ostZone - Julia Eberth und Marí Bohley 28. January 2025

Julia: 

Marí, I wanted to show you something. I got a letter – mail art, in fact – from a woman who attended the workshops “Mail Art – Letters as Art” that we ran together at the Albertinum. She thanks us for “a wonderful opportunity to design art out of paper with colours, materials and various types of writing” and says, “The images and words on the cards we made were highly expressive, and making them was an amazing experience!” Great, isn’t it?

Marí: 

Yes, brilliant. And the participants all really got into it, as well – whether young or young at heart, and whether they were from Dresden or had travelled in. They devoured everything we’d brought along in terms of topics, techniques and materials. It was a lead-in to the exhibition “Revolutionary Romances? Global Art Histories in the GDR”, which I don’t think was very easy to understand. It was good that the participants had a chance to visit the show with an art education officer before the course. What did you especially like about the exhibition?

Julia: 

If I’m being honest – no laughing – the typography in green and pink. I thought the questions on the walls were great; a really good way of making the connection between the past and the present. “When does art become propaganda?” or “How can we share ideas successfully?” They made it clear that you don’t have to like everything that returns to our hallowed art galleries after all those years; you can still view it critically. And what did you find especially good, or not so good, about the exhibition?

Julia: 

Going back to our three workshops again, looking back now, is there one experience you had that has really stuck in your memory?

Marí: 

Do you remember that my cousins from Berlin were at the workshop? In 1977 there were protests when the singer-songwriter Wolf Biermann was stripped of his GDR citizenship. My cousins’ father was put in prison as a result, and his entire family had to move to West Berlin. They brought a mail art postcard to the workshop; one their father received back then from someone in the East. That person didn’t dare send it as a postcard, but it arrived in West Berlin in an envelope, and the two girls brought it to our course as an example of mail art from the GDR. I found it really interesting. And what do you remember in particular?

Julia: 

At the second workshop, there was one participant from Libya and a schoolgirl on a French exchange. The two of them worked away, lost in thought, completely oblivious to everything going on around them. I'd have liked to know where their thoughts took them. Next to the French girl there was a woman who’d brought some old GDR stamps with her to make them part of the design. That was obviously interesting in terms of content. And last of all, I thought it was nice that we did the project together. Everyone was so open and keen to know what mail art meant in the GDR. And I think they understood how important the method was to communicate across borders despite the lack of freedom.

Marí: 

It’s hard to believe that despite the threat of repression in the East, a network of artists developed that extended across geographical, political and cultural borders.

Julia:

Mail art was also not meant to be commercial; it bypassed traditional galleries and valued the creative act of communication more highly than the final product.

Marí: 

And it was a real community effort, despite, or in fact because of the systemic restrictions and monitoring. I imagine it being half thrilling, half critical of the system; something that had a humorous side, too. I also think it’s great that the works were mostly one-offs, as conventional means of reproduction were obviously monitored and regulated in the GDR, apart from photographic prints. Some people used pseudonyms, cryptic language and really creative strategies to help them get around government monitoring.

Julia: 

And they exploited mail art’s full potential as a subversive tool.

In the GDR, mail and communications were strongly monitored, as with the works of mail artists. The artistic exchange via the post system of the GDR was associated with considerable risks and many artists had to be careful not to get into conflicts with the authorities, who could censor or confiscate mail. There were cases of artists being incarcerated for such activities.