Finding an Alternative with Correspondence Art
I started working at grunt gallery in my last year of art school, when post-grad anxiety and depression were looming over me while feeling so burnt out with being in school at the same time. A concoction that lead to the birth of ANTS/ASS (Artists Nurturing Thoughts and Skills/Alternative Support System), an emerging/student artist collective that envisions a casual art school where learning happens through friendships and reciprocal interactions, free from mediations by institutions (academic and otherwise). The whole thing revolves around finding alternative means of being and practicing as emerging/student artists, including making/distributing art and supporting each other where our institutions fail to.
When I came across Anna Banana’s 1990 exhibition, Bananapost (20 Years of Fooling Around with A. Banana), more specifically the pages of artist stamps in the exhibition folder in grunt gallery’s archive, it sparked an interest in not only stamp art but mail/correspondence art in general leading me to find Correspondence Art: Source Book for the Network of International Postal Art Activity in grunt’s library. This book gave an insight into how mail art became an alternative art medium that diverged from traditional structures of commercial art and institutions, such as museums and galleries. Mail art came to rise in the late 60s/early 70s as printing and reproduction technologies became more accessible, creating an affordable way of producing tangible art that could be distributed easily through the postal system. In a time before social media and instant communications, I would say this was revolutionary for emerging artists as it allowed them to create non-juried exhibitions built on a community-based, communication network and participation in a global culture.
In one of the essays Anna Banana wrote in the book, she talks about the humanistic value of mail art, one of them being “... a sense of playfulness, fun, irreverence, surprises and responses.”. This resonated so much with what we’re trying to manifest with ANTS/ASS and in thinking about how important feedback is for artists not just in formal critiques with white, gallery walls, but in other environments that art practices could exist in, such as within envelopes. I think that’s the essence of what mail art could offer emerging/student artists, an environment based on reciprocity and democracy that offers a way to look at everyday activities as artistic mediums with the potential to generate alternative systems that could change the way we traditionally view art practices.
Kira Saragih, 2024
https://kirakirawho.blogspot.com/
When I came across Anna Banana’s 1990 exhibition, Bananapost (20 Years of Fooling Around with A. Banana), more specifically the pages of artist stamps in the exhibition folder in grunt gallery’s archive, it sparked an interest in not only stamp art but mail/correspondence art in general leading me to find Correspondence Art: Source Book for the Network of International Postal Art Activity in grunt’s library. This book gave an insight into how mail art became an alternative art medium that diverged from traditional structures of commercial art and institutions, such as museums and galleries. Mail art came to rise in the late 60s/early 70s as printing and reproduction technologies became more accessible, creating an affordable way of producing tangible art that could be distributed easily through the postal system. In a time before social media and instant communications, I would say this was revolutionary for emerging artists as it allowed them to create non-juried exhibitions built on a community-based, communication network and participation in a global culture.
In one of the essays Anna Banana wrote in the book, she talks about the humanistic value of mail art, one of them being “... a sense of playfulness, fun, irreverence, surprises and responses.”. This resonated so much with what we’re trying to manifest with ANTS/ASS and in thinking about how important feedback is for artists not just in formal critiques with white, gallery walls, but in other environments that art practices could exist in, such as within envelopes. I think that’s the essence of what mail art could offer emerging/student artists, an environment based on reciprocity and democracy that offers a way to look at everyday activities as artistic mediums with the potential to generate alternative systems that could change the way we traditionally view art practices.
Kira Saragih, 2024
https://kirakirawho.blogspot.com/
