| Description |
«Delivery for Mr. Assange» is a 32-hour live mail art piece performed on 16 and 17 January 2013. On 16 January 2013 !Mediengruppe Bitnik posted a parcel addressed to Julian Assange at the Ecuadorian embassy in London. The parcel contained a camera which documented its journey through the Royal Mail postal system through a hole in the parcel. The images captured by the camera were transferred to this website and the Bitnk Twitter account in realtime. So, as the parcel was slowly making its way towards the Ecuadorian embassy in London, anyone online could follow the parcel's status in realtime.
The parcel was a REAL_WORLD_PING, a SYSTEM_TEST, inserted into a highly tense diplomatic crisis. Julian Assange has been living at the Ecuadorian embassy in London since June 2012. Although he was granted political asylum by Ecuador in August 2012, he is unable to leave the embassy premises for fear of being arrested by UK authorities.
We wanted to see where the parcel would end up. Whether it would reach its destination. And which route it would take. Would it be removed from the postal system? Or would it successfully complete the system test and reach Julian Assange.
After aprox. 32 hours and a journey in various postal bags, vans and through delivery centres, the parcel was delivered to the Ecuadorian embassy in London in the afternoon of 17 January 2013. By that time several thousand people had gathered on Twitter to follow the tantalizing and intense journey. The experiment was crowned by Julian Assanges live performance for the camera. |