Postal Art as Bureaucracy
Mail Art and the Big Monster, 1979
Ulises Carrión
Poster
In the spring of 1978, shortly after hearing of the imprisonment of Caraballo and Padín, Carrión participated in the I.AM International Artist’s Meeting in Warsaw, Poland, where he distributed leaflets and presented a text that encapsulated the possibilities and limitations of mail art. In “Mail Art and the Big Monster,” Carrión pushed back against what he regarded as the more utopian characterizations of mail art, while simultaneously underscoring the construction of artistic kinship as its fundamental trait. The text was revised and published by Carrión later that same year in the journal printed by the Los Angeles Institute of Contemporary Art.
E.A.M.I.S. Announcement, 1978
Ulises Carrión
Flyer
In the face of the imprisonment of two of his Latin American collaborators and suspicious of mail art’s reliance on the government-sanctioned bureaucracy of the international postal system, Carrión launched his own artist-led system of communication and exchange. His Erratic Art Mail International System–or E.A.M.I.S.–was presented by Carrión alongside the reading of "Mail Art and the Big Monster” during the 1978 I.Am meeting in Warsaw. As envisioned by the artist, E.A.M.I.S. would operate according to eight rules and he would serve as its Postmaster. Over the course of the following years, Carrión was able to relay dozens of mail artworks, some by artists living under conditions of political repression in Latin America.
Postcards sent via E.A.M.I.S., 1978
Paulo Bruscky (1949-)
2 postcards and 1 accompanying envelope
Courtesy of Institute for Studies on Latin American Art (ISLAA)
In 1971, Brazilian artist Paulo Bruscky entrusted E.A.M.I.S. with delivering a postcard to Argentine Horacio Zabala. At the time Brazil lived under the regime of a military dictatorship while Zabala was living in Europe as a self-exile fleeing from repression in Argentina. Bruscky was often targeted by the Brazilian security apparatus. In 1975, for instance, the exhibition he co-organized with Daniel Santiago titled “International Mail Art Exhibition” was closed immediately after opening and both artists were subsequently arrested.
On loan from Institute for Studies on Latin American Art (ISLAA)
Artists’ Postage Stamps & Cancellation Stamps Exhibition: A Mail-Art Project by Ulises Carrión
Ulises Carrión and others
Postcard for Mail Art Exhibition
Stempelplaats Gallery, Amsterdam
July 21-August 17, 1979
Cancellation Stamps, 1979
Ulises Carrión and others
Mail Art Project (rubber stamp ink on envelopes)
Courtesy of Institute for Studies on Latin American Art (ISLAA)
In the summer of 1979, Ulises Carrión organized a mail art project and exhibition devoted to artists’ rubber stamps that was held in Art van Barneveld’s Stempelplaats Gallery in Amsterdam. Carrión issued a call for participation that invited artists to mail an original design for a “Cancellation Stamp” that would be subsequently produced by Stempelplaats and exhibited in the show. Submissions would afterwards be featured in an issue of the “RUBBER” bulletin published by Stempelplaats that would be edited by Carrión.
On loan from Institute for Studies on Latin American Art (ISLAA)
