friday, july 04, 2008

 

When our lost history is resurrected, the messages of our predecessors are revealed in unexpected ways. Ideas, hopes and lost dreams remain, unforgotten. Our imprint very nearly blanketing the globe, marks of communication reaching further than we can fathom. Inspiration and art forms unveil themselves in the tiniest of places, as we consciously leave our stamp upon the world. Turning from physical to digital, mail is transformed to email, the object transfigures back into idea, and art is observed in a jpg.

And instant messages and text completely out date traditional post. Nowadays, to post something often means to make public a notice. And with our short attention spans and quick communications, we usually fail to notice the rich old substance, artful details and poignant messages saturated in the ways in which we communicate and relate. As a psychological experience, art exists as do we, in public, and in ourselves, and the repercussions of noticing the small things and bringing attention to the details can have a penetrating impact collectively and personally.

 

Somehow in my circumnavigation of the world and thought, my interest in the beauty of hidden messages and lost worlds delivered me to a trove of old postage stamps.Most people have collected or thought about it once, and so can relate. Intrigued to encounter what was kept locked away, it feels like a discovery of artifacts. I’m interested in these spent messages. Cancelled or ‘franked’, this is what they are. The random abstraction of the franking mark surprises me, in its’ one of a kind nature impressed upon the face. It may conjure a specific place and time from any moment past. Imbued with history and experience it transports our lucid perception, sent not only in space, but as historical ephemera, in time. And with multiplicity being strength found in numbers, there is a language spoken with the art of a stamp that is practically universal. Creating an intentional warp in the weave of time, the point is an act of awareness, to notice and perhaps slip through into another era of thought for a moment, and to notice the synchronicity of time and place.

 

On the 31^st of July 2008, on 23^rd St between 7 Ave and Broadway, in conjunction with the SVA residency program in Public Art and AIOP (Art in odd places), A small selection of 7 individual cancelled stamps from the mid 20^th Century shall reappear, reposted at least 50 times each. All US postage stamps, many of them native New Yorkers, messaged around the city over 50 years ago. My strategy will be randomly based on ritual, pattern and repetition. Furthermore, a call for artists will be posted on Craigslist.org and the news will spread by other parallel media, hopefully engaging others in active spirit and intent of ‘Re: Posting’. Old Posted stamps should begin to appear as if they have always been there woven through city streets and paths around the world, as though a collective conscious message is revealed in time. In a large enough action, I think greater mindfulness and awareness of the small details in everyday life may be inspired and produced at large. A surreptitious act of great sensitivity, it is meant as a return to sender from Collectors to the Public Domain.