Reassembly Workshop: Situational Publishing & Latin American Postal Art

In this talk and workshop, librarian and arts organizer Sal Hamerman connects Can Can Press' Reassembly “Situational Publishing” project to the broader histories of mail art as a networked and cross-cultural practice that is simultaneously playful and political.

Ulises Carrión's work asks us to consider how postal art connects relational strategies such as listening, sampling and sequencing to the "Big Monster" of state bureaucracy. In the 1970s and 1980s, Carrión served as a key point of contact with Latin American mail artists such as Edgardo Antonio Vigo, Clemente Padín, Graciela Gutiérrez Marx, and Paulo Bruscky, who were living under authoritarian political conditions. These artists' work playfully subverted and made visible the conditions of censorship and violence that they were experiencing, using the mail to forge international solidarities. The short talk will be followed by an opportunity to create mail art in response to Can Can's project.

ABOUT SAL HAMERMAN:

Sal Hamerman is a Metadata Librarian specializing in rare books at Princeton University Library. Their work draws upon their background in library and archival theory and practice to engage the histories and futures of artists’ publishing, artists’ networks, and alternative spaces of cultural work. Together with Javier Rivero Ramos, Sal co-curated the exhibition Ulises Carrión: Bookworks and Beyond and co-edited the accompanying catalog of the same title. They have also written chapters for the books Art’s Biggest Stage: Collecting the Venice Biennale (2019) and Library of the Printed Web: Collected Works, 2013–2017. They co-founded the artist-run projects Office Space 2 (New Brunswick, NJ, 2018–19) and the Cybernetics Library (New York, 2017–). Sal also co-organizes two Philadelphia-based electronic music series, Spindrift and Chrysalis, and hosts a monthly online radio show on Particle.FM.

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