Mail-Interview with Jose vanden Broucke (B)
THE MAIL-INTERVIEW WITH JOSÉ VAN DEN BROUCKE.
(BELGIUM)
(c) TAM Publications 1999
THE MAIL-INTERVIEW WITH JOSÉ VAN DEN BROUCKE. 72
Started on 15-7-1996
RJ : Welcome to this mail interview. First let me ask you the traditional question. When did you get involved in the mail-art network?
(on July 24th 1996 José wrote to me that he will take part in the interview-project. Probably he will answer in English and partly in Dutch language).
Reply on 23-8-1996
JvdB: Dear Ruud, I first saw the combination of the words "mail" & "art" end of the year 1980. As a name on the list of visitors of the International Cultural Center of Antwerp I received their program for September. One of the issues was about a certain "Antwerp International Mail Art Festival" organized by Guy Schraenen. "Mail-Art" was an absolute unknown idea to me. I had no education, not in general, not in art-history nor any art discipline. I was a dissident from two local art schools, because I had no technical crafts talent and I acted too self-opinionated. I had not heard about Dada, nor about Fluxus; nobody said anything to me, a working class unskilled angry young introvert mother's darling. After I had met Electric Mirei and learned sex from her and became the father of her children into this society, as a result wonderful madness woke up in my body and mind. I wrote some poems and did some proletarian lectures about the situation of the individual into society. I was also deeply touched by the readings of the 'Alpha Cyclus' of the Belgian writer Ivo Michiels, some writings of Samuel Becket and some documents about Julien Beck's Living Theater.
I started participating to the International Mail Art Festival Antwerp by sending a first message on 23.12.1980, followed by the sending of a series of photocopies. My name appeared for first in a mail art publication on the front page of Guy Schraenen's publication Libellus #4 January 1981. The first reproduction of a fragment of my sent mail art was in Libellus #10 July 1981 page 4. It was a fragment of my letter from 23.12.1980. But the real initiation still has to come. So the next autumn I went to see the International Mail Art Festival exhibition at the Antwerp ICC. As a complete virgin I entered the many huge rooms full of hundreds of letters, collages, small papers, nosenses, audio-tapes, a few chaotic videos and strange 'worthless' mailed objects. I was furious to see all that quantity of what looked as a 'undecodable' chaos to me. I was shocked! I went back home and made a large letter 'for the organizer' to express my consternation. I took a piece of paper from a size bigger than my body and wrote in giant letters on it: "Dear Guy, I was visiting the mail art festival on Saturday 3.10.81, and I was not satisfied! So I ask you, please dear Guy, hang this piece of paper on the walls at the mail art festival exhibition so that the visitors can see > read > know that I suppose that mail art is only art if it brings me closer to the people, and the people closer to me." I brought the letter the very same night to the post office of Deerlijk to mail it to Antwerp. The next night I got a telephone from "the organizer" Guy Schraenen himself. Guy said that he would not hang my letter above the mail that was already on the wall because by using such a big size I had a kind of totalitarian effect on the exhibition, who's principal form was the multiform quantity of the mostly about A4 sized artworks. We had a telephone conversation and at the end of the conversation the meaning of what "mail art" was in 1981 had opened its mysterious and playful possibilities for me: I was a M.A. enthusiast
(José enclosed copies of the pages that he mentions in this first answer together with his typed answer so I can relive the time he had then.)
In spring 1982 I asked Guy Schraenen a list of mail artists. he sent me 38 names and addresses. I sent them all my "Possible Letter". I received 8 reactions, under which the first letter from Guy Bleus, Pawel Petasz, Vittore Baroni, Rod Summers, Piotr Rypson.
From this first small project I got new addresses, by which I could participate to Baroni's 'Arte Postale!' and Sonja van den Burg's "Show me the way to your star, so we can share from far." This was the start for my first real co-operation. The co-operation with Sonja who was together with Margot van Oosten the editors of "Sun Echo", that was an important mail-art compilation magazine, lasted many years and gave me a lot of inspirations. By meeting Sonja van der Burg I experienced for first how complex and pleasant human relations and artistic co-operation could join together (the personal contact).
Under the nick name "Mailed A" I did a third project "Send Me Something You Forgot And I Shall Remember". 43 invitations, 15 reactions, under which the first contact with Catastrophe X Jonas Wille, who should also become an important art-partner for many years. Here I also got my first letter from Robin Crozier who sent me a memory/malaise/history form.
So this is my answer to your first question (While writing this answer to you I'm listening to a very interesting radio-program about the punishment of social not accepted sexual activities during the Middle Ages. I don't have to go to my job today. Temple Post M.A. is always deeply influenced by actual circumstances: I don't add life to art. I add art to life.)
RJ : With all the data and copies of the originals I presume that you are documenting your activities quite well. Is that important for you?
(before his answer José wrote me twice that he was working on the answer)
reply on 10-10-1996
(José sent me by separate mail his report about his bicycle-trip from Deerlijk to Habay-la-Neuve, where he met with Baudhuin Simon. With his answer José sent me 15 photo's of the state his TEMPLE looks like nowadays to illustrate his answer)
JvdB: Dear Ruud, I can't find your letter with the second question anymore, but I still remember that you asked me about my archive. You wrote that my first answer to your first question gave the impression that I have a well documented archive.
So in answer I must tell you that I could never succeed in trying to get my M.A. archive in good order nor to get rid of it. The Temple Post M.A. archive is a mirror of my way of living: I dream of a good order but I live in chaos, and I constantly suffer the all too much beauty and quantity but I can't let it all behind. Seen from the contradiction: archived or conserved art versus living art, the archive is on the side of death (framed, catalogued, conserved pieces of art, such as paintings, sculptures, books, photographs, etc.... so all things that are elements of M.A.)
But fighting my love to recycle all old art (the received mail) into new art (the mail to send away) I realize that if we want to show M.A. as art phenomenon or as instrument of logical or non-logical society interventions, we must have a 'product' such as catalogues, exhibitions, reports, books, occasionally or definitive framed works. A good ordened archive is a principal need to be able to take the materials for books, articles, exhibitions, etc.... from it. I think the largest M.A. Archive in Belgium is the Guy Bleus Administration Centre Archive. When I was at his house and saw all the rooms and racks full of boxes, names, paper, impressions, expressions of all those wonderful people all over our postal world, I wanted to get away, because all that Art(ificial) Life seems to cover the daily life as a monster used to do with its prey. M.A. isn't that strange from the classical exhibited arts: The museum is a palace of death art. Living people must be very careful with it!
Of course as real M.A. freak I want to have 'my archive'! But due to the many correspondents who send me too frequently their interesting things, asking me to answer, to give information's, to feed their day- and night-dreams, to encourage, to give correct information, to discuss by letter, to answer as fast as possible, to send money or to do not send money, to send this letter to that person, to find out where a certain correspondent lives, or what happened with him, to participate to ecological, political, sexual protests and provocation's, etc.... I am not able to order the mail from yesterday and the days before, because every day I have new M.A. to face, care for, work out. On the average I usually receive 5 letters a day and answer the same quantity.
The Temple Post Archive can be described into layers:
* First layer : The received, not yet read, seen, opened mail. (Some days I don't open mail, because I'm mentally not ready to have new impressions. Some mail with too long theoretical texts about art or particular mail art are put aside for a long time, because more important information has priority.)
* Second layer : Opened, seen, read mail that has to be answered. (I try to limit the quantity of this layer by using a book in which I write down the receiving date and the date of answering the letter. Some letters have to wait to be answered four seasons or more. Other letters, particular the love-letters are often answered immediately. Letters which stay too long unanswered are often send to another receiver. I also want to limit the new correspondents by sending their first letter to The Temple to another Networker and only sending the original sender a message in which I warn him that I won't answer his M.A. personally. But as many new correspondents give the impression of being very interesting, I can't resist sending some personal answer.)
* Third layer : The answered but not classified mail. This is an enormous mountain. Different mountains. To slow down the speed of communication I also often wait several days to bring answers in addressed already closed envelopes to the post-office. To exclude misunderstandings I use my stamp 'closed but not send on......'
* Forth layer : The Archive itself. Boxes with classified mail. I classify the received mail country by country. When a certain sender has enough sent mail, I give a complete box to his M.A. Some senders have more than one box. I also try (in which I failed until today) to make list on the kind of mail I receive: Postcards, artistamps, photos, art-books, stickers, rubber stamps, audio-tapes, video-tapes, catalogues. But as I wrote before: The Temple Archive is a Temple of Chaos. No classification System succeeds long enough. Systems are mixed with systems and crossed by periods of non classification, I'm too slow to be able to control the Temple Post Network Section.
Usually I send more than I receive. It takes a lot of my life-time and money. The last time I ordered the mail from this pre-classification (third layer) into the real archive classification (forth layer) was in may 1995! (with the aid of my children.) So you can imagine what a hell it is to me when I want to find back a certain text or artistamp or postcard etc.... to use it as comment-material in an exhibition or to documentate an article or talk about the M.A. movement. It is as going to Hades to find back the wandering soul of an unforgettable companion. So in order to develop my love and hate feelings towards 'archiving-ordering' I can do three things:
1 Burn or throw it all away.2 Ask every sender what I must do with the mail he/she ever sent to the Temple (what should be an immense work).3 Accept the lovely chaos that all senders and myself create around me.
Mostly I try to do the third. Sometimes I use received mail as original (no copying) material to answer the senders or someone else, sometimes I throw it away somewhere in town, on the road, in a station or pub, etc..., so that an occasional finder can possibly get 'touched' by the poetry of M.A. (the principle power of the Network as a movement.) When I received disgusting letters (which almost never happens) I send the letter back 'return to sender' or extremely unacceptable mail (such as fascist manifests or menace-messages) I collect it in black shut envelopes as 'poison to be careful with'. Sometimes I show mail in the window on the street-side at my home, so that my neighbours and those who, walking or cycling, are passing by, can have a look and read the story from 'someone of this time and planet'. With intimate letters, such as love-letters I am very respectful and will never 'spread' these into the Network.
In fact the principal Temple Post Archive is not the materials that I have in here, but the copies or originals from received mail that I all or not multiplied, distributed again into the Network.
The Archive can't be more than a kind of a dusty shady lovers room, after the lovers went away, both back on their own personal path through the labyrinth.
The idea of 'Archived Mail Art' makes me melancholic and sad.
Often my wife and children say that I am living in a paper world. They are right. Often I am isolated with boxes, lists, date-stamps, photographs, stories, small or bigger art-works, audio cassettes, video cassettes (I have no player nor monitor!), and even CD-ROMs (I have no PC that can read CD-ROMs ; see my reaction on Guy Blues' sending of the beautiful Artistamp CD-ROM), and I wish I could send myself away in an envelope to be able to spend the night with M.A. princesses or start just one more utopian post dAdA-, post Fluxus-, post-Post revolution with all those beautiful peace and freedom loving senders of the papers and other materials that are the building stones and the dust of the "The Temple" -chaotic Archive.
My actions as an artist, in M.A., in poetry, in performance, in photography, and in the daily life, are all about freedom of sexuality and human relationships, the astounding beauty of nature and the human body, justice in society construction and guidance, brotherhood in food and energy spreading and freedom of speech. My house is full of boxes, full of mail, talking about hope, about revolution, about internationalism, about sexuality, about the construction of a global world, open world, no frontiers world, no selection world, not for sale world, but sometimes I think that at the end I will just be a fool on a mountain of dreams, dissolved frustrations and loneliness. The god of art is the god of loneliness. Also in M.A. my archive is not a solution for my solitude. Nor for the one of the sender. We're all ones in the crowd. That's beautiful. So The Archive is not of principal importance. It is only the memory of a future wonderful past: The Temple in The Actual Time and Actual Global Situation.
Enclosed some photo's of The Temple situation beginning of September 1996.
While working on this answer I heard the news about Afghanistan. As young man in the late sixties, I was told that god was love. Now I hear that god is oil/energy and that the holy places are where the pipelines must be controlled. I'm sure that in the next century god will be information. So free exchange will be more and more difficult. Be careful for the coming god. Don't trust the preachers. Keep your eyes and ears wide open. Stay in touch with individuals, don't accept 'the voices of those who pretend to speak for the people'.
RJ : Could you explain more precise what you mean with: "don't accept 'the voices of those who pretend to speak for the people". Who are these "preachers"?
Reply on 20-11-1996
JvdB: Dear Ruud, The answer to your question I gave years ago to Moniek Darge from Studio Logos in Gent (Belgium), but I can't find the text right now. Consider this card as my reply.
(On the other side of the card there was an article with the text "Nuclear Power Lobby boycotts research on the development of cheap solar cells.")
RJ : I thought you meant 'preachers' inside the mail art network, but now I understand you speak of preachers in our society. For some mail artists the mail art network is a lot of 'fun and games', but for you it seems to be a reaction to the current world we live in. Does (or did) mail art change the world? (A difficult question, I know, but I am curious about your answer).
next answer on 18-1-1997
(José sent me his answer twice. Due to the large amount of mail I got, and the travels abroad, I only was able to retype his long answer in June 1997, and this was the time I sent him the next question)
JvdB: Dear Ruud, I received your reaction (next question) on my preceding #1 on 2 December 1996. Now on 18 January 1997 I finally find some time to answer. Meanwhile I made a trip to ArtPool (where I found after sending two letters to announce my arrival only a closed door and a telephone answering-machine) and to Vincze Laszlo M.A. participant living at Tâigu-Mures, Transylvania, North of Roumania (Where me and Electric Mirei were welcomed as friends and enjoyed a wonderful hospitality.)
My answer to the question if mail art change(d) the world is: YES. But behind this simple word we must see a whole complex of hopes and disillusions. I know many creative people who begin to participate to the Network with a lot of engagement, to stop a few years later, disappointed about the results of their efforts. I think that particular mail art , especially because of its statement 'Not for sale' is 'Art Inutile'. In this society it is very difficult to continue spending time and money on activities that don't give you any financial feed-back. And because of the Art Of Loneliness (Mail art is isolating you at your desk, at the copymachine, at your Pc-screen) you will also don't enjoy much physical company of all those you call 'dear friends' (you will never meet most of the people you are networking with, and when you'll meet them the contact will be fast, loaded with exchange-passions, and for every 'Personal Contact' manifestation you will need a real guerilla-attitude to find the time and money to do M.A. Tourism.) I understand those who say that M.A. is just a faked impossible dream.
But it changed the world because it did something that never happened before: Via the evolutions coming from Dada and Fluxus and via the arthistorical fact of Ray Johnson's New York School of Correspondence a strange thing happened from within the world of artists: Doors were opened for a huge quantity of people who are not familiar with the art-scene. Within the meaning of the magic words 'No Jury' a boiling chaos of exchanges between artists and non-artists, southern and northern people, fools and intellectuals, started living as A Thing Nobody Could Orchestrate. The consequence is that all of us receive often a lot of bullshit-papers, obsessional messages, and so on: Mail art is rubbish, dust, noise, materialized absurdity, hope against all misery and hypocrisy! Dada was everything that was not before. Mail art is Nothing New. Nobody-Art. Anonymous fame. No-thing of Any Value.
There are only two reasons to continue Mail art: -1- Because one is an adept of receiving/sending out communication Signs (MAIL-art). -2- To maintain contact from Artist to Artist (mail-ART). I don't believe that mail art is able to have an influence on other fields than those belonging to these two activities.
Mail-art didn't change the world outside the mail art circuit as art in general didn't change the world in general. Only if art can penetrate into society it is able to change the world. Often we see that 'dangerous' art phenomenon's such as the Berlin Dada-movement had the potency to change the world but because of this it was pointed as a kind of political-criminality (artists can get arrested because their work/actions have an influence on society evolution). I believe that Mail art and E-mail excists thanks to institutions such as the National Postal Services and the PC hard- & soft-ware business. Networking is not a creation from the artists, but an economical development within the concept Mail art Network is playing its game.
Mail-art as activity is equal to all arts: It uses certain possibilities to Play. The meaning of the idea of "Playing" is a dissident thing into society of "exploitation" with mainly financial goals. The difference between The Play of the classical fine arts and Mail-art is that mail-art also plays with its own value: Mail-art works have no value (it is Not For Sale.) So many people doing Not for Sale activities within the idea of L'Art inutile is the principle changing I can see. But it will lead to the same nothing as all Arts: The wonderful Nobody Nowhere World of poetry and nonsense's. every try to make catalogues, exhibitions, public manifestations, publications, readings, etc.... is a try to survive the self-destruction of Mail-art. But the self-destruction of Mail-art seen as 'Art for a certain person' or 'Art from a certain period' is irreversible. No-one will ever be able to point out 'The end of Mail-art'. Mail-art will dissolve into the 21st century of communication possibilities and business. It seems to be impossible for me to say that Mail-art doesn't exist and never existed.
Art is or business or destruction. Mail-art is part of what Duchamp called 'The Artist Of Tomorrow Will Go Underground'. Excepts certain exceptions, such as the action to liberate Clemente Padin from jail in the seventies (or was it another decenia?) , Mail-art and all networking is just a try to play with possibilities such as mail-traffic, fax-machines, computer networks. But seen from the inside I think that Mail-art exchange/networking changed many of the visions on living within a certain society and within the so-called 'global village' of the enormous amount of networker-individuals. As well the networker is an invisible person as his 'art-work' stays hidden for the outsiders. The networking idea is situated into a philosophy as expressed by Foucault (also expressed by Warhol : everybody can be famous for a few seconds) : This time has no longer centers of power and famous people, all individuals are a small center of power on themselves. Into the more commercial level we see how 'stars' become famous very fast and 'disappear' a few years later with the same speed as a kind of 'out of use' products. We see the same in politics. We see the same into Mail-art where participants lose their possibilities to send out mail (Only Senders Can Be Located.) Everybody seems to be reduced by the media into 'a temporary exploitable hero'. Mail-art started in the heart of this 'media' phenomenon. Good mail-art networking is when mail artists can find personal and evoluting solutions for this 21st century monster of 'communication'. The networker is closer to the original idea of dada than to 'someone who will change the world'. For many networkers the networking is a personal statement for personal use. Many of us don't believe in rose gardens. We know that we don't have the power. We exist and we try to maintain a kind of existence we regard as senseful. That's why we spend time and money. I know that some do it 'to change'.
But mostly they are focussed on the art institutions, such as galleries, museums, publications, etc..... but they are only 'the artists' into the net. Besides them there are an enormous quantity of people participating without having any other goal than 'to change' their own circumstances as individual towards 'certain others' and to 'maintain' this New Activity. This 'persistency' is often directed more towards 'the one on the other side' than towards 'the personal profit'.
Mail-art and networking changes the world of every participant, but I don't think it is able to change 'the world' . For those who want to promote political, ecological, etc.... activities I think that it is better to use other channels such as Greenpeace, Amnesty International and all organized political, ecological, etc.... action-groups. Here I want to remind Clemente Padin's famous words: 'M.A. isn't sufficient."
Other Networkers build up an archive of interesting and often quality art works. During my visit at Vincze Laszlo in Târgu-Mures Transylvania I saw how the 'Ex-Libris' - makers (lino-cut on small format) have their own net for exchange their experiences and artworks. A main part of internet is about exchange of sex-themes. So we can't say that communication/exchange networks are a creation of the Mail-artists. But in the seventies and the eighties the Mail-art network became a phenomenon that grew above all other networks, especially within the sub-culture of people who are interested into personal expression such as artists and creative people in general. Mail-art opened doors that were never open before.
A second answer to your question is about how mail-art changed my life. It gave me the enormous treasure of being in touch with so many people I couldn't ever be in touch with without the network. But maybe instead of the Ray Johnson NY School of Correspondence / Fluxus / Ben Vautier / etc.... histories, a net of pure correspondence could have given me all the personal information and tourism possibilities I enjoyed. While I was very active into the mail-art network I got more and more isolated from the world around me, such as my family and my local society. Because Mail-art wasn't able to change the world which is the world of daily lies, media manipulation and development of norms which are often creating a system of exclusion. Due to the information and the contacts within the mail-art network I could read, hear, meet people and their messages who gave me a place into the chaos reality is. I lost my place into the fake world and became a clown in love with so many personalities that I call some of them 'my dearest friend' or 'O my lover lover lover.' Although I'll never be able to meet them and build the society we all perceive in our dreams. Mail-artists aren't The New Power (black or white, fuck it) but The Invisible Dissidents Of The Dealy Exploitation Of All Creativity And Artistry. Beginning this century Dada was the best soap available. The last half of the Xxth century is washed by Mail-art. Thanks to it I could often clean away the omnipresent shit of this Big Monster (Communication Systems) Era within which honesty is measured into degrades of lying and almost all water became undrinkable.
But because of Mail-art I became a double dissident: The first part of the expression: Mail (no jury / all that can be send by mail...) made me a dissident to the Art-institutes (no financial nor other support for exhibitions, travelling, no publications by any local nor governmental cultural organization.) The second part: art, made me a dissident to the establishment (all real artists are criticizing the establishment of society). So after 16 years of Mail-art activity very little is left. I lost more than I gained. It is almost time to leave. That's why I feel the importance to answer your question as clear as possible. I do it now. For this TAM-interview project that I regard as Something Interesting. I'll never do it again.
On your question if Mail-art changed the world I can easily answer: NO it didn't.
It will be funny to have been part of this indefinable movement that wasn't able to change anything but its own participants. And I'll be very sad when it will be The End. ('Cause the media is the message , Life is art, Merz for ever').
RJ : In your long answer you tell also a little about your travels to other mail-artists. Sometimes your trips bring you to quite isolated places where there are mail-artists who aren't always able to send out mail. Why this choice?
next answer on 5-9-1998
(because of a break I took the answer was only retyped in April 1998, and the interview was continued. José wrote in his last letter besides the answer that he hasn't that much time to continue the interview, so after his long answer I will only ask one more question.....)
JvdB: In the expression 'Mail-Art' we have two words. The double synthetic idea. The second part 'Art' is about a new kind of art that is build on collectivity and co-operating. This can easily be done without personal contact. Often the distance and the mystery of the other one on the other side of the sender-receiver playground is a main element of the desire to send and joy to receive, the mail-art exchange. Mail-art without personal contact is mysterious, erotic.
The first word 'Mail' is about the constant creation of an undependent alternative system/network for global village info exchange. The more we can do this mail (exchange or information & art), by direct personal contact, the more its goal: the global village construction, is approximated. So the ultimate communication is the personal meeting.
On artistic level this can be practiced by doing occasional co-art-actions that might be public or not, and by doing occasional congress mail-art (by snail-mail), by fax or telephone, by e-mail.) On the social level it can be practiced into love- and friendship-relation building (emotional/sexual and social solidarity) and particular into being guided within the social reality of the visited inviting mail-art partner (experiencing the local circumstances, the home town, the friends & family, the specific possibilities and limits.) Seeing this reality can lead to a brutal demystification of the image of the "never met before mail-art partner-companion". For me this means not a devaluation of the person of my mail-art partner, but to a better mix of mystery & reality. In mail-art , more than in the traditional arts, reality is the art. Art = all realities and imagination in interaction with each other. Australian aboriginals say the 'art' is to know what is going on' (this in trans-chronological and in transcendental sense). The idea of the personal meeting is, in my opinion, accurate described into the publication 'Radio Sermonettes' about 'Immediatism' , Liberian Book Club, New York 1992, which was only recently reaching me, here at The Temple in the south-west of the Flanders Belgium Europe anno '97 a.s.o.
The power of the personal meeting is based on a mutual personal curiosity into the other one and into the particular togetherness of certain personalities who are meeting at certain places and moments. Without this mutual curiosity the meeting will be hypocrite and worthless, just a show (as we see in many art-events.) When the personal meeting happens, I call it: The Temple.
In the usual exchange (mail-art, fax, e-mail) there are 3 main distances to cross: the geographical, the physical (the impossibility of the pleasure of sensorial observation and influencing), and the individual/cultural. At Temples of Personal Meeting 2 of these distances are resolved: I am at the same place and time as my partner and I can see, observe, hear, smell, maybe touch him/her. Only the individual/cultural distance stays as a provocation for creativity and possible source of frustration.
To return from here to your original question I must emphasize on the fact that for Isolated Artists (those we are interested in and passionated to mail-art participation, but who are forced by circumstances such as lack of organization or lack of money, not any longer able to send out ideas, images, sounds, desires, invitations, answers, participation's, provocation's, advises, greetings) only the personal meeting with the other (more rich, more luxurious) partner, gives the opportunity 'to exchange'. I visited Vincze Laszlo end 1996 /beginning 1997 because it was the only chance to know what was/is his actual life as man, father, ex-libris artist and mail-artist. I felt very sorry to be not able to travel to Belgrade during the period of the Cultural Embargo. Many of us are dreaming of a visit to Rea Nikonova and Serge Segay at Eysk. Often we are obliged to stay at home while we feel 'where it's at' and to join on another moment at another place.
During two journeys I experienced the same conflict between the 'Art'-idea and the 'Mail'-idea:
First I went to Romania, in the spring after the X-mas revolution. At the airport Dan and Amalia Perjovski were waiting for us. They had been very active in mail-art during the Ceausescu repression and stood at the door of new institutions to be accepted as 'Romanian Temporary Artists'. Besides this meeting I also met more working class hero mail-artists such as the brothers Vincze, Marosan and Pungucz Karoly.
When I went to St. Petersburg I met the artists couple Paul & Helen Veshev, members of the Raft Art Group (in that period visited by the Shozo Shimamoto Netrun Group), and also the mail-art correspondent and police-officer Eugene Shaskhin. In both cases of mail-art tourism the artists had the freedom and the luxury of many connections, as familiar to the situation of 'artists', and guided us very heartful towards all places they wanted us to see: Their ateliers and the cultural and art-historical attractions from their locations and the reference of their artistic activities to all this. The more 'amateuristic' (please Networkers, all of you who read this interview, don't shoot at me, the pianist) or do I better say: the 'not for sale partners', showed me 'the right stuff' (the survival of the individual and his friends/family, with their personal aims and necessities, within the own circumstances.)
In both cases of visiting, after the visit, 'the artists' didn't contact me even once again. We left at the airport, shook hands, embraced, had a good time behind, made indistinct appointments for the future and me and my family crossed the 'only passengers' border and left. That was the end. No more communication. No explanation. The radical elimination of exchange. In both cases the others, the 'non' official artists' stayed in touch with me. The reason for this is that their desires for exchange were in harmony with mine, which are about the practical foundation of the global village. This while the 'artists' only had the expectation of the foundation of a network for the promotion and distribution (selling) of their personal art production. These aims, which I respect, are foreign to my personal situation as mail-art networker.
Of course the mail-art network has its limits: to continue it needs the non-isolated partners (Only Senders Can Be Located). But I believe that an essential task of the enormous mail-art network is, also, to be able to 'take in tow' Isolated Artists. The Isolated Artists are the living provocation to practice the Mail-Art rule: "No selection / Open for all." Isolation is a growing reality, To break it is our new utopian desire. (Of course we will lose, but we don't accept this: We are here to found Paradise for ourselves and for all.)
I am not able to travel much (lack of social freedom, lack of money). So I must do other things:
1 - Funtioning as a transmit zone :
- Sending Art ne Rat mail from Croatia to Serbia and Bosnia and vice versa.- Multiplying and distributing Dobrica Kamperelic's Open World magazine (sometimes also other mags.)- Distributing some personal messages from Isolated Artists as Temple Post Worldnews flyers. (I am very grateful if Internet connected networkers put these messages on Internet).
2 - Creating non José Vandenbroucke participation's to M.A. projects, with the materials from Isolated Artists in the Temple Archive, so that the Mail-Art from artists who have no possibilities to participate arrive before the deadline at the address of the project, in an envelope that has as sender the address of the Isolated Artist and not the one from the physical sender, The Temple. So it is possible to find participation from Romanian or other mail-artists that are sent from Belgium. In mail-art all is possible, even the impossible! dAdA! The intention is that the art of the Isolated Artist is shown in the project and that the participating Isolated Artist will receive the catalogue. (Sometimes I don't participate myself, so that the Isolated Artist will receive more useful information than I do).
Mail-Art is about exchange of information. To be isolated is to be not able to exchange. All networkers must face this problem as something to work on. Mail-Art isn't sufficient.
Together with this answer I'll send you a message from Segay, as recently received (please put it as an illustration into the Interview Booklet / if possible) , a photo of me and Mirei at Ludwig Forum Museum Aachen, were we pose in front of a big work from Dan Perjovski at the exhibition 'Romanian Art After Ceaucescu' (no reference to and visits from Mail-Art partners between 1981 and now).
I also must ask you to 'finish' this Interview (only one or two more questions) because it takes me a lot of time and forces to formulate the right answer to your interesting questions, as I want to do this with the quality I want to offer to your very respectful and historical Interview Project
(the next question was sent after a break of over a year on January 16th 1999 and is also the last question for the interview)
RJ : After a long break I think it is time we let others read your words as well José. It seemed you needed always a lot of words to answer my questions. Sorry for the small break, but as promised eventually all interviews will be published. The last & traditional question is always: Did I maybe forget to ask you something?
next answer on 26-06-1999
JvdB: Dear Ruud, I can't imagine what you forgot to ask. I received your Interview-mail on 3.3.1999. So almost 3 months ago. This after I almost attacked you because of your long delay in answering me. Mea Culpa Great Administrator. But there was a war. There is a war. At the Balkans and on so many places on our actual media-manipulated planet Earth, and into the heart of what we so dearly call "Communication Art." Communication is more than ever a product. A subject of economical and socio-political value. Many sensitive people return to an intimate production of personal art. Fin de sciecle panic? Tiredness? Survival necessity?
It is a fact that the M.A. Network didn't succeed in creating an independent network that could be a practical aid for the survival of the free communication for all. The dream is over. Many former M.A. are more isolated than ever. We, the rich Europeans, have no tools to keep them involved into the magma of messages. Meanwhile the conflict between the idea of "quantity" versus "quality" became less funny, more dramatic. Daily I have a series of names into my head to whom I want to send something. But I can't decide to send a folded copied and over-copied A4 with my Temple - Post logo stamped on it, just to show I'm still alive. As long as there's nothing sensefull to say I feel forced to wait. Maybe I'm just tired of seeing that poetry can't rule the world.
I want to end this interview by sending my expression of thanks to the huge work your Interview Project is, a work which value will grow in future. It is, besides Robin Crozier's History Memory Malaise sendings and Ryosuke Cohen's Brain Cell sendings a window on the enormous activity that was and still is developed by the many former, actual and future networkers, grouped under the magic phenomenon-name: Mail-Art. And by sending my dearest regards to all who will read it. I have no truth nor authority to say: "This was Mail-Art" (Wilfried Nold published in Numero 4, 1998 , my letter about continuos Death and Rebirth of the Mail-Art Network), nor to say "This is Mail-Art. I leave it all to you. Good Luck.
RJ : Thanks for the interview José!
Address mail-artist:
José van den Broucke,Pikkelstraat 49B - 8540 Deerlijk BELGIUM.
Address interviewer:
Ruud Janssen - TAM. P.O. Box 1055, 4801 BB Breda, Netherlands
(BELGIUM)
(c) TAM Publications 1999
THE MAIL-INTERVIEW WITH JOSÉ VAN DEN BROUCKE. 72
Started on 15-7-1996
RJ : Welcome to this mail interview. First let me ask you the traditional question. When did you get involved in the mail-art network?
(on July 24th 1996 José wrote to me that he will take part in the interview-project. Probably he will answer in English and partly in Dutch language).
Reply on 23-8-1996
JvdB: Dear Ruud, I first saw the combination of the words "mail" & "art" end of the year 1980. As a name on the list of visitors of the International Cultural Center of Antwerp I received their program for September. One of the issues was about a certain "Antwerp International Mail Art Festival" organized by Guy Schraenen. "Mail-Art" was an absolute unknown idea to me. I had no education, not in general, not in art-history nor any art discipline. I was a dissident from two local art schools, because I had no technical crafts talent and I acted too self-opinionated. I had not heard about Dada, nor about Fluxus; nobody said anything to me, a working class unskilled angry young introvert mother's darling. After I had met Electric Mirei and learned sex from her and became the father of her children into this society, as a result wonderful madness woke up in my body and mind. I wrote some poems and did some proletarian lectures about the situation of the individual into society. I was also deeply touched by the readings of the 'Alpha Cyclus' of the Belgian writer Ivo Michiels, some writings of Samuel Becket and some documents about Julien Beck's Living Theater.
I started participating to the International Mail Art Festival Antwerp by sending a first message on 23.12.1980, followed by the sending of a series of photocopies. My name appeared for first in a mail art publication on the front page of Guy Schraenen's publication Libellus #4 January 1981. The first reproduction of a fragment of my sent mail art was in Libellus #10 July 1981 page 4. It was a fragment of my letter from 23.12.1980. But the real initiation still has to come. So the next autumn I went to see the International Mail Art Festival exhibition at the Antwerp ICC. As a complete virgin I entered the many huge rooms full of hundreds of letters, collages, small papers, nosenses, audio-tapes, a few chaotic videos and strange 'worthless' mailed objects. I was furious to see all that quantity of what looked as a 'undecodable' chaos to me. I was shocked! I went back home and made a large letter 'for the organizer' to express my consternation. I took a piece of paper from a size bigger than my body and wrote in giant letters on it: "Dear Guy, I was visiting the mail art festival on Saturday 3.10.81, and I was not satisfied! So I ask you, please dear Guy, hang this piece of paper on the walls at the mail art festival exhibition so that the visitors can see > read > know that I suppose that mail art is only art if it brings me closer to the people, and the people closer to me." I brought the letter the very same night to the post office of Deerlijk to mail it to Antwerp. The next night I got a telephone from "the organizer" Guy Schraenen himself. Guy said that he would not hang my letter above the mail that was already on the wall because by using such a big size I had a kind of totalitarian effect on the exhibition, who's principal form was the multiform quantity of the mostly about A4 sized artworks. We had a telephone conversation and at the end of the conversation the meaning of what "mail art" was in 1981 had opened its mysterious and playful possibilities for me: I was a M.A. enthusiast
(José enclosed copies of the pages that he mentions in this first answer together with his typed answer so I can relive the time he had then.)
In spring 1982 I asked Guy Schraenen a list of mail artists. he sent me 38 names and addresses. I sent them all my "Possible Letter". I received 8 reactions, under which the first letter from Guy Bleus, Pawel Petasz, Vittore Baroni, Rod Summers, Piotr Rypson.
From this first small project I got new addresses, by which I could participate to Baroni's 'Arte Postale!' and Sonja van den Burg's "Show me the way to your star, so we can share from far." This was the start for my first real co-operation. The co-operation with Sonja who was together with Margot van Oosten the editors of "Sun Echo", that was an important mail-art compilation magazine, lasted many years and gave me a lot of inspirations. By meeting Sonja van der Burg I experienced for first how complex and pleasant human relations and artistic co-operation could join together (the personal contact).
Under the nick name "Mailed A" I did a third project "Send Me Something You Forgot And I Shall Remember". 43 invitations, 15 reactions, under which the first contact with Catastrophe X Jonas Wille, who should also become an important art-partner for many years. Here I also got my first letter from Robin Crozier who sent me a memory/malaise/history form.
So this is my answer to your first question (While writing this answer to you I'm listening to a very interesting radio-program about the punishment of social not accepted sexual activities during the Middle Ages. I don't have to go to my job today. Temple Post M.A. is always deeply influenced by actual circumstances: I don't add life to art. I add art to life.)
RJ : With all the data and copies of the originals I presume that you are documenting your activities quite well. Is that important for you?
(before his answer José wrote me twice that he was working on the answer)
reply on 10-10-1996
(José sent me by separate mail his report about his bicycle-trip from Deerlijk to Habay-la-Neuve, where he met with Baudhuin Simon. With his answer José sent me 15 photo's of the state his TEMPLE looks like nowadays to illustrate his answer)
JvdB: Dear Ruud, I can't find your letter with the second question anymore, but I still remember that you asked me about my archive. You wrote that my first answer to your first question gave the impression that I have a well documented archive.
So in answer I must tell you that I could never succeed in trying to get my M.A. archive in good order nor to get rid of it. The Temple Post M.A. archive is a mirror of my way of living: I dream of a good order but I live in chaos, and I constantly suffer the all too much beauty and quantity but I can't let it all behind. Seen from the contradiction: archived or conserved art versus living art, the archive is on the side of death (framed, catalogued, conserved pieces of art, such as paintings, sculptures, books, photographs, etc.... so all things that are elements of M.A.)
But fighting my love to recycle all old art (the received mail) into new art (the mail to send away) I realize that if we want to show M.A. as art phenomenon or as instrument of logical or non-logical society interventions, we must have a 'product' such as catalogues, exhibitions, reports, books, occasionally or definitive framed works. A good ordened archive is a principal need to be able to take the materials for books, articles, exhibitions, etc.... from it. I think the largest M.A. Archive in Belgium is the Guy Bleus Administration Centre Archive. When I was at his house and saw all the rooms and racks full of boxes, names, paper, impressions, expressions of all those wonderful people all over our postal world, I wanted to get away, because all that Art(ificial) Life seems to cover the daily life as a monster used to do with its prey. M.A. isn't that strange from the classical exhibited arts: The museum is a palace of death art. Living people must be very careful with it!
Of course as real M.A. freak I want to have 'my archive'! But due to the many correspondents who send me too frequently their interesting things, asking me to answer, to give information's, to feed their day- and night-dreams, to encourage, to give correct information, to discuss by letter, to answer as fast as possible, to send money or to do not send money, to send this letter to that person, to find out where a certain correspondent lives, or what happened with him, to participate to ecological, political, sexual protests and provocation's, etc.... I am not able to order the mail from yesterday and the days before, because every day I have new M.A. to face, care for, work out. On the average I usually receive 5 letters a day and answer the same quantity.
The Temple Post Archive can be described into layers:
* First layer : The received, not yet read, seen, opened mail. (Some days I don't open mail, because I'm mentally not ready to have new impressions. Some mail with too long theoretical texts about art or particular mail art are put aside for a long time, because more important information has priority.)
* Second layer : Opened, seen, read mail that has to be answered. (I try to limit the quantity of this layer by using a book in which I write down the receiving date and the date of answering the letter. Some letters have to wait to be answered four seasons or more. Other letters, particular the love-letters are often answered immediately. Letters which stay too long unanswered are often send to another receiver. I also want to limit the new correspondents by sending their first letter to The Temple to another Networker and only sending the original sender a message in which I warn him that I won't answer his M.A. personally. But as many new correspondents give the impression of being very interesting, I can't resist sending some personal answer.)
* Third layer : The answered but not classified mail. This is an enormous mountain. Different mountains. To slow down the speed of communication I also often wait several days to bring answers in addressed already closed envelopes to the post-office. To exclude misunderstandings I use my stamp 'closed but not send on......'
* Forth layer : The Archive itself. Boxes with classified mail. I classify the received mail country by country. When a certain sender has enough sent mail, I give a complete box to his M.A. Some senders have more than one box. I also try (in which I failed until today) to make list on the kind of mail I receive: Postcards, artistamps, photos, art-books, stickers, rubber stamps, audio-tapes, video-tapes, catalogues. But as I wrote before: The Temple Archive is a Temple of Chaos. No classification System succeeds long enough. Systems are mixed with systems and crossed by periods of non classification, I'm too slow to be able to control the Temple Post Network Section.
Usually I send more than I receive. It takes a lot of my life-time and money. The last time I ordered the mail from this pre-classification (third layer) into the real archive classification (forth layer) was in may 1995! (with the aid of my children.) So you can imagine what a hell it is to me when I want to find back a certain text or artistamp or postcard etc.... to use it as comment-material in an exhibition or to documentate an article or talk about the M.A. movement. It is as going to Hades to find back the wandering soul of an unforgettable companion. So in order to develop my love and hate feelings towards 'archiving-ordering' I can do three things:
1 Burn or throw it all away.2 Ask every sender what I must do with the mail he/she ever sent to the Temple (what should be an immense work).3 Accept the lovely chaos that all senders and myself create around me.
Mostly I try to do the third. Sometimes I use received mail as original (no copying) material to answer the senders or someone else, sometimes I throw it away somewhere in town, on the road, in a station or pub, etc..., so that an occasional finder can possibly get 'touched' by the poetry of M.A. (the principle power of the Network as a movement.) When I received disgusting letters (which almost never happens) I send the letter back 'return to sender' or extremely unacceptable mail (such as fascist manifests or menace-messages) I collect it in black shut envelopes as 'poison to be careful with'. Sometimes I show mail in the window on the street-side at my home, so that my neighbours and those who, walking or cycling, are passing by, can have a look and read the story from 'someone of this time and planet'. With intimate letters, such as love-letters I am very respectful and will never 'spread' these into the Network.
In fact the principal Temple Post Archive is not the materials that I have in here, but the copies or originals from received mail that I all or not multiplied, distributed again into the Network.
The Archive can't be more than a kind of a dusty shady lovers room, after the lovers went away, both back on their own personal path through the labyrinth.
The idea of 'Archived Mail Art' makes me melancholic and sad.
Often my wife and children say that I am living in a paper world. They are right. Often I am isolated with boxes, lists, date-stamps, photographs, stories, small or bigger art-works, audio cassettes, video cassettes (I have no player nor monitor!), and even CD-ROMs (I have no PC that can read CD-ROMs ; see my reaction on Guy Blues' sending of the beautiful Artistamp CD-ROM), and I wish I could send myself away in an envelope to be able to spend the night with M.A. princesses or start just one more utopian post dAdA-, post Fluxus-, post-Post revolution with all those beautiful peace and freedom loving senders of the papers and other materials that are the building stones and the dust of the "The Temple" -chaotic Archive.
My actions as an artist, in M.A., in poetry, in performance, in photography, and in the daily life, are all about freedom of sexuality and human relationships, the astounding beauty of nature and the human body, justice in society construction and guidance, brotherhood in food and energy spreading and freedom of speech. My house is full of boxes, full of mail, talking about hope, about revolution, about internationalism, about sexuality, about the construction of a global world, open world, no frontiers world, no selection world, not for sale world, but sometimes I think that at the end I will just be a fool on a mountain of dreams, dissolved frustrations and loneliness. The god of art is the god of loneliness. Also in M.A. my archive is not a solution for my solitude. Nor for the one of the sender. We're all ones in the crowd. That's beautiful. So The Archive is not of principal importance. It is only the memory of a future wonderful past: The Temple in The Actual Time and Actual Global Situation.
Enclosed some photo's of The Temple situation beginning of September 1996.
While working on this answer I heard the news about Afghanistan. As young man in the late sixties, I was told that god was love. Now I hear that god is oil/energy and that the holy places are where the pipelines must be controlled. I'm sure that in the next century god will be information. So free exchange will be more and more difficult. Be careful for the coming god. Don't trust the preachers. Keep your eyes and ears wide open. Stay in touch with individuals, don't accept 'the voices of those who pretend to speak for the people'.
RJ : Could you explain more precise what you mean with: "don't accept 'the voices of those who pretend to speak for the people". Who are these "preachers"?
Reply on 20-11-1996
JvdB: Dear Ruud, The answer to your question I gave years ago to Moniek Darge from Studio Logos in Gent (Belgium), but I can't find the text right now. Consider this card as my reply.
(On the other side of the card there was an article with the text "Nuclear Power Lobby boycotts research on the development of cheap solar cells.")
RJ : I thought you meant 'preachers' inside the mail art network, but now I understand you speak of preachers in our society. For some mail artists the mail art network is a lot of 'fun and games', but for you it seems to be a reaction to the current world we live in. Does (or did) mail art change the world? (A difficult question, I know, but I am curious about your answer).
next answer on 18-1-1997
(José sent me his answer twice. Due to the large amount of mail I got, and the travels abroad, I only was able to retype his long answer in June 1997, and this was the time I sent him the next question)
JvdB: Dear Ruud, I received your reaction (next question) on my preceding #1 on 2 December 1996. Now on 18 January 1997 I finally find some time to answer. Meanwhile I made a trip to ArtPool (where I found after sending two letters to announce my arrival only a closed door and a telephone answering-machine) and to Vincze Laszlo M.A. participant living at Tâigu-Mures, Transylvania, North of Roumania (Where me and Electric Mirei were welcomed as friends and enjoyed a wonderful hospitality.)
My answer to the question if mail art change(d) the world is: YES. But behind this simple word we must see a whole complex of hopes and disillusions. I know many creative people who begin to participate to the Network with a lot of engagement, to stop a few years later, disappointed about the results of their efforts. I think that particular mail art , especially because of its statement 'Not for sale' is 'Art Inutile'. In this society it is very difficult to continue spending time and money on activities that don't give you any financial feed-back. And because of the Art Of Loneliness (Mail art is isolating you at your desk, at the copymachine, at your Pc-screen) you will also don't enjoy much physical company of all those you call 'dear friends' (you will never meet most of the people you are networking with, and when you'll meet them the contact will be fast, loaded with exchange-passions, and for every 'Personal Contact' manifestation you will need a real guerilla-attitude to find the time and money to do M.A. Tourism.) I understand those who say that M.A. is just a faked impossible dream.
But it changed the world because it did something that never happened before: Via the evolutions coming from Dada and Fluxus and via the arthistorical fact of Ray Johnson's New York School of Correspondence a strange thing happened from within the world of artists: Doors were opened for a huge quantity of people who are not familiar with the art-scene. Within the meaning of the magic words 'No Jury' a boiling chaos of exchanges between artists and non-artists, southern and northern people, fools and intellectuals, started living as A Thing Nobody Could Orchestrate. The consequence is that all of us receive often a lot of bullshit-papers, obsessional messages, and so on: Mail art is rubbish, dust, noise, materialized absurdity, hope against all misery and hypocrisy! Dada was everything that was not before. Mail art is Nothing New. Nobody-Art. Anonymous fame. No-thing of Any Value.
There are only two reasons to continue Mail art: -1- Because one is an adept of receiving/sending out communication Signs (MAIL-art). -2- To maintain contact from Artist to Artist (mail-ART). I don't believe that mail art is able to have an influence on other fields than those belonging to these two activities.
Mail-art didn't change the world outside the mail art circuit as art in general didn't change the world in general. Only if art can penetrate into society it is able to change the world. Often we see that 'dangerous' art phenomenon's such as the Berlin Dada-movement had the potency to change the world but because of this it was pointed as a kind of political-criminality (artists can get arrested because their work/actions have an influence on society evolution). I believe that Mail art and E-mail excists thanks to institutions such as the National Postal Services and the PC hard- & soft-ware business. Networking is not a creation from the artists, but an economical development within the concept Mail art Network is playing its game.
Mail-art as activity is equal to all arts: It uses certain possibilities to Play. The meaning of the idea of "Playing" is a dissident thing into society of "exploitation" with mainly financial goals. The difference between The Play of the classical fine arts and Mail-art is that mail-art also plays with its own value: Mail-art works have no value (it is Not For Sale.) So many people doing Not for Sale activities within the idea of L'Art inutile is the principle changing I can see. But it will lead to the same nothing as all Arts: The wonderful Nobody Nowhere World of poetry and nonsense's. every try to make catalogues, exhibitions, public manifestations, publications, readings, etc.... is a try to survive the self-destruction of Mail-art. But the self-destruction of Mail-art seen as 'Art for a certain person' or 'Art from a certain period' is irreversible. No-one will ever be able to point out 'The end of Mail-art'. Mail-art will dissolve into the 21st century of communication possibilities and business. It seems to be impossible for me to say that Mail-art doesn't exist and never existed.
Art is or business or destruction. Mail-art is part of what Duchamp called 'The Artist Of Tomorrow Will Go Underground'. Excepts certain exceptions, such as the action to liberate Clemente Padin from jail in the seventies (or was it another decenia?) , Mail-art and all networking is just a try to play with possibilities such as mail-traffic, fax-machines, computer networks. But seen from the inside I think that Mail-art exchange/networking changed many of the visions on living within a certain society and within the so-called 'global village' of the enormous amount of networker-individuals. As well the networker is an invisible person as his 'art-work' stays hidden for the outsiders. The networking idea is situated into a philosophy as expressed by Foucault (also expressed by Warhol : everybody can be famous for a few seconds) : This time has no longer centers of power and famous people, all individuals are a small center of power on themselves. Into the more commercial level we see how 'stars' become famous very fast and 'disappear' a few years later with the same speed as a kind of 'out of use' products. We see the same in politics. We see the same into Mail-art where participants lose their possibilities to send out mail (Only Senders Can Be Located.) Everybody seems to be reduced by the media into 'a temporary exploitable hero'. Mail-art started in the heart of this 'media' phenomenon. Good mail-art networking is when mail artists can find personal and evoluting solutions for this 21st century monster of 'communication'. The networker is closer to the original idea of dada than to 'someone who will change the world'. For many networkers the networking is a personal statement for personal use. Many of us don't believe in rose gardens. We know that we don't have the power. We exist and we try to maintain a kind of existence we regard as senseful. That's why we spend time and money. I know that some do it 'to change'.
But mostly they are focussed on the art institutions, such as galleries, museums, publications, etc..... but they are only 'the artists' into the net. Besides them there are an enormous quantity of people participating without having any other goal than 'to change' their own circumstances as individual towards 'certain others' and to 'maintain' this New Activity. This 'persistency' is often directed more towards 'the one on the other side' than towards 'the personal profit'.
Mail-art and networking changes the world of every participant, but I don't think it is able to change 'the world' . For those who want to promote political, ecological, etc.... activities I think that it is better to use other channels such as Greenpeace, Amnesty International and all organized political, ecological, etc.... action-groups. Here I want to remind Clemente Padin's famous words: 'M.A. isn't sufficient."
Other Networkers build up an archive of interesting and often quality art works. During my visit at Vincze Laszlo in Târgu-Mures Transylvania I saw how the 'Ex-Libris' - makers (lino-cut on small format) have their own net for exchange their experiences and artworks. A main part of internet is about exchange of sex-themes. So we can't say that communication/exchange networks are a creation of the Mail-artists. But in the seventies and the eighties the Mail-art network became a phenomenon that grew above all other networks, especially within the sub-culture of people who are interested into personal expression such as artists and creative people in general. Mail-art opened doors that were never open before.
A second answer to your question is about how mail-art changed my life. It gave me the enormous treasure of being in touch with so many people I couldn't ever be in touch with without the network. But maybe instead of the Ray Johnson NY School of Correspondence / Fluxus / Ben Vautier / etc.... histories, a net of pure correspondence could have given me all the personal information and tourism possibilities I enjoyed. While I was very active into the mail-art network I got more and more isolated from the world around me, such as my family and my local society. Because Mail-art wasn't able to change the world which is the world of daily lies, media manipulation and development of norms which are often creating a system of exclusion. Due to the information and the contacts within the mail-art network I could read, hear, meet people and their messages who gave me a place into the chaos reality is. I lost my place into the fake world and became a clown in love with so many personalities that I call some of them 'my dearest friend' or 'O my lover lover lover.' Although I'll never be able to meet them and build the society we all perceive in our dreams. Mail-artists aren't The New Power (black or white, fuck it) but The Invisible Dissidents Of The Dealy Exploitation Of All Creativity And Artistry. Beginning this century Dada was the best soap available. The last half of the Xxth century is washed by Mail-art. Thanks to it I could often clean away the omnipresent shit of this Big Monster (Communication Systems) Era within which honesty is measured into degrades of lying and almost all water became undrinkable.
But because of Mail-art I became a double dissident: The first part of the expression: Mail (no jury / all that can be send by mail...) made me a dissident to the Art-institutes (no financial nor other support for exhibitions, travelling, no publications by any local nor governmental cultural organization.) The second part: art, made me a dissident to the establishment (all real artists are criticizing the establishment of society). So after 16 years of Mail-art activity very little is left. I lost more than I gained. It is almost time to leave. That's why I feel the importance to answer your question as clear as possible. I do it now. For this TAM-interview project that I regard as Something Interesting. I'll never do it again.
On your question if Mail-art changed the world I can easily answer: NO it didn't.
It will be funny to have been part of this indefinable movement that wasn't able to change anything but its own participants. And I'll be very sad when it will be The End. ('Cause the media is the message , Life is art, Merz for ever').
RJ : In your long answer you tell also a little about your travels to other mail-artists. Sometimes your trips bring you to quite isolated places where there are mail-artists who aren't always able to send out mail. Why this choice?
next answer on 5-9-1998
(because of a break I took the answer was only retyped in April 1998, and the interview was continued. José wrote in his last letter besides the answer that he hasn't that much time to continue the interview, so after his long answer I will only ask one more question.....)
JvdB: In the expression 'Mail-Art' we have two words. The double synthetic idea. The second part 'Art' is about a new kind of art that is build on collectivity and co-operating. This can easily be done without personal contact. Often the distance and the mystery of the other one on the other side of the sender-receiver playground is a main element of the desire to send and joy to receive, the mail-art exchange. Mail-art without personal contact is mysterious, erotic.
The first word 'Mail' is about the constant creation of an undependent alternative system/network for global village info exchange. The more we can do this mail (exchange or information & art), by direct personal contact, the more its goal: the global village construction, is approximated. So the ultimate communication is the personal meeting.
On artistic level this can be practiced by doing occasional co-art-actions that might be public or not, and by doing occasional congress mail-art (by snail-mail), by fax or telephone, by e-mail.) On the social level it can be practiced into love- and friendship-relation building (emotional/sexual and social solidarity) and particular into being guided within the social reality of the visited inviting mail-art partner (experiencing the local circumstances, the home town, the friends & family, the specific possibilities and limits.) Seeing this reality can lead to a brutal demystification of the image of the "never met before mail-art partner-companion". For me this means not a devaluation of the person of my mail-art partner, but to a better mix of mystery & reality. In mail-art , more than in the traditional arts, reality is the art. Art = all realities and imagination in interaction with each other. Australian aboriginals say the 'art' is to know what is going on' (this in trans-chronological and in transcendental sense). The idea of the personal meeting is, in my opinion, accurate described into the publication 'Radio Sermonettes' about 'Immediatism' , Liberian Book Club, New York 1992, which was only recently reaching me, here at The Temple in the south-west of the Flanders Belgium Europe anno '97 a.s.o.
The power of the personal meeting is based on a mutual personal curiosity into the other one and into the particular togetherness of certain personalities who are meeting at certain places and moments. Without this mutual curiosity the meeting will be hypocrite and worthless, just a show (as we see in many art-events.) When the personal meeting happens, I call it: The Temple.
In the usual exchange (mail-art, fax, e-mail) there are 3 main distances to cross: the geographical, the physical (the impossibility of the pleasure of sensorial observation and influencing), and the individual/cultural. At Temples of Personal Meeting 2 of these distances are resolved: I am at the same place and time as my partner and I can see, observe, hear, smell, maybe touch him/her. Only the individual/cultural distance stays as a provocation for creativity and possible source of frustration.
To return from here to your original question I must emphasize on the fact that for Isolated Artists (those we are interested in and passionated to mail-art participation, but who are forced by circumstances such as lack of organization or lack of money, not any longer able to send out ideas, images, sounds, desires, invitations, answers, participation's, provocation's, advises, greetings) only the personal meeting with the other (more rich, more luxurious) partner, gives the opportunity 'to exchange'. I visited Vincze Laszlo end 1996 /beginning 1997 because it was the only chance to know what was/is his actual life as man, father, ex-libris artist and mail-artist. I felt very sorry to be not able to travel to Belgrade during the period of the Cultural Embargo. Many of us are dreaming of a visit to Rea Nikonova and Serge Segay at Eysk. Often we are obliged to stay at home while we feel 'where it's at' and to join on another moment at another place.
During two journeys I experienced the same conflict between the 'Art'-idea and the 'Mail'-idea:
First I went to Romania, in the spring after the X-mas revolution. At the airport Dan and Amalia Perjovski were waiting for us. They had been very active in mail-art during the Ceausescu repression and stood at the door of new institutions to be accepted as 'Romanian Temporary Artists'. Besides this meeting I also met more working class hero mail-artists such as the brothers Vincze, Marosan and Pungucz Karoly.
When I went to St. Petersburg I met the artists couple Paul & Helen Veshev, members of the Raft Art Group (in that period visited by the Shozo Shimamoto Netrun Group), and also the mail-art correspondent and police-officer Eugene Shaskhin. In both cases of mail-art tourism the artists had the freedom and the luxury of many connections, as familiar to the situation of 'artists', and guided us very heartful towards all places they wanted us to see: Their ateliers and the cultural and art-historical attractions from their locations and the reference of their artistic activities to all this. The more 'amateuristic' (please Networkers, all of you who read this interview, don't shoot at me, the pianist) or do I better say: the 'not for sale partners', showed me 'the right stuff' (the survival of the individual and his friends/family, with their personal aims and necessities, within the own circumstances.)
In both cases of visiting, after the visit, 'the artists' didn't contact me even once again. We left at the airport, shook hands, embraced, had a good time behind, made indistinct appointments for the future and me and my family crossed the 'only passengers' border and left. That was the end. No more communication. No explanation. The radical elimination of exchange. In both cases the others, the 'non' official artists' stayed in touch with me. The reason for this is that their desires for exchange were in harmony with mine, which are about the practical foundation of the global village. This while the 'artists' only had the expectation of the foundation of a network for the promotion and distribution (selling) of their personal art production. These aims, which I respect, are foreign to my personal situation as mail-art networker.
Of course the mail-art network has its limits: to continue it needs the non-isolated partners (Only Senders Can Be Located). But I believe that an essential task of the enormous mail-art network is, also, to be able to 'take in tow' Isolated Artists. The Isolated Artists are the living provocation to practice the Mail-Art rule: "No selection / Open for all." Isolation is a growing reality, To break it is our new utopian desire. (Of course we will lose, but we don't accept this: We are here to found Paradise for ourselves and for all.)
I am not able to travel much (lack of social freedom, lack of money). So I must do other things:
1 - Funtioning as a transmit zone :
- Sending Art ne Rat mail from Croatia to Serbia and Bosnia and vice versa.- Multiplying and distributing Dobrica Kamperelic's Open World magazine (sometimes also other mags.)- Distributing some personal messages from Isolated Artists as Temple Post Worldnews flyers. (I am very grateful if Internet connected networkers put these messages on Internet).
2 - Creating non José Vandenbroucke participation's to M.A. projects, with the materials from Isolated Artists in the Temple Archive, so that the Mail-Art from artists who have no possibilities to participate arrive before the deadline at the address of the project, in an envelope that has as sender the address of the Isolated Artist and not the one from the physical sender, The Temple. So it is possible to find participation from Romanian or other mail-artists that are sent from Belgium. In mail-art all is possible, even the impossible! dAdA! The intention is that the art of the Isolated Artist is shown in the project and that the participating Isolated Artist will receive the catalogue. (Sometimes I don't participate myself, so that the Isolated Artist will receive more useful information than I do).
Mail-Art is about exchange of information. To be isolated is to be not able to exchange. All networkers must face this problem as something to work on. Mail-Art isn't sufficient.
Together with this answer I'll send you a message from Segay, as recently received (please put it as an illustration into the Interview Booklet / if possible) , a photo of me and Mirei at Ludwig Forum Museum Aachen, were we pose in front of a big work from Dan Perjovski at the exhibition 'Romanian Art After Ceaucescu' (no reference to and visits from Mail-Art partners between 1981 and now).
I also must ask you to 'finish' this Interview (only one or two more questions) because it takes me a lot of time and forces to formulate the right answer to your interesting questions, as I want to do this with the quality I want to offer to your very respectful and historical Interview Project
(the next question was sent after a break of over a year on January 16th 1999 and is also the last question for the interview)
RJ : After a long break I think it is time we let others read your words as well José. It seemed you needed always a lot of words to answer my questions. Sorry for the small break, but as promised eventually all interviews will be published. The last & traditional question is always: Did I maybe forget to ask you something?
next answer on 26-06-1999
JvdB: Dear Ruud, I can't imagine what you forgot to ask. I received your Interview-mail on 3.3.1999. So almost 3 months ago. This after I almost attacked you because of your long delay in answering me. Mea Culpa Great Administrator. But there was a war. There is a war. At the Balkans and on so many places on our actual media-manipulated planet Earth, and into the heart of what we so dearly call "Communication Art." Communication is more than ever a product. A subject of economical and socio-political value. Many sensitive people return to an intimate production of personal art. Fin de sciecle panic? Tiredness? Survival necessity?
It is a fact that the M.A. Network didn't succeed in creating an independent network that could be a practical aid for the survival of the free communication for all. The dream is over. Many former M.A. are more isolated than ever. We, the rich Europeans, have no tools to keep them involved into the magma of messages. Meanwhile the conflict between the idea of "quantity" versus "quality" became less funny, more dramatic. Daily I have a series of names into my head to whom I want to send something. But I can't decide to send a folded copied and over-copied A4 with my Temple - Post logo stamped on it, just to show I'm still alive. As long as there's nothing sensefull to say I feel forced to wait. Maybe I'm just tired of seeing that poetry can't rule the world.
I want to end this interview by sending my expression of thanks to the huge work your Interview Project is, a work which value will grow in future. It is, besides Robin Crozier's History Memory Malaise sendings and Ryosuke Cohen's Brain Cell sendings a window on the enormous activity that was and still is developed by the many former, actual and future networkers, grouped under the magic phenomenon-name: Mail-Art. And by sending my dearest regards to all who will read it. I have no truth nor authority to say: "This was Mail-Art" (Wilfried Nold published in Numero 4, 1998 , my letter about continuos Death and Rebirth of the Mail-Art Network), nor to say "This is Mail-Art. I leave it all to you. Good Luck.
RJ : Thanks for the interview José!
Address mail-artist:
José van den Broucke,Pikkelstraat 49B - 8540 Deerlijk BELGIUM.
Address interviewer:
Ruud Janssen - TAM. P.O. Box 1055, 4801 BB Breda, Netherlands
posted by Ruud Janssen at 4:17 AM
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