World Book Night (WBN) in Britain is one of MailYour.Art’s favorite initiatives:
- Its annual calls are interesting and challenging.
- It brings literature and the arts together.
- It is a truly international series of events. This is all the more important after Brexit.
- It is organized by an incredibly effective team
This year, they sent three prints (two A6, as seen at the top of the page, and one A5) in a plain brown envelope to participants as a thank you. As an ordinary person, you wouldn’t think much of it. Not so if you work for Austrian customs. In that case, you might suppose that the wrapper contained special lightweight diamonds, the most important part of the Epstein files, or an inflatable Lamborghini.
For this reasonable reason, a heroic customs officer informed us that the value of the mailing could not be determined and that we were required to state the price and provide the necessary documentation.
We didn’t know the contents of the envelope ourselves. So, we told the customs office that we expected to receive homemade postcards from our friends. We included a quote from Wikipedia about the noncommercial nature of mail art, as well as links to support our claim.
We never received an answer.
Yet, we had to pay €8.
How this amount was calculated remains a mystery.
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