magyar

November, 1973

Exhibition plans:
“Strange picture postcards”
“Self-documentation”
“The 'Exhibit' exhibition”
“Absurd/pictureless pictures”
“Ruined photos”

MAIL WORKS

Conceptual and postal work plans

- I wrote myself a postcard:
“I talked with Loránd Bereczky and he said nothing”.

- Create situation documentation that documents nothing.

- I write to myself to encourage and inform myself through letters.

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December, 1973

(Find a good way to invent): A picture postcard that has a picture on both sides, and one which is a postcard on both sides. It's the mailman's choice.

Transparent picture postcard.
Your picture postcard is my picture postcard.

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May, 1978

Parisian ideas
The Linda Francis exhibition

Exhibition plan
Linda simultaneously in Budapest and New York.
G. simultaneously in Budapest and New York.

Variations

1. Simultaneously, the documentation of the exhibit at the other location.
2. At the same time, the exhibit and the documentation of the other exhibit.
3. Simultaneously, the two exhibits according to plan.
4. Correspondence on the approach. Both put on an exhibition on how they managed to put on a joint exhibit, i.e., they both put on identical exhibits at two different locations. At two locations, identical dual exhibits.

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1979

Competition themes (plan)

Write down what I should do instead of your doing it. (What you would like me to do instead of you.)

I'll turn them into an exhibit, or rather a publication; I'll document your action with my action, I'll carry out the action on successive mornings.

30 exercises

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Plan

To do something in such a way that I'm not doing it, I only participate.

1. Fictitious exhibition for Cavellini on Balatonboglár (Collage)

2.Letter
I organized an exhibition for you that you organized. Earlier on, I organized a lot of exhibitions in which you might have taken part. Unfortunately I didn't know you then. Since then, the chances of getting access to a place are practically gone. The documentation of further activity, however, is still feasible. Congratulations on your exhibition,
György Galántai

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A suggestion (to myself)

1. One must try every idea.
2. One must do everything (that one can).

Collect activities, as experiences, in an archive, and make them available to all in a variety of ways (exhibitions, publications, etc.), so that we might not all invent the same thing over and over again, while time is passing us by.

I suggest the establishment of a great multitude of museums. Everyone who is interested should set up his own museum.

The private museum as a recreational facility. Let us organize competitions between museums, etc. (Who can make a better museum?) Museum network!

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World (redemption): To do all possible good in spite of all existing evil; the result is nothing, more exactly, the something that is the history of nothing, and the justification of being.

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February 18, 1979

- The acceptance of a piece of fiction, and of reality.
- The acceptance of a piece of fiction and of a conflicting piece of fiction.
- Value + countervalue = 0
- 0 = the symbol of existence.

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What is Mail Art/Network?
Sect, sickness, [safety] valve, exchange of information, satisfaction of secret desires, constant presence, expanded space, readiness, discipline, devotion, daily exhibition, maximal inspiration, voluntary hard labor, feedback, etc.

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1980

Telegram to Pécs on January 15

MAILDRAWING
THE PURPOSE OF THIS TELEGRAM IS TO CREATE THE POSTAL CIRCLE BETWEEN FRANKEL LEO-UT 68/B, III. 16, AND THE SÁNDOR DOKTOR COMMUNITY CENTER, DÉRYNÉ-UTCA 18, PÉCS. HALF OF THAT CIRCLE IS MY DRAWING.
GYÖRGY GALÁNTAI
telegram number 2417
telegram number 3621/186

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Iron Sculpture Stamps
1. Anything with everything,
2. Everything with everything,
3. Anybody with everything,
4. Anybody with anybody,
5. Everybody is, or may be, connected with everybody.

Steel and paper, the steel mill and the post office, the sole of a shoe and an industrial object, the fire of the blow torch and the artists' stamp, everyday existence and artistic existence. It is quite likely that these opposites make sense only if they are together. That's why I've put together this spread of stamps, and that's why I like Art and Mail Art.

- I see the most important feature of my own personality not in the fact that I am a sculptor, painter or whatever else, but in the fact that I yearn for art. For me, that's the strongest motivating force. Not that I make sweeping gestures with a brush in my hand, nor how masterfully I can work the copperplate. While I enjoy these manual aspects, what's most important is the will to art.

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PROJECTS

The founding of ARTPOOL, 1979

Primary aims:

1. To collect material for the museum of artistic inventions scheduled to open in 2079.
2. To inspire the founding of the museum.
3. To fill the gap, for the time being, with spaces available periodically.
4. To operate as part of the museum when it is established (according to the original plans).

The purpose of Artpool is to collect, classify and preserve artistic experiments which, under the present circumstances, would disappear without a trace. Offering direction and information, Artpool encourages every attempt aimed at the renaissance of art, and fosters the development of an atmosphere conducive of creativity.

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ARTPOOL - SPACE

Themes

1. Art can be anywhere, in any form!
2. Art is small.
3. What other forms can art take?
4. The questions of art today.
5. What is beyond art?

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1980

GALLERY 300 BY ARTPOOL (plan - Gallery network)

Point: To operate at 300 locations, with duplicated material. You, too, can be a gallery.

The theme of the first exhibition: textile without textiles.

The material consists of 300 signed and numbered originals.

1. You, too, can be a gallery if you have one copy of the assembling in your possession.
2. The first assembling in Hungary to be produced in 300 numbered and signed copies.
Available from the participating artists. (Every artist receives two copies). The new owners of the assembling, i.e. the members of Gallery 300, should report back to Artpool. Artpool records and writes the history of Gallery 300.
3. The first theme: textile without textiles. Subsequent themes will be determined by Artpool (your suggestions are welcome).

Mailing address: Artpool Budapest, Frankel Leó út 68/b.

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Plan

The TELEPHONE GALLERY will open its doors on Wednesday, January 7, 1981, and will operate on every Wednesday falling on an odd day, from 8 a.m. to 12 p.m.
The gallery will collect its program on these days.
The gallery requests that artists submit their 3 to 6 minute telephone works to: 162-659

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TRAVEL PROJECT, 1982

The missive is a trans-functioned meeting. The meeting is a trans-functioned missive.Meet us at the following addresses:

Our reply will be a trans-functioned meeting.

Artpool
J. + G. Galántai

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Buda Ray University (from 1982)

Here, as in real life, one keeps switching roles. For there are two people in all of us: the teacher and the student; thus, there is no difference between teacher and student. Every member of the university asks and answers questions. The questions and answers are visual.

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1983

plan

Please send me one of your motifs so I can use it in my work.
Everything in the world is half finished, waiting for the artists to finish it.
There are no completed works.
All that cannot be continued is bad.
Good works are open to continuation.
Every place is a good place.
Completeness exists only in the moment.
Time leaves everything unfinished.

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NEW FLUXUS
SIGN BOOK
EAST FLUXUS (plan)

Modify your country's commonly used signs! Turn social practice into artistic practice. Draw everything into art.

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Send in your visual, acoustic and verbal motifs, systems (signs) in any form, so that united with the messages and motifs of other artists, they might enter the sphere of eternal movement, and create a sense of the totality of today's world.

In the form of drawings, pictures, audio tapes, video tapes, film, instructions, descriptions, etc.
The plan will be executed on computer; all participants will receive periodic reports on the work. Please notify us of any change of address.

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A step into the future.

COMP + ART - WORLD + FUTURE (plan)

1. Computer graphics and plans in any form-idea, critique, etc.- in a single copy, for exhibition.
2. Computer-graphic assemblings in 100 copies, original print.
3. Art Computer - pool: notes, techniques, description.

Future-image for computer
COMPUTER ART POOL

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COMMUNICATION is the UNESCO's keynote for 1983 as the year of art.

“Artpool Letter is an attempt to explore the possibilities inherent in the bookwork (livre d'artiste), a form of artistic expression little known in Hungary today, unique possibilities which can be realized only in a studio.”

“The purpose of this letter is to express thoughts which are so haphazard and unorganized that we normally would not write them down, for writing requires a great deal more rumination and editing, and expresses a great deal less spontaneity.”

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(Mail-art is considered throughout the world as a form of artistic communication.)

Plan (only a plan)

Acting on a call from UNESCO, the “Artpool” Archives and Communications Base is collecting material on Meta-, Anti- and Super-Mail-Art. The material includes: original mail-art works, projects, documentation, copies, descriptions, sound material, presentations, etc.
Anyone can participate.

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A guide to the concepts “meta-mail”, “anti-mail” and “super-mail” (terms not in common usage):

1. META-MAIL is a message delivered by hand. It is neither tended /encouraged, nor taboo, nor liable to manipulation, and so falls in the category of tolerated art, for, by its very nature, it is delivered to the addressee without anyone knowing whether it exists or not. There is only one possible exception: if it has to cross national borders.

2. ANTI-MAIL is the message that exists only in some documentation or in the memory, for it has disappeared. Presumably, these missives are removed from the communication network by the mechanisms of evaluation or re-evaluation (prohibition) built into the forwarding apparatus. A switch to another forwarding method, such as meta-mail, is recommended.

3. SUPER-MAIL ART is harmless, for it is the communication of silly and immaterial things. Super-mail is the regular channel of the post office, and may, accidentally, prove useful; it's also useful if one's willing to go to great lengths to keep art from being noticed.

Super-mail that has arrived at its destination may be placed in the meta-mail category, for it attaches some unique factors to the regular workings of the post office, and creates another-new-network within the network.
At any rate, it loses its original mail-art character, and becomes a typical piece of dead mail-art.
(There is no uneasy mail-art.)

Based on the above, the concept behind the exhibition plan is not mail-art, but the creation of a realistic picture of art and society through the realities of communication.
The purpose, therefore, is for the works-and the possibilities [of delivery] available to them-to give a true picture of communication as such, of the messages involved in the process of communication, and of the fate and modification of those messages.

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December, 1989

What is beautiful is not art, but the artist. Every artist is a museum. Show me your museum, and I'll tell you who you are.

What makes the art dispersed all over the world through the postal network significant is that this network has arteries, and pumps to feed these arteries and speed up circulation. What was introduced simultaneously by Ray Johnson and the Fluxus movement, namely, that art can materialize in connection with, or as a function of, real life has now, at the end of the century, become a key concept.

What makes these artists happy? An object they received today? Possibly. This, however, is but the pulsation of the network, the concentrates received from the pumps. The exhibits and documents of “communication-art” suggest a new world. And protest against the old. These creations are never depressing, not even if they treat a depressing subject. They are never bad, for something that is done by a lot of people can never be bad.
Unlike consumer-oriented mass production, they represent the unique produced in great quantities; they exemplify the flexibility of thought while making it accessible to analysis. There are mail-art projects that tell us all there is to know about what is, and even something about what will be. In short, about the direction in which thinking is headed. Communication-art is, in fact, a kind of brain-storming that enables us to learn what people are interested in, and what the answers are.

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1993

One can begin life at any time; in fact, every day there are people who start: those who are born that day. And this does not put the newborn at a disadvantage!

One ought to invent a system which recognizes autonomy while preserving its historic context; in short, changes which do not destroy the values created by earlier changes. (Artpool)

What is of value? Everything that is different.
What is considered to be of value? Everything that can, in the course of time, be integrated into what already is by those who consider themselves qualified to do so.
What is needed? Certain institutions, to protect every “invention” which, at one point, may turn out to be suited for integration. (Artpool)

What is “the future”? The continuing emergence of values integrated through the examination of new inventions and free and changing forms of thought, their fluctuating operation and pulsation.

Every segment of a process has its own history, which can also be interpreted in relation to the other segments.

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February, 1993

theme for Artpool

VIDEO/MAIL/ART
with camera and existing (finished) material

1. Short, vivid, or long, monotonous shots.
2. Using other people's material, that of friends, television programs or anything else.
3. What's important is that it should be like mail.
4. We will hold video-mail shows.
5. The letters will be arranged into a catalogue which all correspondents can receive.
6. We will rearrange the video material in different ways (which we have yet to figure out).
7. Use the video as a means of creating images and conveying messages.

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