Socialization of the Private? The Emergence of Polish Mail Art and the Ideas of Democratic Opposition

The emergence of mail art in Poland in the beginning of 1970s coincided with the popularization of neo-avant-garde and conceptual art in the region. Its first comprehensive theocratization came with the NET manifesto written by Andrzej Kostołowski and Jarosław Kozłowski in 1971 which proposed a creation of a network of exchange of art that was based on openness, engagement, expansion and decentralization. At the same time the transformation of the political landscape in the country following the December 1970 protests, and earlier March 1968 events, were reflected upon in the new theories of self-organization and undermining the state monopoly on information that later became foundational for the development of the Polish democratic opposition. The postulates of Leszek Kołakowski and Jacek Kuroń from the beginning of the decade highlighting the need to undermine the conviction of the unreformability of the system and proposing the socialization of the private as the alternative to state corruption overlap with contemporary artistic networking endeavors. The synchronicity of these philosophical and artistic propositions manifests the initial mechanisms and motivations that laid groundwork for self-organized networks that constituted an alternative to the areas controlled by the authorities.

ARTMargins, Volume 14, Issue 1, pp. 56-76.

doi:10.1162/artm_a_00405

https://direct.mit.edu/artm/article/14/1/56/130983/Socialization-of-the-Private-The-Emergence-of

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