“Look mom, I thought I saw a package”. Or portrait of the postal artist as a young cub.
Imagine an aesthetic sender, imagine a smiling postman.
...
This is a story of scrappy and sonic collages. So use scissors. Use glue. Use tape and Scotch.
And, in the end, put everything in an envelope and send it.
When I was little I wanted to be a postman, then I read Bukowski and changed my mind. But when you are small the postman is not just the postman, he is a funny guy with a mustache, he is Hermes the messenger. And if he stops for a drink at the bar, heaven help us.
In any case, God bless his bicycle.
...
Hills of Castel San Pietro, late afternoon. It’s Saturday, say, and it’s happy hour, but today no white wine, no senatorial seat at the usual bar.
It's dark, there's a fog that you wouldn't believe, and I'm wrapped up in this little street, it's already three or four times I've schlepped back and forth, up down down up, but no visual poetry in sight. That's what was written in the newspaper: visual poetry and mail art.
My purpose is nevertheless more practical than artistic in the sense that I am looking for a tip/epiphany for my workshop with differently-abled youngsters. For now, we are doing small collages, writing micro nursery rhymes, and finally putting everything together. Who knows, maybe without knowing it we create visual poetry too.
Finally, I see the sign, as tiny as could be, the arrow points to a dirt road on the right. I arrive in front of a country house with just a small light in a window. No poster, no sign, nothing at all. Just a barking dog. What do I do, should I ring? I ring...
I wait an almost interminable time, and finally a not quite young lady arrives who, a bit surprised, asks me: "do you want to see the exhibition?", "yes, I would like to" "then, please come in". In an instant, we are in the small exhibition space where a thousand poetic cutouts flash here and there. A vivid and sparkling view, a nice energy encapsulated between order and disorder.
The lady is very kind and chats like a river in flood, maybe I piqued her curiosity by pretending to be knowledgeable, maybe I got a couple of names right. So, after the exhibition, she shows me the studio, her works of visual poetry, the mail art archive, the artist's books, but more than that unfolding of treasures what strikes me is a nice and pleasant feeling of work in progress.
Before leaving, she gives me six or seven books, all about postal art. When I get home, I start leafing through one: "Ray Johnson and Mail Art. Retrospective and Testimonies." The first little chapter is signed by Vittore Baroni.
And Vittore Baroni is one of the brains behind Trax. To be precise, he is unit 02.
...
Ray Johnson, the father of mail art, was a prankster. One fine day he invented nothing meant as nothing, indeed nothing, which in this case is better to use in the plural.
The nothings, in ironic opposition to happenings, were events during which nothing at all happened. And nothing at all is, of course, a quote from the wisest among us.
Billy Name, or rather the one who, while painting a fence, stopped to ask himself whether the fence wanted to be painted or not, one day declared that Rauschenberg was someone who made art, while Ray Johnson was art itself.
I don't know about you, but I feel lighter than air right now.
...
Piermario Ciani, unit 01 of Trax, was a prankster. At the time of the Naon republic, the sovereign state of the punk of Pordenone, he invented the Mind Invaders, a group that could not be more ghostly.
There were official photos of the Mind Invaders, interviews, statements, even reviews, but the group, whose only piece consisted of 7 seconds of silence, did not exist.
The other punks of Pordenone, including Ado Scaini (unit 10 of Trax), kept up with them by continually mentioning them in interviews and putting them in the credits of their records. Many were fooled, even Rokerilla, for instance.
I don't know about you, but I still feel light.
...
Trax of X art, or traces of unidentified art. Aesthetic phonetic ethics of collage.
Ten operational units for an exercise/game that, by scrambling and recombining, shapes a sparkling electronic utopian pot-pourri. The idea was conceived on any given afternoon on any given day by units 01, 02, 03.
Unit 01, Piermario Ciani, official photographer of the imaginary state of Naon. Unit 02, Vittore Baroni, music journalist and bedroom alchemist. Unit 03, Massimo Giacon, first cousin of the futurist fairy Spirocheta Pergoli.
...
“My life was first saved by rock'n'roll and immediately after by mail art” (Vittore Baroni)
Mail art: “an ethereal and infinite game of correspondences”, a system of relationships, a free and gratuitous exchange.
“A network frequented by young, old, and children, established artists and beginners, housewives and mad scientists”
Art travels by letter, works are traded, exchanged, given away. No critical filter. No distinction between high and low. Everyone can participate. “All for art and art for all”...
...
Trax is mainly inspired by “Add and return to” by Ray Johnson, an art attack with chain letter-like characteristics. The mail artist would send an unfinished work to another mail artist with the invitation to carry on. The other mail artist would send it to yet another, and so on...
And so on...
A collective work therefore, without any paranoia of total control by the individual. Not only that, a wonderful and absolute trust in chance.
Yes, chance. One thinks of that exhibition where if you liked a piece you could even take it home, with one condition, though, you had to replace it with something made by you. For example, if one were a baker, they could leave a loaf of bread.
Life is more important than art, that’s the only thing art can say.
...
And here is the Trax method:
(Phase 1) Through the postal network, the central unit contacts the peripheral units. (Phase 2) The peripheral units send a first raw draft to the central unit. (Phase 3) The central unit distributes what it receives to other peripheral units for further elaboration.
Without ever meeting and with the idea that the game can continue indefinitely, a thousand fragments fit together beyond the ego.
Banned the sublimity of the superman artist, what matters is creating a participatory mechanism. Art is especially in its making, that is, in the connections/situations that are its premise.
The album is a screeching Balthasar machine, an at times leaden at times playful drift of broken gears. Some trick of the fairy Spirocheta Pergoli, some snippet of the great conspiracy of Pordenone.
Throwing a stone into the electronic pond, the concentric circles are the smile of dada...
…
Here are all the participants in the project.
(Central unit)
Unit 01 Piermario Ciani
(Peripheral units)
Unit 02 Vittore Baroni
Unit 03 Massimo Giacon/SpirochetaPergoli
Unit 04 B Sides
Unit 05 Martin Hall
Unit 06 Enrico Piva
Unit 07 Nocturnal Emissions
Unit 08 Daniele Ciulini
Unit 09 De Rezke
Unit 10 Ado Scaini/Cancer
…
Trax operates between 82 and 87. Not just music, but also graphics, comics, video. The units will grow from 10 to over 500. The subsequent works are excellent, even magnificent.
Trallallà...
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