This slideshow was first seen at a Pecha Kucha night in Huddersfield 13 January 2011, to find out more about Pecha Kucha visit www.pecha-kucha.org . The basic guidelines are for presentations with 20 slides each lasting 20 seconds, 6 minutes 40 seconds in total for each presenter.
This is about a Mail Art project which I curated between 1988 and 1991, not too much more to add to that other than I asked people to send me one blade or more, of grass. Personally I believe interaction and participation is far more important than explanation.
01 Grass – more than just a collection but a connection
02 Started in Central Park NYC, but really Brighton England. My request for ‘a present of a piece of NYC turf’ was forgotten.
03 Meanwhile, I was heavily involved in Mail Art and it was time to start a project of my own.
04 Grass from the ground one blade or more was my opening sentence to mail artists between 1988 and 1991.
Creative interpretation and participation was all that was necessary no rules.
05 Shozo Shimamoto was one of the first to reply.
06 Some people went a little further and provided evidence of origin.
07 This sample was exciting not for the ‘Riot Area’ grass but the contact with Ben Ponton a member of Soviet France makers of experimental industrial music and artwork who I had followed throughout the 1980’s.
08 Dried and bagged the grass wasn’t always green why should it be that would constitute a rule.
09 X marks the spot of the cell which this person wrote many, many letters to me from Sing Sing Prison. The grass was secondary to this and many other relationships that grew through my request.
10 Le Peintre Nato a French artist who is totally true to himself.
11 Creative inspiration and involvement varied and was inspiring, from contact with The KGB to meeting, visiting and regularly exhibiting in a New York gallery to simply meeting real people across the world.
12 And still always good to know where the grass had specifically been picked.
13 Grass and Jack Kerouac – perfect.
14 D F Busky’s own pet in the post, just for me.
15 A friend travelled to Japan brought this sample back and was disappointed not to get a sample from Hiroshima.
16 This was one of the last submissions to the project at a time of much change and growth in Eastern Europe.
17 A never ending supply of creativity was shown over the three years, often making me smile as I opened my post sat on the beach in Brighton.
18 Dobrica was a very active mail artist who I collaborated with many times through his fanzine, not the best of time in his country either which was seen in the work he produced.
19 More than once the changes in Europe were echoed in the project here a postcard of a hole in the Berlin Wall with grass from another hole in the wall.
20 Three years 329 samples 46 countries, exhibited in my home, covered by radio, television and national newspapers. More importantly though relationships started then, continue today and I continue to connect show and share creatively online and offline with people through ‘platform58’.
Mark Longbottom
