A Network of Sparks

Maybe you are a Mail Art veteran who knows all the inside tricks and drawbacks of the business, or maybe you just discovered correspondence art by chance and are now wondering what the hell is going on. So I think I should try to explain what is this thing called "networking" starting from scratch. The dictionary says that a network is "a group, system, etc. of interconnected or cooperating individuals". It is easy to realize that on this planet do exist a numberless variety of networks with the most diverse finalities, from philanthropic associations to Mafia "families". Though maybe some of us could put to good use a net-list of teenage Scandinavian masseuses, what we are more interested in here are obviously those networks of a more pronounced creative, evolutionistic and libertarian nature. There are some distinctive features to help us to discern a sympathetic net from an exploitative one: - direct two-way one-to-one communication (without filters or censorship) - total openess (no selection of participants) - horizontal dialogue (no hierarchies among participants) - no competitiveness ( and profit making) - no dogmatic rules. The very absence of strict rules or of an uniformity of methods and ideologies is what makes networking so unforeseeable, uncontrollable and agreeable to wallow into. When George Maciunas conceived his Fluxus diagrams, he only had to draw a series of connections among a limited number of artists. Networking is a cultural strategy that embraces the most different disciplines ( art, music, literature, weird science, radical politics, etc.) and is potentially open to an endless number of participants. Therefore if we want to sketch out a comprehensive map of this complex phenomenon, we must conceive a kind of open configuration "in progress", like I tried to do with the "organic tree" reproduced in this catalogue. Each networker finds him/herself at the centre of his/her own network, made up of an ever-changing set of contacts, so each networker would design a quite different form of "genealogical tre": in all cases, the lymph flowing in the main trunk would be pure undiluted communication. Mail Art is a rather "pure" model of networking. After over thirty years of history and literally thousands of exhibitions in altemative spaces as well as in respected museums all around the globe (check John Held Jr.'s 1991 fundamental research work Mail Art: an Annotates Blbliography, The Scarecrow Press, P.O.Box 4167, Metuchen, NJ 08840 USA), it managed to remain a totally open, free, mostly unpretentious and very easygoing activity. You simply need a first batch of addresses to enter the mail art net: you send out anything that pleases you and you get anything your correspondents feel to mail in return, from the most enlightening anti-establishment pamphlet to the most boring xeroxed chain-letter, it's all out there. Magazines like Netshaker, Retro-Futurism, ND, Arte Postale! or Global Mail can previde you with a first gora insight into various facets of the net-world (both theory and practice). Summing it all up, networking is an activity that tends to challenge the status quo as it permits direct exposure to first-hard information, originating from different geographical areas and socio-political environments. In the case of mail art, it also shifts the focus from the production of expensive and "decorative" artifacts to the barter of "ephemeral" documents: a gift of time and energy, a new form of spiritual link. The exchange is the message, the possibility to engage in an active planetary dialogue instead of remaining passive receivers, lifetime couch potatoes. Some people consider Mail Art " the most important contemporary art movement", others dismiss it as "the kindergarten of the avant-garde", some embrace networking as a faith and truly believe that it can help to shape a better world, others simply like to play at distorce with like-minded individuals and carnet be bothered by communication theories and philosophizing. Personally, I always thought that the actual "works" that are exchanged (and therefofe also catalogues and exhibitions) are far less importˆnt than the process from which they are derived. The messages exchanged through the direct contact are not necessarily more reliable or intelligent than those diffusori by the mass media (I often write about Mail Art, in my professional activity as joumalist, in the same terms . I write about it in my small publications for the net), networking is simply a different kind of experience, a possibility to enrich our minds with a knowledge gained from new perspectives that adds itself, without shutting them out, to the other communication media Confronting data obtained through different methodologies can only prove profitable, but the usefuIness of the net depends entirely on the skills of the single networker. It's a surf over an ocean of different attimdes and concepts that you most learn to practice without falling in the boiling chaos underneath. I guess the secret is not letting yourself get caught by new sets of habits, like the invitation-show-catalogue routine that has put a sort of muzzle on the virtually infinite possibilities far surprise, sabotage and cultural guerrilla of mail art. Correspondence art makes much more senso if it is not seen as an end in itself, or as a surrogate of art stardom (have you heard this before?), but rather as one branch of a much bigger "tree". Far this to happen, it is necessary that ali the interested parties temporarily leave the secrecy of their homes to meet and discuss face-to-face, like It happened in 1986 during the successful Decentralized Mail Art Congresses (that involved over 500 participants from 25 countries) or in 1992 with the even more impressive Decentralized World-Wide Netwrker Congresses, an inclusive and informai series of events that helped to establish a wider awareness of the possibilities of cross-breeding among the various forms of networking (including of course e-mail, BBS and ali kinds of computerized forums, that represent the most direct evolution of postai networking). From the different levels of modern societies arise a pressing request far self-determination, open participation, free spaces and undiluted truth, so networking may even reveal itself to become a determinant strategy in the cultural life of the 21st century. Right now, we can start to glimpse an organic-harmonious growth of the phenomenon. A network of scattered tiny sparks is already wrapping up the whole planet, and by burning ali together, they can hope to tight up far a brief instant the thickest obscurity.