Pips is basically a magazine that looks like a cardboard box and indeed is one.

However, since magazines do not generally appear as cardboard boxes, nobody really wants to believe that PIPS is a magazine. Nevertheleßs PIPS has the subtitle 'Magazine for UnZeitgeist & UnCommerce', so that anyone can understand that a cardboard box can be a magazine (or vice versa).

Apart from that PIPS is a disease afflicting chicken, showing in an inflamed coating of the tongue. Every now & then, humans, too, have a PIPS, for example when they have a cold or a 'flu. Then there are small pipe filters carrying the lovely brand name PIPS, and in 123 Cromwell Road, London, we find a Mexican restaurant-cum-wine-bar named PIPS. In short: PIPS can be anything and everything, even a mail-art box, which is simply a place where we find people from all over the world, weird & wonderful things, dogs, phone cards, and - just as in real life - even cars in traffic jams.

When PIPS was born in 1986, nobody knew that one day PIPS would be a box. In its early days PIPS was just a normal dada magazine, appearing in an airtight bag, with various additives, faithfully following in the footsteps of YPS (a German children's magazine). Then one day the Pips-Dada-Corporation (a travel agency hitherto unknown) discovered mail art (Kunst per Post), and ever since that day artists & authors from all over the world engaged in long-haul-travel into the PIPS box. Their destinations were Mystery-Secret, Seahorses and Flying Fish, Heart & Merz, Duet & Duel, Magic & Circus or Paradox Box. Most recently, 36 mail artists were lying in the Prayer-and-Repentance Day Box, thus reviving a religious holiday which had been made redundant in Germany.

PIPS has so far appeared 26 times, changing repeatedly its format & packaging, and since 1991 in cardboard boxes containing more cardboard boxes inside. "Printed and written pieces, randomly picked up objects and art sit side by side in corresponding as well as contrasting unity - all contributions are originals!", Karl Riha commented. And it so happened that in 1995 PIPS received the V.O.Stomps Award, because Mr. Stomps was an uncommercial publisher and thus a soulmate of PIPS. It was he who published e.g. Hannah Höch in Berlin in 1926, moving dada and mail art out of the sitting-room and making it acceptable.

PIPS is collated, in true mail-art fashion, from original works. It is a forum for all networkers, mail artists and authors of experimental poetry. Each ißsue focuses on a particular theme and is published in a limited edition of 96 copies 3 times per year. (1997: 97 copies, 1998: 98 copies etc.). Each ißsue contains contributions from 40 artists and authors from Germany and abroard, with each of them submitting 96 originals (signed & numbered). These pieces combine texts (visual poetry) with objects/photographs/colouring etc. Each participant receives a copy.

Themes 1996:

AQUARIUM-BOX 1/96. Underwater box with fruits de mer, sea monsters and goldfish accompaniments.

PLANETARIUM-BOX 2/96. Celestial box with observatory, moon calves and antique seafarer's maps.

SPOT-THE-DIFFERENCE BOX - ORIGINAL OR FAKE? 3/96. Cyberspace box with virtual cheque card, patented mouse droppings & original mail art dada.

Important: For deadlines contact PIPS-DADA-CORPORATION, c/o Claudia Pütz, EMail: puetz.eckart@t-online.de