In times of linguistic confusion, accompanied by censorship and deliberate misinformation, in times when free speech and free expression are losing importance, it may seem like an undertaking to address the question of where the boundaries of a work of art lie today.
But this is only an apparent contradiction. Especially in these times, artistic expression is a means of communication with great potential.
One hundred years ago, the artists of DADA manifested their messages in collages and drawings, used the niche of art to express criticism that no longer wanted to be heard on the streets and squares, used the postal service to evade censorship.
While digital AI may personalize this text for the interested reader, the works sent out en masse will find their way into the collective memory. But it requires careful decoding.
In the post-factual era, digital appropriation helps both sides. While some use ever more finely tuned filters and delete massive amounts of data, contemporary artists can use cut & paste and CNC technology to achieve a reach that was previously denied to them. As Dürer already knew, the use of contemporary technology (at the time, letterpress and lithography) pays off. Today it is the laser cutter that turns a design into a few thousand copies. Posted and liked on digital platforms, and used again and again in other contexts and replicated as part of another work of art, the reach gains.
Nevertheless, digital will remain an anomaly and its time as a valuable medium is numbered. What will remain is the analogue. Paper lasts 200 years if acid-free and well stored.
The DADA artists had already discovered mail art for themselves and used it intensively. Later, Beuys also supplied his friends in the East with drawings and collages to alleviate everyday life in the German Democratic Republic for silenced creatives.
So how can you push the boundaries further if you see your work as a unique piece? As an artist of social sculpture, I have an advantage here. My work has always been about making the whole work possible, fed by the creativity of the many.
So I designed a stamp and sent it to 41 creatives. I myself now use a stamp in my mail art post and they use it too. I have sent around 300 envelopes with it so far and will continue to do so until I have 1,000 envelopes.
If each of the artists did the same, that would already be 42,000 contact options. And what if each envelope was shown to ten interested art lovers? And what if these artists passed this stamp on to a young, up-and-coming colleague at the end of their own careers?
I gladly accepted the invitation from the Serbian artist Predrag Petrovic . The mission of DADALAND seemed appealing and open enough to develop and try out my own creative ideas. Multiplying the design with the laser cutter gave me the option of making this work larger. Many hundreds of copies of the work went to other mail art artists around the world.
These artists in turn responded creatively to this offer and incorporated the artefacts into their own creations. The right of the two collages shown above contains one of my DADALand Eggs. I sent it to an American artist, who used it in a collage and sent it to a French colleague, who then published it on an international platform for mail art.
So where does Predrag Petrovic`s work of art Mission of Dadaland end and where does my work DADALand Eggs begin?
The work of Art The secret monk started in 2023 and is still ongoing. On the one hand, several hundred copies were distributed in the mail art scene, and on the other hand, the project found its way into the international art project ARTSURPRISE.EU. In addition, there was a series of around 150 postcards called The Secret Monk, which contained a riddle. Some monks will also find their way into a new social art project in 2025 (#BUENAVISTACERVERA).
I once said that as a young artist you cannot force the attention of art historians, just as as an older artist you cannot prevent it.
So it will be a mystery to these historians where this art begins and where it ends.
What it has in common is the desire to expand its reach. And this desire is driven by the message that is encoded in this art. So I make myself common with Dürer and Beckmann, with Ernst and Heartfield and all the others, in the desire to be decoded one day, in order to perhaps spare new generations from having to go through the same experiences again and again.
So what does the collage of monotiles say in this context? Well, maybe that history doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme.
