Mail to Nico van Hoorn - Netherlands - arrived

My last mail to Nico van Hoorn arrived. I see this on his blog: http://nicovanhoorn-mail-art.blogspot.com/ which is a wonderful overview of what Nico sends and receives. This time he made again a photo of the envelope in front of the pile of mail he has received from me already over the years. I Didn't realize that I sent him already such a pile, but I am honnored he can just show online that he has collected all of it.

I wonder sometimes what happens to everything that I send out. In the late 90-ies I even did a project that I asked people to scan my mail-art and send digital images back to me. That showed me a bit of how large the collection actually is that I have scattered all over the world. No way it will even be together in one place at one moment.

These days we can see if our mail-art arrives or not because some document their sendings and receivings on a blog or website. How long will these websites last? Blogger offers a free service for as all these times, but I remember the http://www.geocities.com/ times, where you could build your own website. They are all gone when you ween't willing to pay after Yahoo took over. I paid, and that is why http://www.iuoma.org/ is still active. If you want to get a glimpse back of older websites, the only way is still http://www.archive.org/ with their wayback machine. How long will that last to archive the complete Internet?

So I am glad when artists like Nico take the trouble to actualy archive the things I send them. When they invest in the time to store it it feels good for me and I am gratefull.