Video della mostra Im[m]agine	DOWNLOAD: Catalogo Im[m]agine.pdf - Invito - Manifesto

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August 30th / September 9th, 2012 - Im[m]agine. International project of Mail art and Digital art

Im[m]agine ALIDA GIANTI

 

The Councillorship for Culture and the SACS of Quiliano have suggested, in this year 2012, a creative project, that once more provides the idea of a “travelling art”, either through the traditional postal system or by e-mail. There is indeed something new in comparison with previous initiatives, in fact they added a nice possibility: this year artists could send also small three-dimensional objects, respecting their max size, as specified in the notice of participation.
Im[m]agine is the theme of this initiative and it is dedicated to the “objet d’art”. Artists have the maximum expressive freedom, the same sense of freedom – I repeat -, that distinguishes mail-art and digital-art, is here even more powerful: no ties to art galleries, no market requirements, no preferred style, which could be influenced by the latest fashion trends or taste.

Rather than it, you can find here the free pleasure to communicate through your creative instinct and your own artistic experience, you can follow your own idea, inspiration/aspiration, your own artistic sensibility and/or knowledge, your personal technical or technological experimentation.
The result is easy to see, indeed: there are artists, who have sent light postal packages with artworks inside, which stir first of all the curiosity of addressees who open and
watch them; there are other artists, who have used the computer to create fully digital images or to transform different types of images into digital ones; there are artists, who have simply put a photo of their own artwork up online for the world to see, without need for physical transport; there are other more artists, who have chosen to do short videos, whose contents are completely different one from each other (there are social political ones, personal ones, aesthetic ones); and so on.
Therefore, this is a variegated world which works with no artistic restrictions, whose performers seems to participate just only for the pleasure to accomplish a common artistic action, which can generate both virtual and practical pleasant experience exchanges. Considering that the participants involved in this edition 2012 were almost three hundred coming from more than thirty countries (recently Columbia, Lithuania and Java joined the initiative), we can surely talk about a positively global “world art”. In this situation Quiliano has become, for all those who still don’t know it, the small but busy village, which is situated in that particular area of an Italian Region called Liguria: as we live right there, in this Liguria, we are very proud of it!

Mail art travels and symbolically flies, after all just like digital art. This one uses innovating technologies and communication systems, which are more and more sophisticated; it can sometimes offer surprising results, which seem almost like “magic” to those who are not used to its methods. Travelling art, it doesn’t matter if it is traditional or avant-garde art, can also be the expression of a simply idea, which will be translated into practical action: in this way it produces not only an immediate sense of joy in the person who enjoys it, but also the desire to “continue playing”. It happened to the author of this article, too, and this is its short story.
One day a friend of mine, who is an artist, sent to me an envelope with plenty of coloured paper cuttings in it, with this comment: «A little bit of rainbow is never bad!». So, his kind act generated a lot of others, like in a chain reaction; it created collective emotions; it was even transformed by me in a little collage picture – it had to be a present, but it never became! – moreover, I even wrote a short tale about it –this tale, instead, went away, by post, directed to a literary competition!-. These are the curious and wonderful effects of mail art…!
To sum up, let me remember once more the rendez-vous in Quiliano, where you will find Im[m]agine with the expected exhibition of all sent artworks: the finally physically palpable small sculptures and the clear digital images and short video-tales. This time you must personally travel to it if you are interested in, of course distances and possibilities permitting!