page_title: Mail art
section_title: Other media
hierarchical_section_title: Mail art / Media and artistic practices in the creation of mail artworks / Other media
caption_attribution_description: English: Mail Art Zine
context_page_description: Mail art is a populist artistic movement centered on sending small-scale works through the postal service. It initially developed out of what eventually became Ray Johnson's New York Correspondence School and the Fluxus movements of the 1960s, though it has since developed into a global movement that continues to the present.
context_section_description: In addition to appropriating the postage stamp model, mail artists have assimilated other design formats for printed artworks. Artists' books, decobooks and friendship books, banknotes, stickers, tickets, artist trading cards (ATCs), badges, food packaging, diagrams and maps have all been used.
  Mail artists routinely mix media; collage and photomontage are popular, affording some mail art the stylistic qualities of pop art or Dada. Mail artists often use collage techniques to produce original postcards, envelopes and work that may be transformed using copy art techniques or computer software, then photocopied or printed out in limited editions.
  Printed matter and ephemera are often circulated among mail artists, and after artistic treatment, these common items enter into the mail art network.  Small assemblages, sculptural forms or found objects of irregular shapes and sizes are parceled up or sent unwrapped to deliberately tease and test the efficiency of the postal service. Mailable fake fur ("Hairmail") and Astroturf postcards were circulated in the late 1990s.
  Having borrowed the notion of intermedia from Fluxus, mail artists are often active simultaneously in several different fields of expression. Music and sound art have long been celebrated aspects of mail art, at first using cassette tape, then on CD and as sound files sent via the Internet.
  Performance art has also been a prominent facet, particularly since the advent of mail art meetings and congresses. Performances recorded on film or video are communicated via DVD and movie files over the internet. Video is also increasingly being employed to document mail art shows of all kinds.
caption: Cover of Kairan mail art zine, edited by Gianni Simone, aka Johnnyboy, 2007
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