Mejl art – dopisna umetnost; umetnost komunikacije
Mail-art: The Art of Communication

Summary/Abstract: The goal of this work is to point out the specifics of mail art as an artistic form whose essence is characterized by the direct exchange between artists without mediation of galleries, museums, critics, art dealers, as well as free and unrestricted communication. Mail art is not consisted of a unique artistic style, special technique, or precisely defined way of creation. The only common denominator to all mail artists throughout the world is that they materialize their art by the means of postal system. Considering that mail art deals with communication and a reciprocal exchange of esthetic messages, their symbolic structure is composed of presentational symbols as the means for non-discursive cognition of the world. The basic idea of this work is to demonstrate that even in the era of market culture there is a noncommercial art form as a creative oasis of numerous enthusiasts, whose goal is the establishment of an alternative international art circle that acts parallel to the official one, along with its own territory of cultural identification. This work also underlines important differences between Mail and E-mail art, which represents the correspondence art in a digital form, resulted from developments in computer technology and electronic communications. The work is also an attempt to prove the hypotheses regarding persistence of mail art in the world of “virtual reality” and to provide answers about its future.

• Details
• Contents