MODAL POSTAL 01

MODAL POSTAL 01

The postal service: pioneer of intermodality

The introduction of the postcard has contributed fundamentally to the establishment of the concept of a world postal service and a standard postage since 1869, because it not only required the necessary agreement on standards but also simultaneously brought its own format into circulation. As a kind of “virus of the world postal system (...) it forced old postal districts to adopt the norms of the world post and thus succumb themselves,” the postcard was, in a certain sense, the container of the nineteenth century.

MODAL POSTAL is an ongoing postal research project pertaining to the idea of the container and what that means to different practitioners within the visual arts. Postcards displaying the phrase (a) container (is)... were sent to a selection of artists, curators and architects, to collect thoughts and ideas via the paper ‘container of the nineteenth century’. The idea that these ideas - conceived of, enclosed and relocated - may be encountered by people along the way, adds a further element of dispersion, although unquantifiable and unknown. Presented below are a selection of those received at the time of publishing.