Editorial
Hans Braumüller, Hamburg, Germany, 2019.
During 1987 – 1992 in Santiago de Chile, I was engaged in a countercultural zine and a collective of young artists La Preciosa Nativa. We published 10 issues. The last one was an installation in the Museum of Contemporary Art in Santiago de Chile, 1992.
Now I am publishing a zine in the context of worldwide networking culture, connecting these circuits in a local context, with the store Nachladen in my neighbourhood, where I am located with my artist studio in Hamburg, Germany.
I became aware of visual poetry and mail art in 1987, when Gregorio Berchenko invited me to participate at the collaborative visual and experimental portfolio of UNI/vers(;) by Guillermo Deisler.
Since that time I am a participant of numerous international mail art and visual poetry exhibitions and publications. My greatest interest is cooperation and using my networking for creating art that matters.
One of my first mail art projects was Help me to paint, where I sent a piece of my painting to partners worldwide so they could alter it and return it to me. After more than 35 years of painting and doing mail art, textual, visual poetry and meditating about being an artist in this world, I am bringing together a melting pot of artists.
Without the help of my family, supporters and artistic collaborators, this effort would have not been possible. In the web version of this zine at artistmatter.crosses.net, you can find all contributions. In the printed version, you will only find one piece from each participant, because of limited space and resources.
I am continuing a heritage of Latin American mail artists, who have always had social and political motivations, becoming a messenger of voices not appearing in the mass media. Therefore, I am happy that Gregorio Berchenko from Chile and Clemente Padin from Uruguay are supporting Artist Matter Zine.
Nowadays when war is again with us, refugees are unwelcomed by mainstream society, and exploitation is at a new historical high, mail art networking is a collaboration for peace and communication between friends, regardless of their fame and wealth.
Mail art is an operation of hope, thinking globally but acting locally. I hope that the Fridays for Future movement on this planet will make an alliance with indigenous people. Indigenous people were the first victims of progress based on profit, taking advantage at the expense of others and nature. Now climate change obligates us to replace this system. I remember a slogan we used in some issues of La Preciosa Nativa Zine:
