mail art & america’s banking crisis


Correspondence art, commonly known as mail art, began during the 1960s when artists started using postcards as mediums. By inscribing them with poems or drawings through the post instead of exhibiting them through conventionally commercial platforms, it was a collectively publicized denial of the art world's exclusive notoriety and self-constructed prestige. The American Mail Art Movement emerged out of a churning search for self that our nation reckoned with through the 1950s and 1960s, where artists began to express their own individual search for self through the creation and exchange of small works of art through the postal service. Artists were allowed to experiment with new forms of consumer printing such as Xerox machines and allowed for the sharing of work during a time when exposure for art was limited to print magazines and expensive books. Its origins lack a single source, appearing in the works of Duchamp, Schwitters, and especially Ray Johnson, a New York artist. In the 1950s, Johnson posted small collages, prints of abstract drawings and poems to art world notables giving rise to what eventually became known as the New York Correspondence School.

     New Years Card, Murakami Saburo                                        

Coincidentally, 1971 was the year when both the USPS and the term "mail art" became familiar. The first widely circulated use of the term “mail art” in print occurred in the title of an exhibition catalogue: Mail art—Communication à distance—Concept released in November of 1971: the same year that mail processing in America was transformed by the founding of the quasi-corporate United States Postal Service.
In the US, the transformation of mail in July of 1971 was brought about by an act of Congress that converted the former federal Post Office Department into a government-owned company that was expected to generate enough revenue to be self-sustaining. The reorganization into this autonomous entity was agreed to by unions and the government after postal employees, primarily led by Black workers, had successfully engaged in dramatic nationwide wildcat strikes in March of 1970. Simultaneously during the 70s, New York City mail art began to adopt as a form of resistance to bypass the barriers of traditional artistic institutions and decentralize. As commentators and historians have pointed out with increasing frequency, the United States Postal Service continues to be the only delivery service that goes everywhere in the United States “to patrons in all areas” and “all communities,” as Title 39 specifies. This law also says, rather plainly, “the costs of establishing and maintaining the Postal Service shall not be apportioned to impair the overall value of such service to the people.” This essential legislation became a stepping stone to mail art's revolution becoming accessible to anyone with a stamp and an envelope, lowering the social impediments hindering artistic recognition. 
 Untitled postcard, Ray Johnson

As mail art transformed creative communication during this time, the supporting structure of regulated postal banking simultaneously transformed economic access, especially for the millions of Americans excluded from traditional financial systems. During the Great Depression, when the public justifiably lost faith in private banks, the Postal Savings System was a uniquely reliable alternative, discarding the corporate sector's domination that was not always obvious, yet pervasive. By 1947, more than 4 million people had $3.4 billion in savings in more than 8,000 postal units. However, during the post-WWII economic boom, when interest rates at private banks rose, and after the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) offered depositors at private banks some guarantee, usage of the Postal Savings System declined and the program was discontinued in 1967.
I recently finished reading The Unbanking of America by Lisa Servon, a commentary depicting the post office as an opportunistic bridge delivering financial security directly to those in need. According to Servon, banking has changed dramatically over the years, pushing lower-middle-class families towards using alternative financial services such as payday lenders, check cashers, and informal borrowing groups. Taking lessons from the Postal Savings System, a modern public banking option could blend free, accessible accounts (such as FedAccounts managed by the Federal Reserve) with retail services provided at post offices.

However, there remains significant opposition against postal banking's revitalization from the private banking industry, which claims the U.S. Postal Service is ill-equipped to add banking to its other services and that many banks now have low-cost programs that could better serve the currently unbanked population. But why? Banks lack incentives to serve the unbanked and operate on a profit-driven model to often find that serving low-income populations is horribly unprofitable. Conversely, the USPS already serves rural areas and inner cities, locations banks lack the incentivized commitment to reach, thus reducing the distanced effort required to access basic financial services. Contrary to pessimistic belief, the postal banking system wouldn't eradicate community/local banks' presences but rather co-exist, largely benefitting their served community. Despite behavioral economists constantly value-judging financial consumers who choose to partake in informal cashing services, our system is structured so for-profit banks lack incentive to disrupt predatory payday lenders and check-cashing services, as these often indirectly benefit the financial industry. USPS banking can align with other government services to distribute benefits, enforcing a natural extension of public infrastructure.

Italian anarchist Errico Malatesta once said, “Everything depends on what people are capable of wanting.” When hosted by a regulated postal service, both art and banking can become services for communities and mail art transmogrifies into a democratizing force, rejecting the art world’s traditional exclusivity for widening creative participation’s accessibility to anyone with a stamp. The history of postal banking shows that financial security can be a public good and projects a vision of what public infrastructure can achieve when creative accessibility and economic accessibility become a duality: art and financial well-being are both necessary forms of public service.






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