(Piermario Ciani)
Correspondance art or mail art, as it is internationally best known, is an artistical phenomenon with planetary dimensions, founded on the sharing of experiences on a level of equality and on the direct and free exchange of any kind of creation of the intellect that can be transmitted through the postal system (not only creative postcards and letter then, but also packages with publications, tridimensional works, audiocassettes, videos, etc.). With the passing years mail art has taken the configuration of a proper network in continuous transformation, constituted by thousands of people in every corner of the world who to the impersonal and alienating one-way comunnication of the mass media and to the often perverse mechanism of the art critique and market preffered the intimate and disinterested two-way contact that can be gained through a simple and unexpensive medium like the normal corrispondence. This networking activity draws inspiration from a pragmatic philosophy of inclusive and anti-elitist orientation, aimed towards the dismantle ment of all the barriers between the Artist (with a capital A) and the non-artist, art and life.(..)
- no registration tax should be asked to the partecipants in a project;
- no jury should select or classify the works received according to their merits;
- the works contributed will not be returned to the authors (but may be redistribuited free, given as
gifts to visitors, sold to raise benefit funds, and so on);
- a documentation of the project shoukd be sent free of charge to all the partecipants (within the limits of the finantial possibilities of the organizers: this documentation may consist of a simple list of addresses, of a poster, of a proper illustrated catalogue, etc.).
The cases of litigations and ego-conflicts among networkers - so common in the official art world! - have been very rare inside the postal circuit, to the point that mail art, that certainly counts in its ranks people of the most different stylistic inclinations, costumes, ideologies, political and religious faiths, can be taken as an example of a school of great tollerance.(...)
In view of everything said until now, mail art can be rightly considered the largest "underground" artistical phenomenon of this century. (Vittore Baroni)