Research Laboratory: I Am a Parcel, You Are a Stamp

The laboratory is devoted to the study of mail art and will draw on the archive of artist and poet Anna Tarshis (Ry Nikonova) and her husband, the artist, poet, and scholar of the Russian avant-garde Sergey Sigov (Sergey Segay, Serge Segay, Nikolai Essi).

The history of mail art in Russia started with Nikonova and Segay in 1985, when the couple took part in an exhibition of experimental art in Budapest, where their works were noticed by mail artists from Yugoslavia, France, and the USA. According to Ry, the couple sent over a thousand pieces of mail art every year, and received mail art in return—this made them the best-known mail artists of the Soviet Union.

In 1964–1974 Nikonova and Segay were part of the informal association of artists known as the Uktuss School, a unique example of underground art from Sverdlovsk [Yekaterinburg since 1991]. From the scanty information that seeped through the Iron Curtain, the group learnt of Fluxus, whose practices were closely connected to mail art—an art form that was becoming popular at the time. Nikonova and Segay’s move from Sverdlovsk to Yeysk in 1974 inspired the members of the group to develop artistic exchanges via mail.

By the time they started working in mail art, both Nikonova and Segay were already practicing artists and poets and editors of the samizdat journal of theory and practice Transponans (1979–1988). The group of Transfurist artists that formed around the journal influenced culture in Moscow and St. Petersburg, despite being located in provincial Yeysk. The group’s art and poetry were greatly inspired by the avant-garde experiments of the early twentieth century.

The archive studied at the laboratory includes a vast collection of autobiographical texts and essays, poetry and plays, novels and short stories, diaries, correspondence, visual and experimental sound poetry, graphic pieces and photographs, and materials related to performance and mail art practices.

The work of the laboratory will be partially open and partially closed to the public. Participants of the research group working in a closed format will be selected through an open call. Open meetings will include public talks and workshops. The research group will publish a zine, one of the most popular formats in mail art, which also requires collective work.

The title of the laboratory was taken from Ry Nikonova’s unpublished text 42 Dreams About Mail Art (1988–1988), which is in Garage Archive Collection.