ASSEMBLINGS from The Archives of the Eternal Network

Opens: March 10, 2012 and runs through April 15, 2012

Location: 262 Pagosa Street, Pagosa Springs, Colorado 81147 – tel. 817-944-4000

Opening Reception: Saturday March 10, 2012 from 5:00pm – 7:00pm

Winter Hours: Tues through Saturday 2:00pm - 5:00pm

On view will be a selection of Assemblings including Franticham’s Assembling Boxes from Ireland; Art/Life Magazine, Tensetendoned - We Absorb assemblings; Fluxkits from Fluxpress Saint Louis, Bamboo Assemblings, KART magazine (an assembling publication from Australia); Fluxlist Fluxbox; Post cards from the assembling: A Book About Death; selections from the Fluxcase Micro Museum. Additional related works from the Permanent Collection will also be on view.

 What are Assemblings?

 Assemblings are collections or compilations of works of art, multiples, objects, writings, visual poetry and/or ephemera submitted by a network of participants to a single hub where a central editor collates one copy from each artists' edition of submitted materials into a number of portfolios. A common practice is for the editor to then send back one folio or assembling of works to each participating member. Assemblings might be in the form of a box of loose materials, a bound book or magazine format, etc. or even be a collection of sound works or short videos. On view for this exhibit are examples of assemblings in box form, magazine format, an unbound book and as collections of objects. In fact the museum itself is an assembling in its own right.

 History of Assemblings

 Assemblings - as shown in this exhibit - have been created since the early 1960’s as artists, writers, and small independent printers worked on developing alternative, underground distribution networks for their experimental art and literature. As the art and literary worlds came to be controlled by powerful and well established business interests that, in essence, were seen as cultural gate keepers, the creative community experimented with direct mailings and other self-initiated ways to reach out to their collaborators and extended audiences; what we would call today niche markets based primarily on networks of people with similar interests. This kind of experimentation led directly to the establishment of the international Mail Art community known as the Eternal Network which celebrates its 50 year anniversary this year as does Fluxus, an amorphous group of artists that has been highly influential in developing the Mail Art scene in the 60’s and 70’s and on through to the present.