Mail Art (1960)
Sent postcards inscribed with poems or drawings through the post rather than exhibiting or selling them through conventional commercial channels. Mail art is considered art once it is dispatched. In the 1970s, the practice of mail art grew considerably, providing a cheap and flexible channel of expression for cultural outsiders. It was particularly widespread where state censorship prevented a free circulation of alternative ideas.
In the mid-1980s, Fricker and Bloch, in a bilingual "Open Letter To Everybody in the Network" stated: 1) An important function of the exhibitions and other group projects in the network is: to open channels to other human beings. 2) After your exhibition is shown and the documentation sent, or after you have received such a documentation with a list of addresses, use the channels! 3) Create person-to-person correspondence... 4) You have your own unique energy which you can give to others through your work: visual audio, verbal, etc. 5) This energy is best used when it is exchanged for energy from another person with the same intentions. 6) the power of the network is in the quality of the direct correspondence, not the quantity. The manifesto concludes, "We have learned this from our own mistakes."
