SILLMAN, Amy
The O.G. Vol. 15 : Elements for a conversation

A new zine in the form of a bloc of postcards made as part of the Solitude project with the Frans Masereel Centrum in Belgium!

During the lonesome winter of 2020, the world was abstract and brutal, almost un- imaginable. The post office became a lifeline, bringing hopeful and nourishing things like books, messages, art supplies, medicine, and provisions. The fact that the post office was precarious, under attack by the Trump regime, made it seem all the more worth protecting. So when Stijn proposed a “Solitude” project, I immediately thought of mail art, a way of sending little abstract signs of life, like messages in a bottle, ad- dressed one to one, even in a sender’s shaky handwriting, delivered to another through this almost-magical-seeming antiquated public circulatory system.

This package contains 14 postcards and a list of 100 recipients. The postcards describe elemental fragments of a possible world. The list of recipients de- scribes a possible population. Please send out however many cards you want, to whom- ever you want, using the recipient list. There is no need to “match” any card to anyone logically but please use the list to find the receivers. By sending these cards out you activate a cryptic little diagram, and maybe the start of some conversations I have only begun to imagine.

—Amy Sillman (Long Island, 2020-2021)

Published by Frans Masereel Centrum, 2021
Design by Marco Caroti
Artists' Books / Zines