Craig Saper curated this exhibition through loan of "Assemblings" entirely from the Sackner Archive. It might have been the largest exhibition of assemblings in a gallery space to date. His extensive essay describes the history of this international, alternative distribution system with its roots in Fluxus, Lettrisme, Situationism, Conceptualism and Cobra. Circumventing the established art gallery system, bookmakers, artists, visual poets, media artists send from 50 to 100 works to an assembler or compiler who distributes the assemblings to the participants and to subscribers. Worldwide networking systems developed, basically using the postal system and a few avant garde institutions, in an attempt to reach a wide audience and democratize art making. Assemblings combine both crafts and mechanized reproduction. Saper writes, "The artists cherish the production of carefully constructed individualized visual poems and constructions as well as the insistence that readers recuperate, recycle, plagiarize, and forever alter these codes and messages." He concludes, "The assemblings included in this exhibition have an important place in the future of artistic experimentation and extension of the concept of art to include social sculpture. A social sculpture does not merely comment on the production of art, but also on the production of specific types of social networks. As a forum for this extension, assemblings might be remembered as the transition into, and the kit-like instructions for, the quintessential art and literature of the twenty-first century: networked art." The cards are the invitation and dinner menu designed by Greg Bear to resemble stamped, mailed corrogated boxes. The stamps are portraits of the Sackners and Paul Mosher, Library Director. Greg Bear was the designer for the catalogue which is an outstanding example of artistic and graphic design. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.