Learn To Swim!
Mail Art Exhibition, 2009
Mail art is simultaneously an object of art and a message sent by the mail system as the uniting element. The huge mail art collaboration network includes thousands of participants in about fifty countries. Despitethe possibilities to use electronic means of communication, mail art as a type of art still exists and is characteristically personal in a special way and with a certain seriousness of intent.
The beginning of the nowadays existent network of mail art is closely related to Ray Johnson (1927–1995) who founded NYCS – The New York Correspondence School in 1962. Mail art became an international movement around 1964, when the Fluxus network was at its prime and Joseph Beuys, Yoko Ono, George Brecht and Lithuanian-born George Maciunas were active in the network.
Mail art still exists as a democratic and non-commercial form of art where works are not sold and judged by juries. It is not a decorative postcard sent by mail, it is an artist communication network.
One of the characteristic features of mail art is a socially active position and solidarity, many artists of this international letter art community use also other types of art, most often photography and video as well as literary techniques. The operative principles of this art are openness and anti-elitism. On the one hand, they do increase graphomania and mediocrity, but on the other hand, it truly is a place of marvellous discoveries and opportunities for anyone. As proved by the previous experience of the Bolderāja group, mail art as a process can produce a surprising result not only quantitatively but also qualitatively.
Artists who have been invited, have responded and participates in the projects of the Bolderāja group: Clement Padin (Uruguay), Nico Van Hoorn (the Netherlands), Tim Scannell (USA), Paul Tiililä (Finland), Bruno Chiarlone (Italy) Frips (Belgium), Reed Altemus (USA), Roy Arenella (USA), Keith Bates (England), Steve Dalachinsky (USA), John M.Bennett (USA), Malok (USA), Miguel Jimenez (Spain), Jurgen O. Olbrich (Germany), Diana Marshall (USA), Vittore Baroni (Italy), Marcelus Freitas (Brazil), Schoko Casano Rosso (Germany), Horst Baur (Germany) and others. Several of them are classics of the mail art movement since the very beginning of Fluxus network. Of course, also Latvian artists participate in theseprojects.
The Bolderāja group mail art project for Survival Kit is „Learn to swim!” and it originated from their own feelings of being exposed to physical danger during the flood of 2005 and 2007. Bolderāja is one of the so-called submerging territories and the ability to swim is one of the ways of getting along with this inevitability. City planning projects involve schemes of changing the configuration of Daugava riverbanks and creating new territories in Daugavgrīva, Krievusala, Rīnūži, Mangaļsala, by the AB dam. By filling up arms and branches of the river new values are created for the economic prospects of city development – the so-called development territories. But questions of flood danger, inhabitants’ safety, nature and the cultural heritage of the riverbanks are not answered.
The position of an artist as a part of the society can be of two sorts – either disassociate himself/herself from it and live with the slogan “art for art’s sake” or allow himself/herself understand it all and react accordingly. The Bolderāja group calls on people to participate!