Postcards

Mail-art has a traditional heritage as a way of distributing art, and as a way for artists to collaborate. Postcards as a medium of art-expression emerged early in our process.

The social context we find ourselves in, during the residency, is the Swedish parliamentary elections. Mail, posting, post boxes are currently an active and appropriate site for us to work in.

Our rationale is connecting the taxpayers who have funded our residency, with what they have funded, and an actual experience with Art. These taxpayers are voting on the 11 September. A pressing issue in these elections is that art funding may be severely curbed by these elections. This is a method for us to give back to our funders, to share, and to make art which has actual impact.

Two motifs emerged; the postcard and the postboxes. We explored postboxes through performance[s]. Postcards became a vehicle to give original artwork to the residents [tax payer, funders, voters] of Bjorko Alhoma. They are also a means by which we could spread the questions [hand written on the back of the postcards] which emerged during our kaleidoscope conversations. The questions, via the postcard, spread like viruses, infecting receptive hosts.

Postcard process:

A large piece of constructed paper [roughly 2.5m x 3 m, made from found paper] is the material from which the postcards are made: It begins with mapping our bodies on the paper. The paper is further worked by various processes; frottage leaves found in the forest, printing with paint and vegetables, colouring in, collaging, and the finale; a dance process with our feet dipped in the red paint that the buildings, in the area, are painted with. This large work is cut up into 144 individual postcards. Questions are hand written on the back. The postcards are hand delivered to the various postbox sites in the area.