The Museum of Temporary Art presents "33 obscure objects" by Günther Ruch

Introduction by Günther Ruch

We are showing 33 small objects - mini copies of various anthologies of the Mailart network of the last 30 years, which are dedicated to the year "OA-04" (=obscure actions 2004). 33 pieces were selected from around 60 special publications from and about the international mailart network (1974 - 2004). All of which dealt with the historic side of mailart at an anthology level.
These 33 copies of original anthology documentations refer to the specific edition (cover, size and thickness of their original models). However, only with the given text references the actual meaning of their presentation is provided - without text reference, they remain obscure.

Today, the real anthologies can be viewed in any larger mailart-archive, yet they are frequently ignored by members new to the network, which in turn results in inexperienced Mailart decriptions being passed on and understood as definitive.
In addition, these anthologies also display the enormous variety of used media (artistamps, postcards, rubberstamps, stickers, photocopies, SIEBDRUCK, etc.), as well as crossing into related artistic fields such as visual poetry, copy-art or sound poetry. Of course, art such as sound poetry have their own pioneers and presnetation conditions, therefore also their own anthologies and artists, which is why their anthologies don't correspond to mailart ones.
This exhibition only shows publications that have a documentary character and that research mailart or were written by mailartists (the essence of mailart is and remains the international communication and collaboration, which originally only used traditional postal systems). In hundreds to thousands of mailart-shows with hundreds or thousands of participants, anywhere between one-hundred and one-thousand catalogues and publications were created describing this mailart phenomena - from which only a few were real anthologies.

The selection criteria for the anthology objects presented here, were to present a variety of authors from various countries as well as a selection of the small media activities of the chosen artists. The mini-objects were designed to match their original counterparts and made for the Museum of Temporary Art by Günther Ruch. Enjoy your journey through this both "imaginary" as well as "documentary" presentation of published objects.

Please feel free to participate.
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