Mail Interviews by Ruud Janssen

Mail-Interview with Ray Johnson

2009-12-21T03:50:00.000-08:00

The Mail-Interview with Ray Johnson comes in a new daylight with the discovery of the 3rd answer. Ray never came around to sendint it out, but only this month I got a digital version of that answer that is in the R. Feigen collection.

To make the whole incomplete interview more transparent I rescanned the envelopes and the ansers again. Before the Mail-Interview started Ray Johnson also sent me two other letters. with the start of the Mail-Interview I also discovered that Ray only recently puchased a new rubberstamp with his address. To show this I scanned all 4 envelopes on one image (click on image to enlarge):

The Interview has been source for discussion in the interview with Norman Solomon (USA) too. See that Mail-Interview for these details available on: http://www.iuoma.org/postcard.html .

Ray Johnson's 1st Answer

2009-12-21T03:48:00.000-08:00

Ray Johnson's 2nd Answer

2009-12-21T03:46:00.000-08:00

Ray Johnson's last answer...

2009-12-15T22:20:00.001-08:00

Dear Ruud, Please find attached an image of Ray’s answer to your interview question. © TAM-Publications and Ray Johnson Estate, Courtesy Richard L. Feigen & Co.

More details: http://www.iuoma.org/interview.html

The Art of Communication - Mail Art Madness

2008-10-05T04:00:00.000-07:00

The Art of Communication - Mail Art Madness was the title of an article about Ruud Janssen published in the magazine Rubberstampmadness, written by Nancy Brook Mandell (Issue January/February 1999).

I have also high-resultation scans if you can't read these images.

6 kilo's of Mail-Interviews

2008-05-21T10:58:00.000-07:00

Today my order of books from LuLu arrived. 6 kilo's of Mail-Interviews. As you can see the books are quite thick. Some are 360+ pages thick. If you are interested, you can order one or all of them yourself at: http://stores.lulu.com/iuoma The copies that arrived in Breda now are for the TAM-Archive itself. The selling of the books goes quite well. About 50 are already sold and are now in some Mail-Art collections for sure. I am working on a new book as well. Details will follow when the time is right.

Mail-Interviews - PART 5

2008-04-13T22:38:00.000-07:00

The last part in the Book-series of the Mail-Interview Project has now been published. It contains only a few more interviews, but they are also quite interesting. Also the complete lists and details about the project are added with reprints of the hardcopy covers that were made over the years.

Printed:

161 pages, 6" x 9", perfect binding, cream interior paper (60# weight), black and white interior ink, white exterior paper (100# weight), full-colour exterior ink. Paperback book €12.07

Description:

A selection of 5 more Mail-Interviews conducted by Ruud Janssen with International Mail-Artists and Fluxus-Artists in the years 1994 till 2002. This time also unfinished interviews and an overview of all names of the interviewed persons! Includes interviews with John M. Bennett, The Unexpected, Jürgen O. Olbrich, Ko de Jonge, Michael B. Corbett and a reprint of the mail-interview Newsletter that explains the Mail-Interview Project. A part of the book is reserved for reprints of the covers made for the booklets in the 90-ies.

Order online at: http://www.lulu.com/content/2359294

For all books go to: http://stores.lulu.com/iuoma

Mail-Interviews - PART 4

2008-04-13T00:42:00.001-07:00

Yes, a next book with Mail-Interviews got published. This time a combination of complete mail-interviews and a collection of unfinished interviews. 21 mail-artists in total.

Printed: 343 pages, 6" x 9", perfect binding, cream interior paper (60# weight), black and white interior ink, white exterior paper (100# weight), full-colour exterior ink. Print: €16.96
Download: €2.50

Description:
A selection of 21 more Mail-Interviews conducted by Ruud Janssen with International Mail-Artists and Fluxus-Artists in the years 1994 till 2002. This time also unfinished interviews! Includes interviews with H.R. Fricker, Julia Tant, Raphael Nadolny, John Evans, Bern Porter, Birger Jesch, Patricia Collins, Daniel Plunkett, Patricia tavenner, Judith A. Hoffberg, Peter Küstermann, Robert Rocola, Rod Summers, Marie Stillkind, Roy Arenalla, Rudi Rubberoid, Stephen Perkins, Klaus Groh, Ruggero Maggi, Vittore Baroni, Svjetlana Mimica and a reprint of the mail-interview Newsletter that explains the Mail-Interview Project.

Orderdetails: http://www.lulu.com/content/2354626

All books: http://stores.lulu.com/iuoma

Because I know some people don't want to order online I will see how I can help there. When I order the books myself and send them out, postage is paid twice. Cheapest way is to order straight from LuLu. But when I have stock here in Breda I can determine how heavy a package is and what the extra postage is. Next month I will give the details.

Books from Ruud Janssen

2008-04-11T10:19:00.001-07:00

You can order at : http://stores.lulu.com/iuoma

Mail-Interviews in BOOK-FORM available

2008-04-06T08:28:00.000-07:00

On http://stores.lulu.com/iuoma you can have an overview of the publications that I have made available for you. This includes now two books with the complete texts of 28 interviews I did in the years 1994 till 2007. A selection of the most interesting interviews, including people who are no longer with us like Edgardo-Anonio-Vigo, Ray Johnson, Dick Higgins, Norman Solomon, but also some very active Fluxus- and Mail-Artists. Just have a look.

The information insides these books is always available online as well for free. These books are made for the persons who rather have the texts in printed form so it can be read and archived.

Available are:

Mail-Interviews - Part 2 Mail-Interviews - Part 2 (book)
Print: €16.23
Download: €2.50
A selection of 12 Mail-Interviews conducted by Ruud Janssen with International Mail-Artists and Fluxus-Artists in the years 1994 till 2002.

Mail-Interviews - Part 1 Mail-Interviews - Part 1 (book)
Print: €13.59
Download: €2.50
A selection of 16 Mail-Interviews conducted by Ruud Janssen with International Mail-Artists and Fluxus-Artists in the years 1994 till 2007.

25 Years in Mail-Art 25 Years in Mail-Art (book)
Print: €8.83
Download: €2.50
A book with Biographical materials connected to the the 25 years of active work by Ruud Janssen in the Mail-Art Network. Overviews, Interviews, Dates and events.

TAM Rubberstamp Archive TAM Rubberstamp Archive (book)
Download: €3.75
Hardcover Print: €21.48
This catalogue is made to support the exhibition of the TAM Rubberstamp Archive Collection at the L-Gallery in Moscow, Russia. The TAM-Rubberstamp archive started in 1983 and is currated by Ruud Janssen from the Netherlands.

Ongoing Interview with Ruud Janssen

2007-11-21T11:57:00.000-08:00

After so many Interview with the first concept it is time for a new concept. I prepared a blog for an interview where others will ask the questions and I will try to answer them. I don't know who will ask the questions, but I know i will answer them. The questions will come as the comments to the posting. I will repeat them as the header of the posting and the content of the posting is the answer. This way the structure of the interview will be determined by the readers of the interview so far. We will see if this works or not.

Want to read? Go to: http://rjinterview.blogspot.com/

Mail-Interview with Alison Knowles by Ruud Janssen

2007-09-12T12:07:00.000-07:00

The Interview with Alison Knowles by Ruud Janssen

(question sent on 5-4-2006 by e-mail)

Ruud Janssen : Welcome to the interview. Before I start with an interview I always like to read through the biography of the person I am interviewing. Looking at such a career in Art I always wonder, do you still remember when you decided you wanted to be an artist?

(answer on 5-4-2006 by e-mail)

Alison Knowles : Yes, I remember well when I decided to be an artist. It was when my grandmother addressed me as one. She looked at my pencil drawing of an osprey's nest built in the cross wires of a telephone pole and hung it over the piano. I was six, maybe seven years old.

(question sent on 6-4-2006 by e-mail)

RJ : You graduated in 1954 from Pratt University. Looking back at this study, what did you learn there, or maybe a better question is: what didn’t you learn there?

(answer on 11-4-2006 by e-mail)

AK : My graduation from Pratt Institute was in 1956. I had transferred from Middlebury College in Vermont. Because my father was an English professor at Pratt I was able to enroll at no expense in the Art Department

In the nightschool for three years I was able to study painting with Adolph Gottlieb a recognized abstract impressionist at the time. He said very little to anyone, but spoke directly in front of the work to each person so it was a personal critical dialogue about art with each one of us. He made me feel I could be a great painter. at the time I intensely admired Helen Frankenthal, and had acquaintance with the work of Pollock.
Franz Kline also taught in the class from time to time. During the day I studied graphic design and commercial layout. My best class in the dayschool was with the painter Richard Lindner. He was a philosopher and dedicated his thoughts to areas outside painting. We had discussions as a group. We also had an hour to draw together. His concentration drawing technique is really a mediation on time . We would draw for five minutes as slowly as possible with pencil on the paper, not taking our eyes off the subject. We began the class each week in this way. I learned very much from him and use this drawing technique with students today. What I learned there was that I am artist. What I should have learned there was that I am not a painter. However, in those days all artists were painterd.

(question sent on 13-4-2006 by e-mail)

RJ : In a text I read: “Alison Knowles is a conceptual artist doing performance art, installations, sound art and bookmaking”. Quite a variety and definitely no mentioning of painting. It seems that after your formal education some informal education took place. Is this somehow connected to the “New York Mycological Society”[1] ?

(answer on 13-4-2006 by e-mail)

AK : Oh yes, the mycological Society was led by John Cage, who along with my father is my teacher. We went on Sunday walks in Upstate New York near where John lived. We went by bus, Dick Higgins my husband and myself to spend time in the woods together, studying mushrooms and having the time while walking to talk to one another. I find walking together to be the best way to exchange ideas. John was always willing to talk to people proposing an idea or observation. We all became acquaintances and then friends. I knew of John through the New School course he gave in the late 50's and was eager to have some of that wisdom and daring rub off on me. As for painting, my attentions dwindled after a show at the Nonegon Gallery on 2nd Ave. in New York. My diverting to the New School class was gentle and then abrupt. I destroyed all my paintings in a bonfire behind my brothers country house. This is slightly distressing to me now, as they would be easily marketable in Italy.

However, this act of destruction on my part led me directly into the Fluxus family of friends and as I say, connections to the New School and George Brecht, Dick Higgins, Al Hansen and Allan Kaprov, among others. On our first Fluxus tour in '62 I began to write performance events. But perhaps that is another question.
Ciao

(question sent on 21-4-2006 by e-mail)

RJ : When did you meet Dick Higgins for the first time?

(answer on 21-4-2006 by e-mail)

AK : I was invited to a party at 84 Christopher Street by a friend Dorothy Podber [2] and our friend Ray Johnson. It was Dick's apartment. I stayed for three days.

(question sent on 24-4-2006 by e-mail)

RJ : You talked in your previous answer about “the Fluxus family of friends”. When was the word “Fluxus” first used in this circle of friends?

(answer on 25-4-2006 by e-mail)

AK : These friends who did concerts together performed under the banner Fluxus. Simultaneously I would say we felt like friends rather than say a group of actors doing a play together. The term family may be my own invention but I like it. No way to put a date on this, but early on.

(question sent on 24-4-2006 by e-mail)

RJ : The term family is also an indication of how these times must have felt. It is interesting that Ray Johnson also belonged to this circle of friends. Some say he also belongs to the group of Fluxus people but I also read somewhere that Ray never considered himself a “Fluxus artist”. How do you see this?

(answer on 27-4-2006 by e-mail)

AK : Ray Johnson was a mail artist, and founded the Correspondence School.
He never travelled with us, or wrote pieces for performance that we could use. I have many memories of his work, always absurd and interactive.

(question sent on 27-4-2006 by e-mail)

RJ : Could you describe one of your favourite performances of the early days. If possible I will publish the original score with this interview. But I am more curious on how you think back of the piece you choose.

(answer on 28-4-2006 by e-mail, booklets on 6-5-2006 by regular mail)

AK : like "shuffle[3]" alot. It presents the group as a group entering andleaving the hall in a snake-like conga line. I would like to send youmy pamphlet of early pieces called By Alison Knowles. It lists theevent scores from this period. Please give me your mailing address.

(On 6-5-2005 I received two booklets by mail. The first booklet: “by Alison Knowles”, 1965, A great Bear Pamphlet - New York. It contains a listing of 17 scores written by her. The second booklet: “MORE by Alison Knowles”, 1979 2nd Edition, Printed Editions New York. “These pieces in MORE are the writings, spoken parts, poems and events from my environments of the 1970’s. Given the opportunity to reprint MORE, I decided to leave out several of the shorter pieces in the first edition to make room for Three New Bean Events, The Shoemaker’s Assistant, and Bean see also Bein. The collage preface that follows was made by Philip Corner.” As a reaction I sent her some samples of previous mail-interviews that I published.)

(question sent on 6-5-2006 by e-mail, booklets on 7-5-2006 by regular mail)

RJ : Thanks for sending me the two booklets. I also looked on the Internet to find details about the performance “Shuffle”. Online one only finds fragments of what it must have been. On you own site (url: http://www.aknowles.com/) also a lot can be found on what you did. A booklet fits more to the times these first scores were performed. I probably will use the booklets as illustrations for the finished interview. As I read in your biography you came in contact with computers in an early stage. I quote:

“In 1967, Knowles produced The House of Dust poem, possibly the first computerized poem, which she produced with composer James Tenney following his informal seminar on computers in the arts held at her home with husband Dick Higgins in 1967”.

What does a computer mean to you nowadays?

(answer on 8-5-2006 by e-mail)
AK : Nowadays I use the computer for daily email contact and to sometimes send a picture for card or publication. I don't use it every day, and I am not a computer adept but it is a great tool we all agree. I do not use it to do artwork however. All my work seems to be tactile, touchable and musical sometimes (the beans falling down inside the paper) or performances where real people look at real people.

(question sent on 10-5-2006 by e-mail)

RJ : When you talk about performances where real people look at real people I am trying to visualize that. The bean performance is probably a superb example of where this happens. It also involves the musical element. I found a photo of one of those performances (I thought it was on the site located at: http://www.4t.fluxus.net/Where the 40 year celebration of Fluxus in France was documented. What I wonder is: Why beans?

(with this e-mail I sent the photo that is also besides this question)

(answer on 11-5-2006 by e-mail)

AK : beans are not usually used to make art or sound works so my position in using them for both is unique. It opens up the world of art to ordinary things such as edibles. I discover rare information about beans in libraries all over the world. The first of my publications was the Bean Rolls published by Fluxus in the early sixties. The next was A Bean Concordance published by Station Hill Press in the 70's. I am always collecting new information and I find everyone has something to say on the subject. Also, I think it is healthy for artists to have outside areas of research besides their own world. I am leaving for Venice now so please hold the questions for a few weeks.

(question sent on 22-5-2006 by e-mail)

RJ : How was Venice?

(answer on 24-5-2006 by e-mail)

AK : Today Venice is rainy. I am here with a performance and exhibition through July 1st.

(question sent on 24-5-2006 by e-mail)

RJ : Could you tell me more about what kind of performance you did and what you exhibited in Venice? It is raining here too......

(since I didn’t get a reply in September, I resent the question again with attached the concept for the Mail-Interview booklet.)

[1]
New York Mycological Society
Mushrooms are the fruiting bodies of fungi, of which the vegetative growth is typically underground or in wood. Fungi serve a major recycling role in nature, breaking down dead trees and other organic material. Fungi also help nourish trees and other plants, thus playing a key role in the health of our forests. And yes, some fungi can also play a destructive role in nature by attacking living things such as trees. Most mushrooms are not poisonous and quite a few are very good edibles. But some are very toxic and a few are deadly! Unfortunately there are no simple foolproof rules to distinguish the edible from the poisonous. One must learn individual mushroom species if one plans on eating mushrooms. The most important point is that no one should ever eat unknown mushrooms! When in doubt, throw it out! Joining a mushroom club is the safe and fun way to learn about mushrooms and fungi. The New York Mycological Society is a non-profit organization of 150 members who share an interest in mycology (the study of mushrooms and fungi) as well as in mycophagy (the eating of mushrooms). The present NYMS was reincarnated some 40 years ago by the composer John Cage and a small group of other mushroom lovers and students. Mycology is mushrooming! (text from the NYMS – Site)

[2] Dorothy Podber ran the Nonegan Gallery in the mid-1960s and she was associated with Black Mountain friends, the Mole People, the art world and the underworld. She is famous for shooting a stack of Marilyn paintings in late 1964, which she can she considered a performance.

[3] #1 Shuffle (1961)The performer or performers shuffle into the performance area and away from it, above, behind, around, or through the audience. They perform as a group or solo: but quietly. Premired August 1963 at National Association of Chemists and Performers in New York at the Advertiser's club.

Beginning in 1962 Alison Knowles wrote an important series of event scores (instructions for events carried out) which anticipate do it. These event scores were published in A Great Bear Pamphlet (1965) which included scores for Shuffle #7, 1967 ("The performer or performers shuffle into the performance area and away from it, above, behind, around, all through the audience. They perform as a group or solo...but quietly") and Proposition, 1962 ("Make a salad").

unfinished...... but published on 11-9-2007 (c) FHC

Mail-Art Interviews seen on a MAC

2007-09-05T10:35:00.000-07:00

Mail-Interview with Anna Banana

2007-09-01T14:26:00.000-07:00

New Interviews

2007-06-04T06:16:00.000-07:00

If you are looking for a specific mail-interview that you can't find, just lt me know and I will upload it here.

Ruud

Mail-Interview with Julie Hagan Bloch - USA

2006-10-10T12:00:00.000-07:00

hardcover version of the mail-interview booklet

Mail-Interview with Julie Hagan Bloch (USA)

2006-10-10T11:58:00.000-07:00

THE MAIL-INTERVIEW WITH JULIE HAGAN BLOCH 31

Started on: 7-3-95

RJ : Welcome to this mail-interview. First let me ask you the traditional question. When did you get involved in the mail-art network?

Reply on: 20-6-1995

JHB: Well, It was probably around the early '80's.... 1983 maybe. It sort of pounced.... I'd been carving eraser-stamps for a few years & heard of a couple of rubberstamp magazines, Rubberstamp-madness & National Stampagraphic. I wrote to them and they both showed favorable interest in my carvings right away. Very quickly I was corresponding with some folks via the rubberstamp magazines, and also got in a group that exchanged mail-art on a monthly basis. I forget the name of the group now; it was in 1984 or 1985 , but I still correspond with Kay Sluterbeck & Tom Nelson whom I met in that group. That group may still be going on as far as I know; after a while I had to drop out because of being short of extra time! I'm still short of "extra" time, but I work around it!

Anyhow, these few contacts led to others & I just kept going with it! Always, though, what intrigued me most was eraser-carving. Still does. Other things get put aside so I can do more carving. One thing that's so great about mail-art is it's an ideal form for sharing carved images. Mail-art lets me feel in touch artistically, even though I live in a very small town. I truly cherish my fellow-artists/correspondents. I have the best of it all here - peace, quiet, & lovely surroundings, and contact with other artists. Our post-office enjoys the unusual variety that gets sent to me too. I give them samples of the artistamps I make, and they put them up behind the counter. Like my own refrigerator-display! (In your country, do the mothers of small children tape up the kids' artworks on the refrigerator door?) Well, enough for that question, nu?

RJ : Well, maybe you should do a project on refrigerator's doors? Mine is decorated with magnet-artworks I received through the mail.... Your eraser-carvings are quite well known in the network. Sometimes your work is even used as illustrations in books. How did you become so good? Maybe you could tell me how the proces of making one stamp evolves.

Reply on 21-9-1995

JHB: The first part is having an idea you want to work with! Then, tools assembled, do your drawing, work with it until you're pleased with it, transfer it to the eraser, and carve it! Often, I continue the drawing process with the carving tools: refining, deleting, adding texture, or re-designing if I either change my mind or make a mistake! And I'll let you in on a little secret: the end result is hardly ever exactly as I had envisioned it! But also, it's hardly ever worth re-doing; time's better spent on trying not to make the same "mistake" on another carving - or else using the information gained deliberately to create a similar effect.

The key to gaining skill in the process is not unique to eraser-carving. Practice. A lot (I've carved over 2,000 stamps by now.) Love the work. Put your heart & mind to it. Concentrate. Have fun with it! Be open to learn whatever you can from a variety of sourses. Recognize that all your skills are a gift, and use them with love & respect. Practice. Love. Attention.
I made a stamp about this topic too: "ALL-PURPOSE MAGIC TRICK LEARNED WHILE CARVING STAMPS: Don't work carelessly, thinking, "why be careful? I can't do it well, anyhow." because then, you'll probably be right. Take the time and care needed, WORK AS THOUGH YOU EXPECT TO BE ABLE TO DO IT VERY WELL because then, you'll probably be right."

(This complete text Julie carved in a eraser sometimes in very tiny and precise letters. The carving shows her very wonderful skills when it comes to making eraser-carvings with very fine details)

Oh - a few, actually: "CHECK OUT the work of wood engravers and wood block carvers!" , "What to carve? Look around you! Look inside you!" , "Contents: Helpful, I hope, but NOT TO BE TAKEN TOO SERIOUSLY.... Do whatever works for you! Invent something new! JUST CARVE!!!"
(These are all on the back cover of my little carving book.)

Another point about skill in carving is keeping the enthusiasm fresh. One way I do that is to apply eraser carving to whatever my current interest happens to be. (For heavens sake, one can carve anything!) Lately I've been fascinated with ancient Egyptian art & hieroglyphs. (Sadly, I'm lacking a teacher for hieroglyphs, but I do have a couple of excellent texts to work with.) I'm having a wonderful time with it all, and of course it shows up in carved stamps!

RJ : Yes, it sure does! Do you also carve in wood and make larger works?

Reply on 12-10-1995

JHB: I have carved in wood in the past, but haven't for years. The grain of the wood always seemed to have a different opinion than I did about where a line should go, & we never reached a mutual understanding.

I also used to do larger works - when I was in art school ( a little over 20 years ago!) I preferred large canvases, say 4 x 6 feet, & 18 x 24 inch watercolors & drawings.... But as the time goes by I find that I prefer to work much smaller for many reasons: large pieces require physical strength to manipulate & lots of space for storage, & are harder to share with people many miles away. And large sized works are easy to accept as they are, in the sense of size, and the viewer remaining as is..... Small works seem to ask the viewer to become of a size to enter the work, because it's too hard to see it well otherwise. One must change & enter into a different view of the world. I guess that sounds weird. That's okay. Wierd is fine too. It's good to help shake off the idea that some people may have that this existence is "normal", whatever THAT is. Magic is normal, & it's everywhere! Just walking outside today, in this gorgeous Autumn weather one breathes magic! It's more than just the delightful beauty of scent & color.... it's a feeling.... I love it!

It's necessary for me to try to convey some of this in the thing I do. Wether it comes across or not, well, who knows? But it is important that I try, & the magic is ALL of it - the form, color, feeling, & my state of being as I work. I think people would do well to remember we can all do magic. Putting one's heart and spirit into a made object - that's magic and very healing for the doer & the viewer. I think one also receives the blessings of whatever the attention focuses on, and of course blessings are extended to the object or place or person or animal that is drawn or carved.

RJ : In the latest pieces of mail I received from you, I noticed that you are influenced by old historic subjects these last months. What is so attractive about the Eastern culture?

Reply on 2-12-1995

JHB: Ruud, I could say any number of things about this, but the main thing is that it just touches my heart. It is beautiful in a way that for me is magic, and it makes me want to be closer to it.

I was at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (in New York City) several months ago, standing before some acient Egyptian tomb carvings: scenes & hieroglyphs... tears came to my eyes and I wanted to know the heart of them, to be closer to that beauty. So since then I've been studying hieroglyphs when I can, & looking at the drawings, paintings and sculpture, in books or in museums. It's magical, mysterious, seductive, lovely. It's for the same reason I studied Chinese 15 years ago: the art captures my heart.

RJ : Is it the story of your life, that you always follow what your heart tells you to do?

Reply on 3-2-1996

JHB: What a beautiful question! I think that's probably true for the major events of my life, and I believe that a lot of the time heart & head are in agreement.... or at least they conspire to make it seem so.... Even contemplating the question brings a smile to the heart & a feeling of love. What treasures these feelings are! To be in a space of love & beauty, just by thinking about them. Now there's magic! Thank you for bringing it on!
ps. Sometimes the pull of love is so strong, it's not a matter of choice: the only possible thing to do is to follow one's heart. Nothing else exists.

RJ : Again you sent me some beautiful prints of your newest rubber stamps. Do you keep all your erasers? How large is your collection?

Reply on 21-2-1996

JHB: No, I don't keep all my carvings. Some I make as gifts, some end up as gifts, a very few are commissioned pieces. But I do keep most of the carvings I make. I probably have about 2,000 and I like always to have at least arround 50 uncarved erasers on hand, plus some of the larger sizes of carving material like Nasco's carving block, April Pease's "P-Z cut", & a few others which I can't recall just now. Sometimes I get an idea to do a series of carvings that eats up my supply of erasers, so I need to be prepared! It's best to go with the idea when it takes you by the hand. I love it when I'm able to just flow with the idea & draw and carve for long, uninterrupted stretches.

RJ : You sure are lucky that you can do that, and the results are really wonderful. When I myself got involved with the mail art network the magazine Rubberstampmadness was quite interesting for mail artists (as you told also in one of your previous answers). The most recent issues I saw of the magazine were completely different to the ones from the beginning of the 80's. It has become a very large glossy magazine with lots of advertisings. What are your thoughts on these developments, that rubberstamping has become big business?

Reply on 5-3-1996

JHB: There is room for everybody & for all of it. RSM has evolved from charming, down-home small publication to classy, professional larger publication. It reaches more people now, yet has information on networking for many levels, some really cool artists, & so forth. Folks who wish to be less "glossy" are not prohibited from being so, for heaven's sake! I think it's a waste of good energy to get upset with people or entities for changing, as long as others are still free to go their own way. National Stampagraphic is a lot like it used to be years ago, very low-key, & lovable. That's the key, I think, to why these 2 (RSM & NS) are still around - love. It's not how "glossy" you are or aren't; it's how much love you work with - (and, of course, simply staying in business is due in part to luck!) - and both are full of love. There's so much "us" versus "them" in this world - it's time people realized that there is no "THEM" ; it's ALL JUST "US".

And what's wrong with glossy, anyhow? I can't find fault with better reproduction of original pieces, more information on cool toys (via - 'gasp!' advertising!) - show me where this causes harm? If there's to be a complaint, let it be with real problems - like polluting our lovely Earth, torturing animals or people, stupid wars, supressing of others' beliefs, other forms of bigotry (religious, racial, social, etc.) OY VAY! You want problems? EASY to find. You know what else? I'm a lot different than I was in the beginning of the 80's too! And it's great! (and so are you, dear; you got me going on that one, didn't you!)

P.S. I bet there are lots of other rubberstamp publications out there that are very low key - this world is full of surprises!

P.P.S. I could get more in-depth philosophically, but it makes my ears itch. Enough philosophy already, let's make art!

RJ : Yes, I got you going there for a while. Sometimes it seems that art & money don't mix, but in reality they seem to be completly connected. In the 70's and 80's there were these discussions that mail art and money don't mix. Nowadays, with the high postal rates everywhere, the mail artists of the 90's know too well that money is needed to keep the post going and lots of recent larger mail art shows are sponsored to pay for the costs. What are your thoughts on this subject?

Reply on 2-4-1996

JHB: It seems to me a bit like complaining about the weather. Like it or not, what can one do about it? Individual solutions: make more intense (whatever THAT means!) art & correspond with fewer people, making a stronger individual connection; do mass-mailings but less frequently; get a grant; work with people in a smaller area & personal contact (within art schools, for example); pray for postal rates to go down! In fact, Ruud, I saved (somewhere - can't find it at the moment) a little quote you mailed me a year or two ago, something to the effect that one might reconsider methods if one is continually sending a mass-produced letter about "Sorry I'm sending a mass-produced letter, but I don't have time to write". Why not pare down the number to those with whom quality correspondence is enjoyed? Mail art is supposed to be for enjoyment (isn't it??). Or, admittedly, at times to make a social or political point - but I suspect most of us do mail art because we like to. And in honesty I must admit that I seldom respond to "calls for mail art" for any given event unless the call is accompanied by a personal letter of some kind. Of works to do, I have plenty already, thank you! As I said: for me, it's about love, not how many pieces of mail I can move in a day.

As far as art & money mixing - well, sometimes they do & sometimes they don't! Clearly, one needs to survive; and clearly, art needs energy, love. time, & other resources. It can be more subtle, too. In 1991 I got breast cancer. I know why I got it; I was depressed because, due to having to take a "real" job, I couldn't make art.

(...wow - I had to stop a moment & the moment stretched to over 2 weeks! Time-ways!)

...so - with that diagnosis came the renewed determination to do what I believe I came here to do: show love for this amazing All-of-creation with my art. Please understand, this doesn't imply I'm any kind of world-class master artist. It just means that, for my own personal life, I must work with beauty, with love. Like birds who must sing, no matter what their song: crow or lark (I like them all!); no matter if they're heard or not.... though, to be sensible, I suppose the song often serves to attract mates or announce territorial borders... but I bet they'd sing anyhow. Lovely things, birds. Like listening to Kiri te Kanawa, for example, or Kathleen Battle.... like angels singing. Healing to the spirit.

Back to the question - yes, it is a shame when folks can't afford to mail as they'd like. When I was first married, money was very tight - though we had enough to physically survive, thank god - & I do remember not mailing as often as I would have liked, in order to save money... but what I did then is to do what I could do, & not get my shorts in a bunch, so to speak, because of what I couldn't do. I don't have enough time to waste it on being critical like that. As I said before, do what you can do, and with love.

RJ : The envelope you sent your answer in was made from a page about astrology. What does astrology mean to you?

(On April 25th I received a first e-mail message from Julie Hagan Bloch. Nothing special, but just a test if she could reach me that way. I replied that here first e-mail arrived and that she could send in her answers that way too. However, I also told her that I would enjoy her snail-mail more because of the wonderful stampings she always uses).

Reply on 4-6-1996 (internet)

Hi, Ruud!

Yes, I will be sending you some goodies in the mail but I'm feeling a tad guilty at how long it's taken me to respond to the last question so I'm answering with the help of Thoth Ram‑Dos (I did tell you that's our computer's name, didn't I?).

Astrology. I guess for me it's another bit of potentially useful information. Seems to me that this whole universe is pretty much all of a piece, as it were, and that everything is therefore interconnected. I'm not an astrologer. Not enough time to devote to it. But now and then something I'll read in an astrology journal or and ephemeris will ring a bell and help me to gain a little insight. For example, the time I got breast cancer was when transiting Pluto was squaring my ascendant. (Yes, I know it sounds like gobbledygook. Well, it can't be helped.) Pluto has to do with deep transformation, sometimes pretty heavy duty. The ascendant is one's self‑in‑this‑body, for lack of a more succinct explanation. So. Does that help?

On a different subject, David does the grocery shopping for our household, bless his heart. Last time he went, he brought back a golden‑orange pepper, "just because it was so pretty". Now, I ask you, is that man a treasure or what? I'll be sending you a few little eraser‑carvings I did using that pepper as a model. It really is a lovely thing, that pepper. The color is exquisite, and the shape of it is wonderful. The funny thing about it is that, since the U.S. Post Office recently issued a commemorative stamp of one of Georgia O'Keeffe's paintings (the red poppy), I was looking through a book I've had (for almost 20 years!) of her work. I had in mind to think a bit about her and what she did, and perhaps carve a print or two in her honor. Looking through that lovely book, I was struck most by her just working with what delighted her eye. And that evening, David brings home the pepper. Aha! So in a way, the pepper prints are in honor of Georgia. What an incredible woman she was.

I'm also thinking that perhaps I'll go to the grocery store myself (I hate to shop, but maybe it wouldn't be so bad if it's for art supplies, so to speak), and see the shapes and colors in the produce department. In the seed catalogues I see lovely fruits and flowers and vegetables...peppers, for example, in red, green, yellow, orange, white, purple, just to name a few!

I'll send the prints off to you in the morning. Meanwhile, happy Spring!

RJ : Now I think of the subjects of your eraser carvings, it has mostly to do with daily life as well. You latest answer came in by e-mail (you actually wrote it a few hours before I got it today!) and I wonder, what is a computer too you, and what do you think of e-mail?

(this next question was sent only 30 minutes after I received her answer, by e-mail of course!)

reply on 2-7-1996 (internet)

JHB: HA! I just remembered where I put the interview question. Oy... when I get behind with paperwork, things do get lost! Okay, the question was about Thoth Ram‑Dos, our computer, or computers in general.

Computers are great. E‑mail is a big help for quick communication (well, it CAN be...!) and can be fun besides. What's not to like? The regular postal system still can be used for sending pictures and what‑not. It's good to have both. The more options, the better. It's not as though use of the more traditional mail systems is now prohibited, for heaven's sake!

Besides the e‑mail, I hope eventually to be able to use the computer for producing our books, which is the reason we got it in the first place. We still need to get a scanner, though, and until we do we can't do the books from the computer. There's a program that can use my own calligraphy and use it as a font. (First have to have the scanner!) I like doing a LITTLE calligraphy, but it's getting so that my hand and shoulder cramp up too quickly to really enjoy doing an extended session of it. I do want to use my own lettering in our books, though, and having it available as a font is the way to go. Besides, that way I can spend more time drawing and carving, which I prefer. There I think the computer will be a help, too. In fact, that's the argument my husband used to get me to consider a computer in the first place. He said: "Think of being able to have your original artwork, blow it up big on the computer, touch it up, reduce it back to the original size, and have it camera‑ready." I told him, "Oh, you tempter!"

And so Thoth Ram‑Dos came to live in our house. I love the drawing and carving but I do not like to do the fiddly work involved in getting an image camera‑ready. Once an image is carved, I want to do something else! There are so many things that I'd like to carve!

RJ : Besides the e-mail there are also the sites and homepages where people put their information on-line. What do you think of that?

Reply on 11-7-1996 (via e-mail)

JHB: I don't yet have a lot of experience with this part of the internet. I've played a bit with it, of course, but it still feels like getting a new foreign language textbook and skipping to the middle or end chapters: sometimes one is able to make sense of bits of it, and it is fun to work with it, but to really GET it a bit more study is required.

My impression as a novice is that one could easily spend a great deal of time in it.... So far, I've not had a lot of luck using it as a research tool. Although it seems almost everything is represented in some capacity, the representation usually is rather superficial. At present, I have far better luck in a good big bookstore. It isn't as time‑consuming to "download" pictures in a bookstore, either! Using Georgia O'Keeffe as a reference again, I found a scant few illustrations of her work on the internet, but in a bookstore, aaah! Lovely illustrated volumes, and the main problem is to choose which to buy! Such riches...

At any rate, I'm sure there is much good material in magic cyberspace, for one who knows how to access it. I'm sure I will eventually. I did have some luck, surprisingly enough, in finding eraser‑carving‑related items on the internet! The luck consisted mainly in having friends tell me the home page addresses (if that is the correct term) for them. I found yours, Ruud, and a few others. What fun! Yes, I can see how one could spend a LOT of time there!

Incidentally, Ruud, my lack of expertise is the reason for the delay in responding to your question. I don't have a lot to say that means much. But heavens, for not having much to say, I sure did natter on, no?!

This kind of communication is a far cry from that of even 50 years ago. I wonder what will be available in another 50 years! I guess that's all for now. Be well, dear. Love and blessings, Julie

RJ : Another subject I would like to ask before we end our interview is, "your archive". Do you keep all the mail that you get in? How do you deal with the flow of incoming mail?

reply on 5-10-1996 (e-mail)

JHB: Your last question related to archiving: "Do you keep all the mail that you get in? How do you deal with the flow of incoming mail?" As you can tell, sometimes the flow of incoming mail does not have a corresponding outflow very soon! Some mail is answered quickly, such as orders for the small books I publish; I try to fill orders and mail them out again within 48 hours. Questions about carving I put at the front of my "mail to be answered" stack. I must confess that though I like to answer mail promptly, often that stack waits a while for me to attend to it. The nearly three‑month interval between your last question and my answering of it is surely a case in point! It was an interval, however, that saw the completion of the camera‑ready copy for the next haiku book, which is now at the printer's awaiting its turn on the press. (I am glad about the book's reaching that stage, for sure!) Usually when I begin a correspondence with somebody, I warn her/him that while I do answer my mail, the timing of the answer is totally unpredictable.

I don't keep all the mail that comes to the house. There's just too much of it. I keep what is special to me personally for one reason or another; and most of the rest of it I pass along. Some things that are not "keepers" but are of a large enough size, I use to line the bottom of the rabbits' cages when I clean them. I have to use something, after all! Mail art is sacred in the sense of the communication that takes place, but not necessarily as an object once its purpose has been fulfilled. Besides, paper does not keep forever, and space is somewhat limited. The more one has, the more time is necessary to take care of it. I have fantasized about dumping the entire contents of my files into a bonfire, and enjoying the lightening of spirit that accompanies lightening of posessions... but then when I go to weed out some of the files, I end up keeping most of them after all. "I can't throw THIS away...". The trick in not becoming inundated in paper is to be strong in the first place and not let the paper enter the file at all; pass it along right away. It isn't easy. When a piece has been put together with a lot of care and love, it is hard to let it go. But then, it is also fun to share nice work with mail art friends. It is a bit of a paradox for me. I like to have interesting things on hand to look at and respond to, but I don't like to be responsible for a lot of stuff to take care of. And I like things to be fairly tidy and clean, and of course the more things there are in a space, the more complicated that becomes. I find it easier to think clearly in a clean space. Not only a physically clean space, but also a mentally clean one. If I have too many things to do, I often find it hard to accomplish anything beyond the most essential tasks. The mental system (or mine does, anyhow) gets overloaded with too many things to do, it seems, and fizzes out. Poof! It's a great exercise in focus, though, to concentrate on one bird in the flock, as it were. It is an interesting question: if a system is best served by simplicity, then why is there the tendency towards complexity?

Ummmm, I dunno. I'm a slow learner, maybe??? ;‑) Back to you, Ruud, and I hope you are having a fine Autumn. It is so very lovely here now. I love this time of year. The trees are so spectacular in their blazing brightness, and the clean, crisp air is ambrosial. Aaaaahhh!

P.S The lift of spirit that follows the letting go of possessions is mild compared to the lift felt after completing a major task. It's almost as though a physical weight were removed from me. ( I wonder if it's like that at the time of death, the feeling of a major job completed, great relief and lightness, and now it's time to move on to the next thing...) I love the work I do, but completion is nice too.

There, that was my after‑midnight nattering!

RJ : Well, maybe it is time to round up this interview. It started in March last year, so if we don't stop now we might 'natter' on year after year (just joking). Was there anything I forgot to ask you?

reply on 26-11-1996 (e-mail)

JHB: I don't know if you forgot to ask anything or not, but there is one more thing I'd like to put out there for people: There is a great light at the very core of your being that is made of nothing but love. Find it. And realize that the light wears your form, has your tendencies, your loves, your brain, your skills, everything that makes you who you are. You ARE good enough. You are great, just as you are. You must do what makes your heart happy, what you know is right for you in your own circumstances. Honor who you are. Everyone has this light; it is everywhere and in everything. We are surrounded by love.

One of the finest things about mail art is that people share their own unique vision, freely and without external judging. They share who they are. We are surrounded by love.

Well, Ruud, no doubt there will be something else I'll remember after this is all done, but I can live with that! I suspect that the "nattering" will continue in any case! In the snail mail printout of this that I'm sending, I'll enclose the latest haiku book, hot off the press, as it were. I hope you like it! Now it's back to answering other mail, trying to fit in as many projects as possible (one of the first of which is revising my carving book. It's hard to believe it's been out for almost ten years...products have changed, and there is more I want to share with those who'd like to carve! The more I teach, the more I notice patterns of things people keep asking, or not realizing that they need to know. I need to address that in the book) , and not wear myself out...well, not too much, anyhow. Bless you for doing this project. It's led me into some helpful contemplations, and I hope that it may be of some interest to the readers. Be well, be happy, and remember that you are fine, just as you are, and made of love.

Love and blessings,

Julie

RJ : Thanks for this interview Julie!

Address mail-artist:

Julie Hagan Bloch,
51 Mongaup Road,
Hurleyville
NY 12747-5406
USA

e-mail : blochprint@zelacom.com

Mail-Interview with E.F. Higgins - III - USA

2006-10-10T11:55:00.000-07:00

cover of the hard-copy version of the mail-interview

Mail-Interview with E.F. Higgins - III - USA

2006-10-10T11:53:00.000-07:00

THE MAIL-INTERVIEW WITH E.F HIGGINS - III

Started on: 16-05-1995

RJ :Welcome to this mail-interview. First let me ask you the traditional question. When did you get involved in the mail-art network?

Reply on: 15-9-95

EFH:Thanks for the invite to the interview. I haven't been doing much international mail art for a number of years, due to the postal rates, & I was spending US$ 700 a year on postage there for a while. To answer your question, I got involved in the mail art network about 1975-'76. At the Univesity of Colorado, I was working with paintings & printmaking, working from "2-D" objects as my models. Posters, Postcards, Play money, Stamps, envelopes, etc. I produced the first sheet of Doo Da art stamps in 1975. Right around that time a visiting artist. Edwin Golik Golikoff, a N.Y. Artist, living in Denver, told me about mail art, Buster Cleveland, Ray Johnson, Anna Banana, etc. I started mailing the stamps, collages etc. around then.

RJ :What were the first reactions of the people you started to mail your works to?

Reply on 5-10-1995

EFH:That would be hard to figure, as I wasn't there, when they got their mail. Mail art is neither a wrapped gift to a friend at their birthday Party, nor a Rauschenburg, in a show, in a Museum, in a collection, reproduced in an Art Business Magazine, commented about by "Art Critics" etc. etc.

Judging from the responses, from other artists, through the mails, some of my stuff must have interested some to respond. The many different mail artists' correspondances revealed the miraid various influences affecting these artists. Golikoff used a typewriter, & puns in many of his letters & postcards. Ray Johnson, his grey copies of drawings, gosip, & puns. His
surreal puns, sometimes understood. Concrete poetry, newspaper & picture collage, pornography, manifestos, self-documentation, self- historification, self-promotion, were some of the things sent, received, & seen in mail art show catalogues.

One of these things were stamps; on the letters from real countries, artists stamps, & rubber stamps. Due to my background interest, I gravitated to corresponding, with these concerns, to other artists & shows having this as a format or main idea. The 1975 Show of Artist Stamps at Simon Frazier university, B.C., Canada, organized by Jas. W. Fetler, visually introduced
me to the world of the following artists from that show: Pat Tavenner, Joel Smith, Donald Evans, Ken Friedman, Robert Watts, Bernd Lobach, Endre Tot, Klaus Burkhardt, Carl Camu, Dieter Roth, George Ashley, & Ad Varney of the Coach House Press.

I was a painter & printmaker, and carried these diciplines into my mail art activity, most notably, Painting Doo Da Stamps. Often these 16" x 18" paintings were photographically reduced, and printed as sheets of stamps with the color copier, perforated, & used in mail art. As a printmaker in the traditional methods, the color copier was an explosive discovery to me.
No longer did time & money restricted the imagery, edition, distribution etc. To spend 2 hours each pulling an edition of Etchings, tends to discourage mailing off a dozen or so to friends, and push one more into the $ Art Gallery system.

RJ :I can understand the influence of a color copier. Some choose for a large color copy, but it seems you like to reduce your works to even smaller pieces, into artistamps. Why is this artistamp so interesting for you?

Reply on 17-10-1995

EFH:To color copy print from a large un-related artwork, such as a painting, sculpture, etc. , as an edition print seems silly exept as documentation, doing huge injustice to both the original medium & the traditional printing process. Picasso may have done a series of etchings
based on his painting "Guernica", but the prints intrinsic method, process,
look, have more to do with these concerns, than reproducing the painting. He didn't print 300 color copy prints of a photo of the painting.

When Warhol painted a 12 ft. square "Hammer & Sycle", "Deaths Head", or whatever, he probably had a pretty good idea it would "Read" when reproduced, 4 inches by four inches in some art magazine. Hireonimus Bosch probably didn't have this thought occur to him... check it out. Photography has changed the making of art, & definately Art & Business. Wouldn't a 12" x 12" Warhol have sufficed?

When I paint the Doo Da Stamp Paintings, it is understood by me that they are ment to be used to make stamps. The lettering is there, the 3P or what- ever denomination is there. It isn't, in most cases, added later. Hence, the painting becomes, what traditionally was known as a rough sketch, ie, a creative work done in the process to achieve the invisioned final "Work". To delegate painting to this role, "making color copy artstamps", turns tradition on its head, & really pisses off the Art Gallery system.

If creativity, through a process, isn't TRANSFORMED BY THAT PROCESS, it is hardly creative in my opinion. A photo, slide, or color copy may be functional, helpful, or useful in describing another artwork, but unless it is transformed, it's work$job.

ARTISTAMPS, like their traditional cousins, "Govn't minted miniature prints", share significant similarities - the main one being, I think, the imagry on them, ie "relating to the people, lands, ideas, nature, accomplishments, celebrations, religions, etc. of the country." The
correspondence carried by the regular stamps, becomes the correspondance, carried by the Artistamps in mail art, that joious dance of the muses amongst us.

How wonderful to have perhaps correspondanced with a guy from the "country" of Gauguin, Cavellini apparently correspondanced with some amazing "countries" to hear him tell it!!!

What kind of artstamps would a "country" of Picasso have produced?, & my!, wouldn't that have been fun.!!!?

The "COUNTRIES" of TUI-TUI, Blurr, BANANA, TRIANGLE, JOKI, & NETLAND, to name a few, are alive & well!!! By in large, unlike the Govn't issues, these countries have the continuity of one or two creative beings in charge of the postal issues for many, many years.

If you ever got a letter from someone in a different country, the stamps, & rubber stamp cancellation marks were a wonderful part of getting that letter. Sometimes their correspondence to you reflected the stamp imagery or not. Artistamps on mail art is a BEAUTY!

I have seen wonderful stamps from countries I may never visit - some even
with that country's art I may never see. With artistamps, the ART VISITS
YOU, not you visiting the museum! I am not against travel or museums,
actually, I love both, but to have these "COUNTRIES" visit YOU,
sometimes unexpectedly, is a treat!!!

P.S. During construction work, that I do to make a living, when somebody screws-up, I put two things to them: #1 "There's 4 things you gotta remember if you want to be a plumber:

(1) "H" stands for hot.
(2) "C" stands for cold.
(3) Friday's payday,
(4) & SHIT DON'T RUN UP-HILL.

The other thing I put to them is more insideous. After they've escaped a major disaster, for themselves, as well as others on the job, I ask 'em, "HEY! WHO PAYS YOU????? & before they can answer, I yell in their face, "SAFETY PAYS!!!

Not too long ago, here in America, some young kid burned down the house, a trailer actually, having learned fire is lighters & fun from some cartoon character named Bevis & Butthead. And now, to legally sell lighters here in Amreica, they have to be "Child-Proof". The only swear
word or obscenity I ever heard my father utter, in 50 years, was ___________, as he was teaching me power tools when I was, .... oh, maybe 13 or 14 years old, when he nearly cut off his finger.

RJ :Are there other stories of your childhood that have had an impact on your the art you produce nowadays?

Reply on 14-11-1995

EFH:Stories? ...?

RJ :Ah...

EFH:Well, there once was a gal from Nantucket...

RJ :Actually, influences.... were there any other significant ...

EFH:Oh, ... you mean like stuff places, & people?

RJ :Yea.

EFH:I suppose, in everyones' life, there's things to remember; if you asked anyone else, they'd say something like, "What?", even if they knew them very well, when they heard the reply. When I meet people in bars, I tell 'em: "I'm 59 years old." I think I've been doing this for the last 10 years or so.

As a youngster, growing up in a small town outside of Chicago, I had the good luck, or some may say, the "IMPRINTING" (like you see the T.V. show showing you how to have the young condors learn the wild, by eating raw meat from a puppet hand, that looks like a (they suppose) adult), to learn many things.

Probably, if anybody's still around, from back then, they'd tell you a
different story, than what'd you figure from .. say the writings of Jules
Verne, Lewis Carrol or Edgar Allen Poe. "So the guy sez to me in a bar in Kankakee, Ill. , he was out of work or something...., 'apparently this guy breaks into the PICASSO museum ... didn't like a painting, or sumptin',,,,& PAINTS OVER A PART OF IT!!!!!!!..' "so the story goes,";&
Picasso himself was in town, or sumptin'....& they get him out there for insurance purposes, you know, to assertain the damage, & whadda think he sez... you know, after looking at it and all...??? 'I look into the distance, trying to figure what the pablo might have'a said, as I looked him up & down, figuring iz this guy crazy or can he buy me another beer, when he says something....'

You mean that kind of story?

RJ :What's Picasso say?

EFH:Well, He looked at the "Damage, & pulling at his jaw, said "Not Bad."

RJ :"Did he actually..."

EFH:"Oh, Not that story...... O.K. , Hello Buster, to assume a painter, Stamp maker, or what-ever didn't used to have some fun at writing would be to deny Claes Oldenbug & all of Chicago humor.

Here's the thing: Since RJ asked the question about other stories of my childhood, "that have had an impact... etc....", I have invented his "dialogue" or return questions. I don't have a computer or e-mail....& have been corresponding with a young cartoonist that..... He does the drawing. I'll do the story line. Met 'em on the train from Chicago to GRAND CENTRAL.

So, If RJ decides to run this part of the interview, please understand, we didn't just send mail to undrstand one short word... Sometimes people talk like that. Ruud, my apologies.

Trying not to get side-tracked, on the interview, but it depends on how you're traveling, & but, anyway, we all gotta stop for eats, piss & Clear Stars.

THE ASS HOLE MUST THINK HE'S A WRITER Chapter 2 , Hemmings' typist gor $25. Bucks a page (back then)

Well, enough of my....a....ah....., well, anyway, if this is supposed to be about Artistamps , or mail art, ....here's a reply from Joel Smith, from Illinois, Illinoise. (One of the best, in my opinion, that makes Art Stamps).

(E.F. Higgins included a copy with a small text about Joel Smith's Artistamps where is explained shortly how he makes them and motivated why....)

RJ :What do you think is important enough that I should ask you? Don't start to think too much, just figure out what you think I should know, and than give the answer.......

(After some silence I first received a postcard from E.F. Higgins, and a bit later his answer with in the envelope also some of his new artistamps).

Reply on 4-3-1996

EFH:Art. At some point, in the development of human beings, we noticed our ability to control our bodies. At first this was mostly useful, to survive. & reproduce. At this early stage, was the start of many future developments, that chrystalized for thousands of years, to get to the point
of drawing bison on cave walls.

The brain was developing also. Cause & Effect. We get together to chip the flint this way, (the 'ol guy said so), tie the gut rope, such way on the wood (tree-part), & we stick into the big eatable-thing.

28 years old, was OLD. GrandPaw,.....maybe.

And so they persevered. These Humanoids. With their brain growing, their skills developing, & & The strongest leader, always led. But, DRAWING the sticking on the wall!!!! WOW What is that?

Apparently, or maybe, the early OLD, (previously BIG STRONG) learned
how to run a crew & explain, in whatever "language" they had back then,
how to get the food, & not get dead, on account of getting hooked on one of those nasty tusks.

Survival instincts have thousands of years over religions, Philosophy, & Art. Somewhere in there, as we tribes got bigger, needing a sort of Organization, Heireicy happened again. And what do you suppose they used as an argument:? "Doesn't matter, BOB, you usta be good on the
hunt, These drawings, & (& I admit) along with these guys decide you don't know what you're doing." .... & besides,......

Did that cave drawer get amazed at his or her DRAWING, or do you
suppose it was a survival instinct? And today, Here in 1996, I wonder who's doing what for what reason.

Back to you R.J.

RJ :What are YOU doing EFH? (to make it easy, what did you do today?)

(On 12-3-1996 I received an envelope from E.F. Higgins with in it two artistamps with an envelope on them with the text "Artist Creative, Originator, Genius, Hommage a Ray - Mail Art". No letter was included, and the envelope the artistamps were sent in was one of the special stamped envelopes I normally use to send my answers/questions in. The envelope was decorated in the typical style of Higgins with artistamps and rubberstamps.)

RJ :How way you correspondance with Ray?

Reply on 30-3-1996

EFH:Kennedy had been shot. I may have been young, but I wasn't old. Yesterday I thought of askingpeople that write me to send me a batch of stickers or address labels because it seems to take so long to walk around & look up their addresses, after figuring where I put it.

The knees ain't what they used to be. Like most 59 year old men, other than the normal regrets, Ray's Death bothered me. Kennedy's death bothered me in a younger way...Then. I was 25 when my 21 year old brother died, of the bends, working on a oil-rig off Bankock. The T.V. says
americans go there to get young sex, & maybe get AIDS. This was before that. & thats that. This is what?

Somewhere in there Bukowski refused to bowl with the Midgets, & I howled it last saturday in SOHO, N.Y.C., where all the Art Galleries have turned into womens shoe shops, and Harry was good news: two things:

Couple thou for one of his big Paintings, & the other guy traded him a Jean Michael Basquait.... Buster 'n I used to lend him a buck now & then years ago, when we would sit out on the corner of West-Broadway & Spring St,'s & he was spray painting his poetry.

I have been reading up on computers. Wow! The best way to bowl is get some salad, beers, warm weather, & try your best as you remember saturday mornings in the midwest in the junior bowling league. Remember the bigness of the place. Head high pin-ball machines. DON'T DROP IT! & don't touch those! swimming lessons. The Balanger Brothers stealing
those maybe same balls years later to drop them on cemi's... off the overpass. I-94.. Or maybe it was ol 66. Joliet, Illinois inmates make liecense Plates for the cars. No state has anything about bowling on their Liescence Plates. What does it say on the plates of the country of Doo Da?
It's a small country

(Here was printed the stamp of Higgins mentioning: "The country of DooDa is 12 feet in any direction from where Higgins is, at any given time.")

& then the girls get there, bringing out the salad, as we're drinking beer, turning over the hamburgers, the new one hours later, sang a better Hank than Hank Williams. & No she wasn't wearing a poka dot dress, but when I went into the kitchen, to see how she'd do on the ice-cube thing, they had the T.V. on, & I noticed how the guys that got strikes, had a Right handed
kind of glove, & aimed at the right side of the lane way down there, & they gave it a right handed twist, so's it would look like it's almost ginna get in the gutter, & then would come back, & BOOM!!! hit the #1 ball at about 5:23 (O'Clock)

I don't know where to begin. Fortunately, thats taken care of. Many stories have the average person. But how to end it? I for one don't believe for a minute, Ray jumped into that River. But as we say in Hollywood, But will it make Mney$$$????????

If this interview (to the reader) seems a bit disjointed, it's because the
obstinanstance of mailed Q. & A through the mails: When the Galantois
where here, we goofed around with a power tool called a "Router". We had
great fun drawing on wood with this machine. What it does, this machine,
is carve into wood, at 32,000 R.P.M. to facilitate WOOD Prints, on such,
usuallly non-traditional materials as Plywood. Man!, you can ink it up with
a hard rubber roller, & Print on anything, & I wonder if it will wear out
faster than them Copper Plates that Rembrandt worked on.

Back when I was in Highschool, I had a Professor, by the name of Dr.
Eastwood, encouraged me in the creative writing, since then, I've more
gone into the Visuals, than the writing.

(Perhaps it shows!)

Creativity is a wondermunt!... It should definately be encouraged. The IDEA is not a few, well distributed images or Poems, to Fakely tell somebody, that they're better than anybody else.

OK Here's the Story:

" Diego Rievera, Esher, & Wan Gris walk into this bar in Kankakee, Illinois, (U.S.A.), they have cartoons playing on the T.V.. Diego Rievera brought with him a $100.00 painting of some sort of a Gun-fight, he'd got at the antique shop. Esher was trying to buy schnopps for the bar, as I put
in Two bucks worth of Hank on the Juke, trying to remember where I put the Halstead line.....

Written interviews to Creative Genieuses tend to look like this in print.

RJ :Any more news about the country of DOO DA? Do they use firecrackers there?

Reply on 1-6-1996

EFH:Dear RJ: When I was a child, there was a Museum called the "Knight". It was somewhere in Chicago & had a pile of chains, stacked up out in front. The size of the links were about 3 feet, and this was from the Civil War era, used, they said or remembered them saying, "Used to shut
the port of Charleston.... had it across the RIVER!!!... no ships could come in or out!"

Inside were neat suits of armor, & miniture little diarammas, similar to what you might see at the N.Y.C. Museums' of Natural history, depicting say something, like... eskimo villages, or early American Indians in their Long-Houses, with part of the little roofs cut away so you could see in, except these diaramas showed people impaled on sharpened trunk-roots on living trees.... & as I remember, the scale was about the same, but I was smaller back then, & only seen the Teddy Roosevelt/Indian statue after I got there.

But I disgress, ....You asked about Doo Da, & If we use firecrackers here.

Firecrackers, traditionally are used to CELEBRATE. The spirit of
Independence & all that. Gunpowder, attributed to being invented by the
Chinese, before Marco Polo went there, was modifided within the last
century to give off more of a silver Bang, than a KA-BOOM, when used in
the aformentioned, "Firecrackers".

The "KA-BOOM" fork in the road has certantly been traveled by not only
them guys inventing "C-4", Clamore, &assorted other Big Booms, but
apparently the Uni-Bomber, several major Govn'ts, & a whole host of
greedy "El Ka-Boomers!!!" This is not "FIRECRACKERS", as we have
come to know & love the celebration. Thomas Pane, or the guy that wrote
the other things other than Gullivers Travels, ...what was his name...? 1
Tom Jefferson. Or maybe you were 12 years old, & you had a friend, name
of Jonnie Vance, with a brother that was astationed down in Georgia, &
you made a list, & saved up your Paper-route money to get some Lady-
Fingers, Bottle-Rockets, & some "16's".

I was 14, she was 13. I told her I'd been shot in a gang war. It was at
Chicago beach. I still had the bandage on my right arm, & couldn't get it
wet..... I peeked the white, plastic to show her the 32 black stitches & she
was duely impressed. She had the most beautiful Blue-Green eyes & not so
bad looking in her swim-suit, that I'd seen in days!!!!! (Hard Drive on the
Typing fingers today after, once again, becoming,... THE TILE MAN)!!!!!

When the Doctor stitched me up, he asked "Doorknob?". "Empty CO2" I
said.

"Gorgonzola!!!" I initially said, looking at the Blue Cheese Brand
Firecracker Painting. stacked against the Perforator, "Stilton!!!" I thought
loudly to myself, somewhat pleased.

"When we were kids," the doc said, "we used to do doorknobs."

Later, I found out that, he & his gang were making firecrackers, out of
matchheads. (Look it up on the Internet). But I swear to you, the guy I
talked to, kinda kreepy, Ya know? come to my Painting Show at the "X
OXO" Gallery, didn't get the idea from me..... Hells Bells, ......Midwest
farmers been making trout ponds for years.... WATER IN, WATER OUT.

"The Stream Runs Trou!" (Ray Kelly & the Rivington School)

I've been doing this stuff for years long enough, to respect, when it says on
the lable, "THIN SET-MORTER MIX". (¬ contains PORTLAND
CEMENT) I try not to use my hands that are rapidly turning into gravel-
scoops, as the mixer-things. I left the hand lotion on the job day before
yesterday, & was amazed it wasn't home, after a prefuntctory clean-up. I
told them, if they want to use some you're welcome, but, I'm taking it
home, 'cause yesterday, I missed it.

I am working this job to save up money to get a computer. All winter I
didn't feel like painting, I didn't deal much cards, I was as they say
HIBERNATING. The guy I'm working for, 's 26....he said he'd been
watching T.V. all winter & ......

We're working on 42nd St/10-11th sts. Avenues. I'm supposed to be there
tomorrow in 3 hours. If they fire me, who they gonna get?

It's the Theatre district, Film. (Till this job, haven't been there in
years.....& WOW.... will ya look at what they're trying to do! "What'd he
say?"

THE IDEA BEING CELEBRATION of the use of Firecrackers in the
country of Doo Da. Something for the kids... Legal! Ah, but it's all now
well so compartmentalized. "AH, don't worry about that!...Let the experts
handle it. Like Dan Rather experting on the NEWS? Like Phil Donahue
experting on United Statesers too much fat time, & interest in
Perversions? "Look," I'm gonna say to my kids someday, I hope, "That's
horsemanure... the reason it don't smell's they eat grain. Mix it with that
leaf stuff. (& later) Now this batch is what the tomatoes eat!....got that?
Put a batch of it in that old tire, set it in a sunny place, & we're gonna grow
some of the best tasting tomatoes (with appologies to Dan Quale) you ever
had."

Celebration is not every night. When rare becomes normal, then what do
they want. Travelers would bring back strange & un-usual things. Probably
from indigenous peoples & some of their stuff or/the food.

With mail art, in the Raw, artists are exposed to these images, ideas, &
thoughts poems directly. If we can't, do you think the Normal can? & lets
get the ambassadors not appointed by political connections or
contributions, but... hey, we are the ambassadors! SEND WHAT YOU
WANT.! People without a culture are more apt to....

Ruud, how long you wanna go on with this thing? This kid I met on the
train from Chicago, I'm working on the second "Mc" detective thing, sent
him 7 pages, & we haven't got him to Australia yet, but he called today,
saying maybe it's O.K. If the comic book goes a little long...... Said it was
probably right he didn't send the 50 Bucks till I finished the story, but he
just got out of school, & was starting on the picture part.

RJ :O.K. I can understand the hint. I will rap up this interview now and see
how it would fit in a printed booklet. Unless there was something I really
frogot to ask you?

reply on 23-8-1996

EFH:How about "How's the Fishin'?" Just got back from my cousins
wedding out west & saw batches of Kids, all related to me, went to a day of
Poderosa Ranch & Trout fishing. Kids are great. My Hat's off to Pawel
Petaz, C.T. Chew, Ed Varney, Pat Beilman, Anna banana & All the rest of
'em (stamp artists) that keep at it in the face of this wonderment. That's
the Art.

Address mail-artist:

Edward F. HIGGINS III
DOO DA POST
153 LUDLOW Apt.#6
New York , NY 10002-2229
U.S.A.

Mail Interview with Clemente Padin

2006-10-10T11:50:00.000-07:00

THE MAIL-INTERVIEW WITH CLEMENTE PADIN

This interview was done in the period December 1994 till March 1996 by
mail. During the interview Clemente Padin from Uruguay also got
hooked up to the internet as well.

This is the e-mail version of the interview. There is a hardcopy as well
which also contains some illustrations. For more info on this and on the
interview-project in general you can contact me at the address below the interview

THE MAIL-INTERVIEW WITH CLEMENTE PADIN

Started on: 3-12-1994

RJ : Welcome to this mail-interview. First let me ask you the traditional
question. When did you get involved in the mail-art network?

Reply on: 31-12-1994

CP : My first experiences in Mail Art date from 1967 when with my
latin-american friends Edgardo Antonio Vigo, Guillermo Deisler and
D maso Ogaz we started to exchange our reviews : Diagonal Cero ,
Ediciones Mimbre , La Pata de Palo & Los Huevos del Plata ( Diagonal
Zero , Osier Editions , Leg of Wood and The Eggs of the Silver ) and
our mail-art works. The Uruguayan review OVUM 10 published 6 post-
cards with my visual poems in 1969. Later, in 1974, during the
Uruguayan military dictatorship, I organized the First Latin-American
Mail Art Exposition documented at the Gallery U, in Montevideo and I
was editing the second epoch of OVUM, about which G‚za Perneczky
says: "The periodical and private publications that had midwifed in the
birth of the network ( File of Canada, the American Weekly Breeder
and Mail Order Art , Poland's NET , Padin's OVUM , etc ) displayed, to
different degrees, motives that emphasizes the need for social contacts
or were based on more commercial interests." (A Halo, 1991, p.232).
After the history continues...

(Clemente Padin typed his answer and made under the text a collage
with some artistamps with texts like "Junio 1973" , "Zona Militar" , "Ay")

RJ : The mail-art I have seen from you mostly has a political meaning as
well. Did mail art have an effect on the political situation?

Reply on : 21-01-1995

CP : I am not sure but in my personal case the answer is: YES! You
know, I was imprisoned for the Uruguayan dictatorship the 25th August,
1977 for my opposition to the military government. An edition of
rubber-stamps and false mail-stamps denouncing the suppression of
human rights and the death, torture and disappearance of many people
opposite to the regimen led my incarceration and the sentence by four
years for "transgression that hurt the moral and reputation of the army".
Also, for organizing the Counter-Biennal in front of the latinoamarican
section of the X Biennal of Paris, France, curated by the Director of the
Fine Arts Museum of Uruguay, in the fall on 1977. But an intense and
supported mobilization of hundred and hundred of artists in the whole
world freed me after only two years and three months!

Mail art (and the network) could have effect in the social-political
situation because it is a product of the human work and reflects and
reproduces the social relations. Like artistic product is specificly art,
with a value in the market interchangeable by money (in our concept
the value is high but the price or its expression in money is
contemptible for the merchants). Like product of communication, mail
art is inseparable part of the social production and it can not leave to
express the reality but symbolically. Thus, mail art is a subliminal form
of social conscience and an instrument of knowledge (like science). So,
also, it can be a tool of change (or status's legitimation) and
transformation (or retrocession).

RJ : You call mail art 'an instrument of knowledge'. After so many
years of doing mail art, how would you describe the things you learned
from the network? What does the network bring that you could not have
learned in any other way?

Reply on : 14-2-1995

CP : First, it is an instrument of knowledge of myself. And the others.
After, there are many things that you can learn by personal experience
through networking. Network (and art) discovers dark and secret zones
of our spirit an existence. Also, it brought us to understand the
entangled of our present world. By means of networking we have
learned what things like solidarity and true friendship are. Sometimes
we can question and change indesirable reality. Only by networking the
people know all the possibilities of the new instruments of
communication that technology have putted in their hands. On the other
side, art and network have discussed and anticipated the scientific
knowledges like impressionists that discovered the corpuscular nature
of light. It happens because artists that experiment with artistical
supports or new instruments of communication also discover its
structure and physical properties.

RJ : Can you give some examples of 'new instruments of communication'
that you have worked with?

(On February 23th Clemente sent out his first E-mail message, which I
read on February 25th. It was not an text-answer, but in a way an answer
to my last question. Clemente has entered the Internet too. I sent him
an E-mail reply to confirm arrival of his message and wrote to him that
he could sent his next answer by E-mail too).

Reply on : 11-3-1995

CP : By a side the new instruments of communication work like tools of
inscription: pencil, brush, chisel, etc. By other side they use different
supports like paper, frame, painting, wood, books, etc. Now for the
inscripts we use the scanner of the P.C. and like support of the
Facsimile or the P.C. sconce or the modem. Before we use air or sea
mail for communication between us. Now, we use the electronic space.
Before we sent objects, post-cards, envelopes, letters, DIN A4, etc. Now
we transmit electronic impulses and, in the near future, R-laser.

We know that the works are altered by the medium, because each
medium has its own in-put and out-put, id est, its own codes of entrance
and exit, included its own channel of transmission. All these items
integrate the form of expression that determinate the form of contents
inevitably. If you obtain a competent expression to a peculiar content,
using the new instruments of communication, perhaps you gain an
artistical message. Personally I have used fax and through a job-friend
I'm trying to use E-mail. Also "new instruments of communication"
involve all the last discoveries of the graphic industries.

RJ : Can you tell me a bit more about your first experiences with E-
mail. To make the question more concrete I will send this question by
E-mail and by the traditional mail on the same day.

Reply on : 2-4-1995 (by Internet) , 4-4-1995 (by snail-mail)

CP : A friend, from AEBU, is an associate of a database called
"Chasque" and he consents the use of his e-mail to me. Finally,
February 23th 1995, I did my first e-mail communication to Chuck
Welch, Fagagaga, Reid Wood, Harry Polkinhorn and you. After Ashley
Parker Owens sent me the e-mail directory from Global Mail. I also
connected with Abelardo Mena from de Banco de Ideas Z de Cuba. In
Uruguay there are only three e-mail services connected with Internet:
the Republic University; URUPAC, a public institution belongs to the
official telephonic service and RED CHASQUE ("chasque" is the ancien
and primitive communication system between the latino american first
people) depending of the private institution: the Third World Institute.

The first communication by Internet in Uruguay was the August 23th
1994, to the SECIU (Informatic Centre Service of the Republic
University). You see, we are too young! The costs for transmission in
minimum between 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. and for nothing between 10 p.m. to
7 a.m. A Kilobyte received costs one cent and each kilobyte sent costs
five cents of a dollar, but you must add the cost of the CHASQUE
subscription. The first world sells us the computer technology, but also
the rules of its use.

RJ : In 1986 you and others proposed the constitution of a Universal
Federation of Mail Artists (see MA-Congress 86, edited by G. Ruch,
page 50). Some years later I invented the International Union of Mail-
Artists, as a fake union in which everybody could take his own role (see
IUOMA-magazine, june 1991). Do you think that there should be some
real organization for mail-artists or would it undermine the whole game
of mail-art in which there are no written rules?

Reply on : 9-5-1995 (internet)

CP: The Institutions are born when they are necessary. Mail Art doesn't
need Federations or Syndicates for to act but the mail-artists need
institutions in particular situations of their lives.

Near 1986, almost all Latino america went out of dictatorships and we
need to defend our rights. The unity of people was essential for to
consolidate the reconquered liberty. Our Universal Federation of Mail
Artists was defined itself "by the principle of freedom, justice and social
solidarity" and was pronounced for "the respect of the human rights and
for economy political according to the social interest". Also it proposed
lines programmatic action for to defend the interests of the mail- artists
in front of private and public institutions. Like you have said, Mail Art
doesn't need rules and, if you read the text in MA-Congress 86, our
proposal didn't impose ones. Only it just joined efforts to struggle for
our dignity, first like humans and second like artists.

RJ : Currently you are very busy with the mail-art project: "Jose Marti:
100th Anniversary" with an exposition for AEBU. Why did you start this
project?

Reply on 11-6-1995 (E-mail) 15-06-1995 (snail-mail)

CP: If you see, all my mail-art projects regard these considerations: join
the people to struggle for their rights and demand situations
political-economics that permit us a peaceful life. It is the case of the
"Jose Martu, 100 Anniversary". He died liberating his country, Cuba,
and he died raising the flags of solidarity and equality between men.
Those are not only words. He really sacrificed his life for our rights.
Not only he struggled against the spanish and north-american
colonialism but, also for the elemental human rights, like to love, to
eat, to work, to sleep, to be restored to health, to have two square
meters of land for to be buried on, to have a roof ... don't have to
struggle for the food with the rats like more of the half of the latino-
american population. Jose Marti is not dead and never will he rest
while there was anybody hungry on the world.

RJ : Is the project a succes? Did the mail-artists who contributed to the
project understand what it was about?

Reply on 28-7-1995

CP : Almost all networkers that have participated in the Mart¡'s homage
have understood his thought. For many people to convoke a mail art
show over Jos‚ Mart¡ was a surprise and also an anachronism because
the network don't exalt the individualism neither the official history
(always placed in hands of those who have the power). But to talk about
Mart¡ is not to talk about the past or the individual person but the
heroic fighting for the liberty and dignity of the peoples, like him, 100
years old before.

To talk about Mart¡ is not to talk about Cuba or "Our America" (as he
called America Latina) but the whole world, there where there is an
outcast or a starving man for bread and justice. I have rather chosen to
evoke his gigantic figure in these critical instances for his small mother
country and people, arbitrarily and unilaterally blockaded since decades
by the largest economic and military power of all the times, as well as in
these instances of sharp crises in our Latin America, where
underdevelopment and neo-liberalism oblige to more than a half of our
population to infraconsume and hungry.

I like his maxim "Doing is the better way of saying", leaving to the
rhetoric of words and symbols its mere role of being the frame of the
action. During all his life Mart¡ proclaimed his humanist thought and
cultivated the essential values of life: equality, dignity and fortitude
before difficulties, the total offering to just causes, love to his people
and liberty, thirst of justice that admits no bribery. And network has
understood it in this way, supporting this initiative in a great number
with the participation of 315 networkers from 38 countries.

RJ : How do the Postal Offices in Uruguay look at mail-art nowadays. Is
it different compared to the times you started?

Reply on 20-8-1995

CP : Yes, it is different. In 1967, when I started with mail art and when
I was editing "Los Huevos del Plata", generational uruguayan review,
the post was costly. Nowadays, it is the same as in the countries of the
First World. Also, we have the SAL service, more cheap but slow. I have
a post office box that costs US$ 40,- each year.

In jail I knew the President of the Postal Union. He told me that in the
Uruguayan Post Office there are always police investigators (civil
policemen). He was imprisoned ten years under dictatorship because he
was the employers representative (!). Now, I do not know if there are
investigators but we know that the repressive apparatus from
dictatorship was not removed in Uruguay.

RJ : In all the years you have been active in mail art you must have
received a lot. Do you keep it all? How does your archive look like?

Reply on 13-9-1995

(by separate mail I received the beautiful catalog of the Marti's
exhibition with a large list of all the participants and some samples of
contributions)

CP : In fact my first archive was formed by visual poetry since 1967.
Remember that the visual poetry exhibitions in Latino American (that
we called "New Poetry") first were shown in Argentina by Edgardo
Antonio Vigo in 1967, and after, in Uruguay, in 1968 by me. All these
works from more than 400 poets (fonics, visuals, process-poets, etc.)
were exhibited in the "Exhaustive International New Poetry Exposition",
at the Gallery U in Montevideo, Uruguay, 1972. After I packed it for an
exhibition at the Fine Arts Museum of Santiago, Chile, directed by
Nemesio Ant£nez.

The ten wood-boxes with all the works were sent to the Chilean
Embassy in Montevideo, in September 1973. But one month later, there
was the Pinochet's state-stroke and I couldn't return to the Chilean
Embassy because we had our own dictatorship in Uruguay and I was
afraid for my freedom. So I lost my visual poetry archive. After my first
mail art show in the exterior (the "Image Bank Post Card Show",
Vancouver, Canada, 1971, and the well known "Omaha Flow Systems",
Omaha, USA, 1973, by Ken Friedman) I began to organize the "Festival
de la Postal Creativa" ("Creative Post-Card Festival") in 1974 and I re-
organized my archive. But, when I was imprisoned by Uruguayan
dictatorship in 1977 I lost 20 suitcases with all the works and
correspondence; letters and cards from Beuys, Ulrichs, Higgins,
Friedman, Albrecht/D, Blaine, Carri¢n, Sarenco, Groh, Gappmayrs,
Tilson, Dowd, Deisler, Zabala, Vigo, Ben, Garnier, Moineau, Filliou,
Urban, Xerra, Jandl, Plant, Atchley, Davi, Det Hompson, Crozier,
Nannuci, Miccini, Spatola, Gerz, Nichol, Arias-Misson, Kooman,
Meltzer, Ockerse, Cook, Toth, Beltrametti, Ehrenberg, Varney, etc.,
etc.

After that, from 1983, whet I was re-born to art and life, I organized
the "May 1st., Workers-Day" at AEBU, Montevideo and many other
shows about freedom to Chile, Panam , Paraguay, Nicaragua, against
apartheid and United States Interventions, etc. All these exhibitions
were donated to the social institutes that had sponsored them, like the
"Uruguayan Association for Mandela's Freedom", etc. par example, the
Jos‚ Mart¡: 100th Anniversary" that I curated in this year was donated
to the "Americans' House" of Cuba, because Jos‚ Mart¡ was the Cuban
National Hero. And so.....

Now, I am cataloguing and placing anything that I receive. My archive
is stored in suitcases and is available for viewing and studying to all
people. Also, I'm preparing slides and documentation for my periodical
statements and conferences. In the future, I wait till somebody
transforms my archive in a Latino American Networking Space for to
preserve the memory of these years, so much rich and actives.

RJ : After so many years of doing mail art, do you see any changes that
have appeared in the network over the years?

Reply on 1-11-95

CP : Sure! Mail never stops, always it is transforming. First, the
beginning with Ray Johnson in the mid. 1960s with the sendings to his
friends and the foundation of the New York Correspondence School.
After the apparition of the first lists of mail artists by the action of Ken
Friedman and others. The political and social situation of countries of
the Third World and East Europe propitiate the birth of the network
like an artistical resource for to surpass the isolation and the
institutional arbitrariness through communication and interactivity
toward freedom and dignified life. This part was studied exhaustively by
G‚za Perneczky in his book "A Hal¢". We read: "Accordingly, the
network started to expend around the year 1972 through the almost
simultaneous emergence of the Image Bank in Canada, the File
magazine and other pioneering experiments with international lists of
addresses that involved the Polish Koksal Gallery, a couple of Czech
artists and Clemente Padin of Uruguay."

More later the new media increase extraordinarily the connections and
the participants in network was more and more. Also the fall of the
Berlin's wall and the incorporation of new countries in mail art did
that, today, there are hundreds and hundreds of exhibitions each year
and the networkers sum thousands and thousands in all the world.

Now, we assit to the inclusion of the fax and e-mail increasing the
interactivity between networkers and, also, to the growing
mercantilization and institutionalization of the mail art. Money and
mail art don't mix: precisely, the force of the network lies in this norm.
The theme is to maintain art in the area of use, and not in the area of
the market or change. By now network only has value. It has not a price
with search for profit or lucre, out of its social function like the market
art.

RJ : I have noticed that some mail artists that are in the network for a
longer time, build their own "correspondence school" and don't always
react to newcomers who try to contact them. One reason is of course
time and money, but another is that they get tired of explaining again
and again the concept of mail art and rather just play the game with old
friends. Do you ever get tired of explaining what mail art is all about?

Reply on 27-12-1995

CP : (here, a memento for my old chilean friend, Guillermo Deisler,
who died the fall of October 1995 in Halle, Germany).

No, I am not tired of explaining to all what is mail art and networking,
especially to newcomers. They have in their hands the future of these
forms of communication. The change and the transformation of the
Network are absolutely necessaries to preserve the principles of the
eternal communication. When the network stops, it dies and dissapears.
For the newcomers, I have edited a small booklet about latino american
mail art with exhaustive notes about mail art's characteristics and I am
answering all the correspondence that I receive (the money only does
speed up or slow down that process).

So, it is impossible I can build my own "correspondence school" though
I have my old friends, naturally, like Edgardo Antonio Vigo, Graciela
Guti‚rrez, Brusky, C‚sar Espinosa, Klaus Groh, The Barbot's, John
Held, Bill Gaglione, Geoffrey Cook, Blaine, Hamann, Polkinhorn,
Braumuller, Hoffberg and many others.

RJ : The last networker we lost was Guillermo Deisler, as you
mentioned. I also heard this news earlier from Birger Jesch in Germany.
Did you know Guillermo for a long period? How will you remember
him?

Reply on 6-2-1996

CP : Yes, I knew Willy postly from 1967 when we interchanged our
publications "Ediciones Mimbre" and "Los Huevos del Plata" and our
incipient mail art. Personally, I met him in 1971 during the
"International Expo of Propositions to Realize", in the CAYC, Art and
Communication Centre, conducted by Jorge Glusberg. The event was
curated by Edgardo Antonio Vigo. From that moment we were friends
for ever. Guillermo was professor at the Visual Arts Department of the
Chilean University in Antofagasta, a northerly city. During the state-
stroke by Pinochet and the Chilean Army, in 1973, Will and his family
had to escape quickly from their mother country. After a stay in Paris,
with Julien Blaine, they established at Plovdiv, a Bulgarian city and,
later they mover to Halle, Germany, where he died in fall, October
1995.

In my first public opportunity, at the beginning of the V Biennal
International of Visual/Experimental Poetry, curated by C‚sar
Espinosa in Mexico City, from 10th to 20th of January, 1996, I
performed an homage to Guillermo, with a lecture of his poems and
tales about our friendship ( I recorded when Guillermo sent me
Bulgarian official stamps that I bought in Montevideo for financing the
"OVUM's" mail). I ended my performance, called "Willy, for ever..."
showing the video of "Memorial America Latina" (Philadelphia, Penn,
U.S.A., 1989) where it is possible to read, in the portals which closes
the cemetery-memorial: "They have not died, they are sleeping and
dreaming with the freedom". Like Guillermo now.

I am organizing two events in homage to Willy. First: a great exposition
at The Chilean University with his works, in the fall of 1996. I am
asking the network to send me works, letters, postcards, or anything
that is related to him. All the works will be donated to the Chilean
University, and documentation will be sent to all. And second: a mail
art show "Guillermo Deisler, our friend...", without restrictions (no jury,
no return, no size-limits), documentation to all. The deadline for this
will be October 30th 1996. Contributions to both projects can be sent to
my mailing address.

RJ : Well, I guess the interview is coming to an end. Anything you would
like to say while you have the chance?

Reply on 4-3-1996

CP : Sure. Now, we assist to the globalization of the culture of the First
World and the greater expansion of the transnational capitalism. This is
meaning that our old cultures of the Third World are dissapearing
because they are not equipped to defend themselves. If the tolerance
before the multiplicity of focuses and expression possibilities as well as
respect to the personality of the "others" through pluralism (social,
politic, economic, ethnic, religions, cultural, sexual, etc.) are the
irrenounce bases of network, then here is a contradiction between
networking that aspires to the universality of communication and the
small communities, indefensive and fragiles in front of satellites,
computers and modem technology. We know that this signifies the
expansion of a commercial culture (Coke, McDonalds, Disneylands,
etc.) and not most communication and understanding between peoples.
Marketing doesn't care who you are or what your culture is like,
because it wants to make everything everywhere the same for its good
business. How could we resolve this contradiction.

RJ : Well, maybe someone out in the network can comment on that.
Time to finish the interview so others can read your views as well. I
would like to thank you for you time to do this interview, and I wish you
good luck with all your activities.

Address mail-artist:

Clemente Padin,
Casilla de C. Central 1211,
11000 Montevideo,
URUGUAY.
E-mail : juanra@chasque.apc.org

Address interviewer:
Ruud Janssen - TAM
P.O.Box 1055
4801 BB - Breda - HOLLAND
e-mail : r.janssen@iuoma.org

Mail-Interview with John Evans - USA

2006-10-10T11:48:00.000-07:00

THE MAIL-INTERVIEW WITH JOHN EVANS. 69

Started on 11-6-1996

RJ : Welcome to this mail-interview. First let me ask you the traditional question. When did you get involved in the mail-art network?

Reply on 16-1-1997

(John Evan's answer was written on a paper filled with color-tests with ink he made before).

JE : Dear Ruud Janssen. Thanks for inviting me to be interviewed for your project. Sorry that I have been slow in responding. The pile of mail on my desk simply seems to keep growing. I need a secretary - ah wouldn't that be great.

Happy 1997. When is your birthday? As to your question - When did I get involved in Mail/Male Art?

Well it was in 1964 - 33 years ago. WOW! I remember it vividly - I was @ a party on West 10th Street in "the " Village @ HarveySpevaks. It was a hot summer afternoon, and there were these 2 men there - Ray Johnson + Albert Fine who were fascinated by this rather crude tattoo of a knife on my left arm (I got it while in Highschool in Redondo Beach, California). I had no idea who they were, but Ray went off somewhere, and then reappeared on the roof where the party had moved, with a drawing of a knife, which could be a penis - it said "knife" and was signed Ray Johnson. It hangs above this desk. After that I began getting correspondance of the "please add to and send to" variety from both him + Albert. Have really met so many people through this encounter that I lose track - it changed my life, and I am eternally grateful to all concerned. Since Ray died I have been a bit slow in getting to my correspondancing, on + I do try. Do hope this is what you want. Best of love, luck + laughs, @

ps. What ever happened to Sonja van der Burg of Afzet? She always spoke highly of you.

RJ : Dear John Evans, In connection to your questions to me: My birthday is July 29th. What happened to Sonja? She moved to a new address and sent nobody this new address. A way to stop with mail art, and as far as I know she moved to other ways to express herself. I did get her new address from Mark Bloch one year ago, but the letter I sent to her was never replied.

But in this interview I would like to focus on what you have done and experienced in these 33 years. A long time indead. Are you still in contact with most of the mail artists from the 60's and 70's you encountered then?

(Together with my answer I sent John some info's of my latest activities)

next answer on 3-3-1997

JE : Thanks for the package postmarked 22 January. Like the strange creature that you painted on the envelope. Also the account of your trip to San Francisco was a joy to read. It is a great city. Next trip you must come to Daciddy - Nieuw Amsterdam, which is an even greater city. There are a number of mail artists here, but we are not very organized.

As to your question abot being in contact with the mail artists from the 60's & the 70's , many of them have died, or dropped out of the circuit. Those who have died that I know of being Cavellini, Ray Johnson, May Wilson, Pauline Smith, Harvey Spevak, Albert Fine, Mike Belt, Rob Cobugio, Brian Buogac and perhaps Falves Silva of Brasil. There are many who I am still in touch with from that time - Ed Plunkett, Buster Cleveland, Ed Higgins, Mark Bloch, Bill gaglione, Tim Mancusi, Pat Tavenner, Anna Banana, Les Barbot, Carlo Pittore, Walt Evans, Michael Leigh, Art Naphro, Bill Dobbs, Les Oisteame, Geff Hendricks, Sur Rodney Sur, Wally Darnell, Philip van Aver, Jim Klein. There must be others who I am forgetting, but @ my advanced age it is to be expected. Actually as I wrote the above three of my favorites come to mind - Richard C. + Blaster (Al Ackerman) + Wilson.

It is getting late and I must get to bed as I get up @ 5 AM so that I can go to my part time job as a "horticultural technicien". This helps pay the rent, and is only 3 days a week so it is bearable. It entails watering + caring for plants in these Manhattan Towers - a strange, but wonderful garden.

Hope all is well for you. Love, Luck + Laughts @ *

(* this is a lowercase E with a dot, not a symbol for at (@) - my signature)

RJ : The problem is that the computer has problems with "lowercase E with a dot", but then again, it is a machine and not human. This interview seems to get more of a letter-exchange then a set of questions and answers, but I don't mind. Yes, I know that New York is an interesting place to visit. It is on my list of wishes, so who knows what happens.

You mention a lot of mail artists of the beginning period. Are there also newcomers to the mail art network that write to you?

next answer on 28-8-1997

(with his answer John Evans sent me two xeroxes.One xerox was about his upcoming exhibition Invitational '97 - September 10 - October 4. The other copy of a page in the New York Times, about America Off-line; the effects of the e-mail and the explenation that there still is MAIL. His interview-answer was written on a cut-open envelope from Magret A kane with color stains of paint on it).

JE : Thanks for your last missive of which there is no date that I find legible. Your letter actually accompanied me to Redondo Beach, California, where I thought I might have a bit of time to do some Mail art.
Had to go attend my mother's funeral, but did not have any time to do much but deal with family matters. My mother, Alice Sauers Evans , lived to be 91 and had been sick, so her death was expected, but it is always hard to lose one so close. Things went smoothly though.

As I look over the copy of my letter to you I see some blatent omissions from my list. Guy Bleus, who I simple love, being the most outstandingly missed.

Your question, regarding newcomers - there do not seem to be any with the exception of yourself who has been around for awhile, that I am now correspondancing with. C'est la vie.

RJ : You like to work a lot with paper, ink and water-colors, all those things done by hand. What do you think of the things that are produced by computers?

(In March 1998 I heard from Roy Arenella that he met with John Evans at the opening of his new exhibition - Collages & Paintings , 1968-98. I decided to send the last question to John Evans again just in case he lost it. Quite soon after that I got the next answer and als a photo/card in it that Roy sent to John with a portrait photo he made of him).

reply on 11-04-1998

JE : What do I think about computer art? Well I find it to be a valid form of Art. More so than so called "performance" or "Video". Guess I do not like things that make one vegetate. I barely watch videos or TV @ home. Why should I have to go to a gallery or a museum. Some performance art has been really quite wonderful, but I prefer "the" theatre. Computers are like cameras in a way and I love photographs preferably old ones from the 19th century. Can one believe the time? WOW. End of 20th. Strange weather we have been having. Very warm. Have been getting collages from a couple of college students in Brasil. Interesting!

RJ : What makes a collage interesting to you?

(there was a lang pause between the sending of the question and the receiving of the answer. Just before the summer, which I spent in Germany and Greece, I sent John Evans a copy of the last question)

next answer on 19-11-1998

(with John Evans's answer he sent two cards of invitations to exhibitions. One of Collages by Vince Grimaldi - "Man and his world" , and the other one "And I Quote" (dedicated to Buster Cleveland 1943-1998) with also work by John Evans in it. "A very good show!" , John writes on this last card. Something I knew since another person I interview (Roy Arenella) sent a very wonderful review about John's part in the exhibition)

JE : Dear Ruud, Cannot believe that I am finally getting around to answer your question and the pack of things which you last Zent. Do hope that you got to Germany + to Greece.

My daughter India is now in Perugia - Italia. She seems to be loving it. Who wouldn't @ 20, and studing art. In the next term she will be in Firenze. Lucky.

As to your new question - on the verso. "What makes a collage interesting to me?" - I really love to look @ all different kinds of collage and all art in general. It is always fascinating how a person handles the different elements which go into the making of a work. As Gertrude Stein said: "Everything is the same on lt different" and vive la difference. Love, Luck Laughts @

RJ : You seem to like Frensh language a lot. Any specific reason for that?

(the interview never got finished)

Address mail-artist:

John Evans,
Avenue B. School of Art
199 E. 3rd Street - 2B
NEW YORK , NY 10009, USA

Mail-Interview with John M. Bennett (USA)

2006-10-02T13:15:00.000-07:00

hardcopy version of the mail-interview

2006-10-02T13:12:00.000-07:00

THE MAIL-INTERVIEW WITH JOHN M. BENNETT (USA)

Started on: 4-7-1995

RJ : Welcome to this mail-interview. First let me ask you the traditional question. When did you get involved in the mail-art network?

Reply on 27-7-1995

JMB: I got involved in mail art about the age of 8, in 1951, crossing the pacific on a ship from Japan to Oregon. I wrapped up little messages and drawings in many layers of tape and paper and tossed 'em overboard. After that my career went into a kind of lull, except for a brief period of sending poems I'd written to girls when I was in high school, until about 1974 when I started doing mail art at the instigation of a friend, the now-deceased painter Mr. Sensitive. It was great fun and still is. One of the earliest issues of LOST AND FOUND TIMES was a mail art project (copy is enclosed). Mail art delights continue to make their way into its pages.

RJ : Is it possible to describe what is so delightful about mail-art?

Reply on 9-8-1995

JMB: What's delightful about receiving mail art is that it's so full of people's uninhibited expressions, off-the-cuff blurtings, or careful, lunatic constructions. It's about as close as one can get these days to a "pure" art, one with no agenda, no career-building motives, etc. (This doesn't mean it doesn't have political or social messages - it often, even usually, does - but the functionality of that is impersonal).

Anyway, receiving mail art stimulates my own creative processes - it's a source of contact with other artists which is most welcome to someone who lives a fairly routine life in a relative cultural desert.
What I like about making mail art is that it's a medium in which I can either distribute my main work, poetry, and/or do completely spontaneous things that often surprise me and serve as a source of ideas for other projects. Do it, and put a stamp on it! What joy!

RJ : What joy! Is mail art only something positive to you? are there any negative sides to it too maybe?

Reply on 19-8-1995

JMB: Well, yes; I can't bear throwing the stuff out, so I keep filling up these boxes I then have to move around and deal with. (Pile up around the bed, block the narrow aisles in my office, stumble over....) Fortunately, however, there are a couple of libraries who collect the stuff, so every so often I seal 'em up and ship 'em off, so long as they pay for the shipping, which they usually do.

Basically, if I didn't enjoy doing it, I wouldn't do it. I do find the rising postage rates distressing, though.

RJ : Like me, you probably get lots of mail art with invitations to projects, chain-letters, add-to projects, etc. Do you reply to all of those or do you select what you answer?

Reply on 2-9-1995

JMB: The add-to projects are among my favorites - little "brain cells" scurrying around the world acquiring more and more memory as they go. Those always get my full attention. I do reply to most of the project invitations. Some are more interesting than others, of course; though sometimes the truly dumb ones are an irresistible invitation to do something really nasty, eh?

Chain letters, however, are a different matter: I rarely respond to them at all, though I suppose my act of breaking the chain is a response of a kind. I don't like doing mass mailings (I get enough of that sending out LOST AND FOUND TIMES when it's published) and chain letters seem like I'm doing someone else's mass mailing. Many years ago I responded to a few of them, but rarely got anything back - so I think there must be a lot of other chain breakers out there, bless their hearts.

RJ: Thank you, I am one of those collector of chain letters and today my collection is over 700..... You mention 'LOST AND FOUND TIMES'. What is this publication about?

Reply on 18-9-1995

JMB: LOST AND FOUND TIMES is an avant-garde literary magazine (I'm sending you a copy via surface), that includes the occasional bit of mail art. It began in 1975 as a single-sheet publication of fake lost-and-found notices that was stuck under car windshields in parking lots. The first issues included notices by people we knew in the mail art network. When the other editor died suddenly in 1978 (Doug Landies or Mr. Sensitive) I continued to publish it, gradually expanding its literary aspect. It's rather fat now, gets around a lot, and is collected in numerous major institutions, etc.

RJ : Are you a collector too? Do you keep all the things you don't recycle?

Reply on 30-9-1995

JMB: I collect: skull rings, skulls in general, little cars, feathers, rocks, hot peppers, olive oil cans, old bottles, books, postcards, records, masks, rubber stamps, mail art (what I don't keep is given to various libraries that collect such material), nude decks, photographs, flutes, other instruments, baskets, old tickets, socks, hats, bandannas, my own poetry, and shoes. Whew!

RJ : Why do you collect shoes?

Reply on 14-10-1995

JMB: They substitute for my hands, I don't like to wear the same shoes 2 days in a row, I like to look at something different when I'm walking, they remind me of vaginas and dicks at the same time, I have wide feet and have trouble finding shoes that are truly comfortable, I have bursitis of the heel, they are like tongues.

RJ : And why do you collect skull rings or skulls in general?

Reply on 28-10-1995

JMB: So cute no hair no death I live inside the boney ring my skinmask itches likes to shine like plastic rubber potmetal aluminium silver wood I have a tiny plastic one with spring jaw holds the words "Time Release" a beetle glistens under maybe this provides the frame:

HARDEST

Spoke returned and animation stands of lettuce
driven over (somewhere else) I cancelled drains you
turned savored itching in the furnace ducts stinks
moon sizes closet lamp the corn regrooms shucks
shirt's milk plate of horns and dribble gleaming
sons frown

frown house, smiles, plate of skull collection
spotless wilk the shirt shucks moon field of ears
and hair silk waves long thought duct tape spilling-
ledges drains you moved or cancelled else, salad,
copulation in the passage air you spinning tire
without a spoke
9.13.95

RJ : Thanks for sharing this poem with me. When the interview is published at least this one will be shared with more readers. I have noticed that you mostly publish your visual poetry on small papers and postcards in collaboration with others, like Cornpuff, Hartmut Andryczuk, Al Ackerman, to name a few of the ones you enclosed with your latest answer. How do these collaborations come about?

(On 2-11-1995 the LOST AND FOUND TIMES booklet that John M. Bennett publishes arrived at my P.O.Box)

Reply on 10-11-95

JMB: Actually, a lot of my visual poetry is published in literary and/or art journals, and some of it usually is included in my books of poetry. I also exhibit a lot of it in art spaces; recently I had a number of pieces in what must have been an excellent show at the Musée de la Poste in Paris.

Anyway, the collaborations start in different ways - sometimes one of us just modifies or adds to a piece from the other; at other times one of us will propose doing a collaboration and start it. Most are done through the mail. Some are purely visual, some mixed visual and textual, some are purely textual.

One of the longest collaboration projects I've been involved with is a series of "chapters," mostly textual, done with Robin Crozier - this has been going on for years. I've also been doing a long series of collaborations with Sheila E. Murphy: we plan a full-length book of these poems, which truly seem like they were written by a third person: they have a unique style all their own. I've collaborated with dozens and dozens of folks through the years, and I find it an extremely stimulating and valuable process, both in the doing and in the final results.
RJ : Your use of rubber stamps is quite interesting too. Some mail artists in the USA and Europe like to use several rubber stamps to make a (realistic) visual story out of them, but you like to combine rubber stamps which don't fit together to give some kind of message. On your latest envelope for example, the head of a bald man with two nails stamped onto his ears. What is the story behind your stamp-work?

Reply on 29-11-1995

JMB: Why make something everyone expects to see; something they've seen already? I want to make something never made before, something I, and others, will see for the first time. This is my goal in all my art and writing. Rubber stamps are a quick way to achieve this: with a couple movements of the hand, you can make a bizarre combination of images and/or words and thus have an instant experience of seeing the world as if for the first time: the world becomes new and exciting, and one continues to learn about it.

On a less metaphysical plane, I enjoy rubber stamps as objects (they're one of my "collections") and for their potential to create works in multiples, a fascination related to my work as a writer, whose works are reproduced in books, which are the ultimate "multiple" art form. Perhaps this is a contradiction (or unity of opposites): I want to create things no one has seen before, but create them in many identical copies. Vive la contradiction!

RJ : There is another contradiction in connection to mail art. I've noticed that some say that mail art is more alive than ever because of the many participants and shows that there are today, while others say that mail art is almost finished because all things that are done nowadays have been done before. What are your views in connection to this?

Reply on 18-12-1995

JMB: Both groups are "right" in their own ways. The mail art world is made up of a great number of somewhat overlapping groups. Some groups fade back - like the one Ray Johnson was in - while others expand, to fade back later, etc. Mail, like any medium, will have art going on in it as long as it exists, though the people doing it and the styles they do it in will change, come and go, etc. As to everything having been done already, of course in a way that's true, but it's always been true. Everyone has to go through their own learning process and part of that process is to imitate what they've seen others do, so they can get it out of the way and go on to something else.

Mail art is no different from any other art form in this. I am not of the belief, by the way, that Ray Johnson was the "originator" of mail art. He was important in the fomenting of one particular circle of it, that eventually got a lot of attention, and spun off other groups. But people have been doing mail art since the postal service began in France in the 18th century, and even earlier, when "mail" was less institutionalized.

RJ : What do you think of the development of e-mail as a tool for communication? Have you tried it yet, or is a computer something you don't connect to communication?

Reply on 9-1-1996

JMB: Email seems like a great thing to me, and I know a lot of fine stuff is going on there - Electronic Juxta just "published" an email chapbook of mine, in fact, and there are several fine email "magazines" and other projects going on. The impermanence of it, I suppose, frees people up to experiment pretty wildly at times (and at great length sometimes, too, I'm afraid).

I do have an email address at work, but I happen to have a complex and weird vision problem, and I myself can't do much with a computer: I can't do more than glance at the screen occasionally without getting severe headaches that last for days, so this means I can't enter anything into one, or edit anything on screen. The most I can do is glance at what I think I might want to read, and then print it off to read it.

In order to reply to anything, I have to have a postal address. Anyway, I don't see electronic media as replacing books, say, but as another kind of media with its own values. There's something about a book, a physical object you can hold in your hands, completely self-contained, that you can deal with in your own time, that has permanent value.

RJ : You mention "your own time"..... Is it true that almost any mail artists I am in contact with, has a problem with finding time to do things? Are there some special things you still have to do?

Reply on 24-1-1996

JMB: Ah, so much to do: organize these files and stacks, compile books and such of so many joint projects, so much wonderful material just waiting for time and $$$ to put 'em together and publish them, so many books of my own work to organize, edit and hustle, so much art I'd like to do, like make a one-of-a-kind book every day, like fill my backyard with junk sculpture and towers, like make junk collages everyday to send out in the mail, oh so many secret projects to do in the mail that I can't tell you about; oh for the time to contemplate daily for an hour some treasure received in the mail!

RJ : You mention secret projects and I am very curious on what that could be all about. Is it a secret for the network; would telling me about those projects spoil the project completely. Or even better, are they illegal projects, projects nobody ever would get to know about....... Tell me about those secret projects, I sure won't tell anybody about it (only publish it....)

JMB: I will tell you about my secret projects,

RJ : Well, I never thought that something like that was possible. I am surprised that you are still able to send out mail at all! I just hope that the printer here in Tilburg won't censor this part of the text. As I can see from your answers before, POETRY seems to be the most important art-form you use to express yourself. Why? What is so fascinating about letters and words?

Reply on 2-3-1996

JMB: If I knew the answer to that I'd have understood what consciousness is. I can say that the process of writing poetry seems to combine several interests, pleasures, needs; seems to satisfy them like nothing else I do: the need to know, the need to be learning, the need to know I know nothing, the need to know nothing, the need to see and know together, the need to hear what I haven't heard, the need to read what I haven't read, the need to be someone or something other than "myself", the need to say what can't be said, to think what can't be thought, the need to be outside and inside knowing outside at the same time, the need to be inside and outside knowing inside at the same time. Language, used as an art, springs from, and addresses, several kinds of consciousness at once; it is the best way for me to attempt a totalizing awareness, to know it all and say it all; to be more than "who I am".

It's snowing heavily today, but soon I will head to the kitchen to prepare a nice paella, some gazpacho, and garlic bread. Yum!

RJ : So you like garlic! Do you like people who don't like garlic?

Reply on 15-3-1996

JMB: Not only do I like garlic (as does the whole family - good thing, too, since I'm the cook), but I've been growing quite a bit of my own the past few years. It's a garlic that grows wild around here that I've been cultivating in my garden, a stiff-neck variety, nice and strong with a great flavor. I preserve a lot of it by pickling it in olive oil. Some of my favorite high-garlic dishes are pesto (I grow my own basil, too), pasta with raw garlic and olive oil, pasta with clam sauce and lots of garlic, chicken or tofu marinated in various garlic-based sauces; oh the list is just endless!

Uh, about your question, I have known some folks who dislike garlic - I really do not understand that, it's sort of like not liking sex, eh? - but whether I like them or not seems to have little to do with their garlic-blankness. Life is full of mystery.

RJ : Which mystery of life would you like to solve right now?

Reply on 2-4-1996

JMB: The mystery of mysteries, & suppose; though maybe I'm happier with such things left unsolved, and open.

(together with the retyping of the text and my next question I also sent a complete printout of the complete interview-text to John M. Bennett)

RJ : Well, time to end this interview I guess, unless I forgot to ask you an important question. Thanks for your time and energy!

Reply on 19-4-1996

JMB: In reading through this interview I realized that nowhere did I mention the most important mail art experience of my life; one of the most important experiences in my life in general, in fact. This was the "mail art romance"which brought me together with my wife, C. Mehrl, now C. Mehrl-Bennett. Around 1977, she, who was living in Dubuque, IOWA, saw some work of mine in a mail art show there, and, as she puts it, thought the work was the most "repulsive"thing in the show. So she sent me some mail, it had a nice sarcastic/ironic quality to it that I enjoyed, and we kept on exchanging mail art. It was at least a year before I even knew she was a she, since she gave her name only as "C. Mehrl"and what she sent was mostly visual. Anyway, our correspondence gradually gor more personal, and in 1979 she came down to Columbus for a visit. It was true love, we got married in 1980, now have 2 kids, and are very happy together. For our wedding, we solicited mail art contributions, which were incorporated into a film about us by John McClintock, called MAIL ART ROMANCE. The film was released in 1982. Lady C, as she calls herself, is a painter and assemblage artist, and her work is as beautiful as she is.

RJ : Well, this is certainly a lovely detail of your life, and you might guess that I am now quite curious about this film. Thank you again for this interview John!

Address mail-artist:

John M. Bennett
Luna Bisonte Prods
137 Leland Ave
COLUMBUS , OH 43214 , USA

Address interviewer:

Ruud Janssen
P.O. Box 1055
4801 BB Breda
Netherlands
r.janssen@iuoma.org

Mail-Interview with Mark Greenfield (UK)

2006-10-02T13:08:00.000-07:00

hardcopy version of the Interview

2006-10-02T13:06:00.000-07:00

THE MAIL-INTERVIEW WITH M. GREENFIELD

This interview is one of the many interviews done by Ruud Janssen with various mail art networkers. If you are interested in the others, ask for the newsletter about the interviews. It is permitted to pass on this text as long as it isn't changed and when quoted, the interviewer and interviewed person would like to know about this. Enjoy reading this!

Started on: 6-4-1995

RJ : Welcome to this mail-interview. First let me ask you the traditional question. When did you get involved in the mail-art network?

Reply on: 26-04-95

MG: I began in the seventies corresponding with various friends. At that time I was an art student, much of what was discussed was about art, many times including examples, sometimes illustrating the envelope. However it was not until the late eighties that I read an article in one of the art magazines I was subscribing to, about 'mail art' and took part in a 'mail art' project. Since then I've taken part in many others, ran projects myself and extended my 'network' greatly. There are numerous reasons why I take part in mail art.

Firstly the need to communicate with other art minded people and a general need to communicate. The stimulus provided by mail art is another important factor. For example I enjoy exploring and discovering of one does 'A' what happens to 'B' and so forth. It is a 'living' art, it also makes use of new media and I see much potential for mail art.

RJ : Could you tell a bit more about the first projects you have done. How did they come about and what were they about?

Reply on : 11-05-1995

MG: The first mail art project I organized was disappointing because it relied on another person, who later told me they hated the work, did not follow the instructions, and therefore the response was exceedingly poor. However I've recently totally revamped this project and am changing this disappointment into a success. As it is presently ongoing I can't tell you much about this project as it would effect the outcome.

My second project was called the Umbrella Project. The idea was inspired by Christo Javacheffs Umbrella Project and I invited artists to send art as a response to his project. Would people know about Christo's project? Staged in USA and japan, other countries could hear/see this project only by mass media communication, TV, Newspaper , and radio. How successful would this be? Would people for example in the (then) USSR hear of this project? Hopefully I honoured my part of the agreement by sending out the documentation to all participants. At the time of the project I had a lot of interest from external parties, promising this and that, I even gave a nearly hour long interview to The Guardian Newspaper, an important major newspaper in Great Britain.

As you are probably aware, in the USA Lori Kevil-Mathews was tragically killed when high winds blew a Christo Umbrella across a road crushing her against a boulder. Christo closed the project early out of respect for the victim. In Japan Massaki Nakamura was killed while trying to remove a closed Christo Umbrella, the cranes arm touching a 65.000 Volt high tension wire. Obviously all the external parties interest in my project fairly disappeared totally.

My next project was the 'Y' project. A lot of my art has spoken about war. Mail art did not seem to be talking about the ongoing war in Yugoslavia. I wrote to every Yugoslavian mail artist address I could find. To provoke a response I supplied a poem by B. Webster that I titled Yugoslavia. I asked the artists to comment on and contribute any views about the poem. The outcome was seven replies, these were of different view points and the seven were sufficient for me to publish a small booklet titled Y. Most projects seem to end at the documentation, but this was not the case with 'Y'. I sent the booklet to all participants and other Yugoslavian artists, the rest I sent to other mail artists in various parts of the world. The resulting correspondence was exceptional, the subject could not be ignored. It has been suggested to me by one Serbian artist that its time to do another 'Y'. As yet the first one has definetly not finished!

Mail art projects are only a very small fraction of what I consider my mail art activities. By far the most important factor to me is the regular communication between certain artists. The term 'project' seems to only mean the invite and response projects. A lot of my ideas are experiments with mail art. For example I would not class my LA BOHÈME ART xeroxzine as a mail art 'project'

RJ : Tell me more about the ideas that you call 'experiments with mail art'.

Reply on : 26-5-1995

MG: In mail art we already have the tried, tested, and almost traditional format of the mail art project, and we have many mail art traits which we accept as standard, but I believe mail art is still very young, its full potential no where realized. It is only by experimenting that we can try to discover the potential of a new art language.

It is a complex subject for me to discuss what actually is an artists 'drive' to discover. Perhaps its to do with modern arts freedom and I'm trying to ascertain if there are boundaries. There is also a form of discovery which is a kind of learning adventure for ourself just for enjoyment. Maybe I'm trying to find the most effective use of art possible. The list of motives is probably inexhaustible, whatever the reason, the drive to discover does exist within and the only way to satisfy this desire to make new discoveries is by experimentation.

RJ : You seem to be quite fond of the "Please add to and return" principle. What is the reason for that?

Reply on: 8-6-1995

MG: Both the add & pass and the add & return have produced some excellent results. However a lot of the add & pass pieces get lost in the network. A mail artist who has added to several of my add & pass booklets may be frustrated if they have never received anything from me in return, but the ONLY reason I have not sent the artist anything is because I have not had any of the add & pass pieces with their art on returned to me. With the add & return principle it is between two individuals, if one decides not to add to, the other artist knows where the art is, can ask why or decide to let the other artist keep the piece, and so forth.

The add and pass seem to take a long time to reach the final participant and be returned. With add & return normally the piece is passed fairly quickly between two individuals. I enjoy the idea of one or more artist collaborating together on one piece of art, the result is nearly always exciting.

RJ : How do you feel about chain-letters? Do you participate in them too?

Reply on 28-6-1995

MG: Chain letters cause great distress particularly to the very young and the elderly, and I have personally witnessed this suffering, so there is obviously no way I would want to get involved with anything remotely associated with chain letters.

When chain mail art letters (cmal) first started they were just an extension of mail art, and as I was new to mail art at that time I posted them on in the way suggested, but even then I was a bit concerned with the obvious relation to chain letters. When threats started appearing on the cmal, then I no longer took part. All threats ended in my special bin and from then on I took no further part in any cmal, with or without threats. A lot I would return to the person who sent them with a note saying I was not interested in cmal.

I was surprised to find my name was already added to some of the lists on cmal and someone had even photocopied my rubber stamp on to one. I don't understand the relevance of sending me cmal with my name already on, probably the sender was so busy bulk xeroxing they did not bother to read what they were sending.

The craze of cmal however seems to have almost died out. At the height of the craze every other piece of mail seemed to contain a cmal invite, now it is extremely rare for me to receive any cmal.

It is possible that the reason cmal have now decreased to such an extent is because it doesn't seem to work, as I said my name was on a number of cmal yet I've never had one piece of mail art due to cmal as far as I'm aware.

RJ : You also like to use the copier for another kind of work you do, the collages with one or more colors that you then copy (in one-color of full-color) in a little edition, then sign and number them. What is the idea about these works. They sometimes look like puzzles and are wonderful to look at......

Reply on 28-7-1995

MG: I love colour. Colour has its own existence, it possesses a beauty of its own. Colour is part of our world. I find the colourful presentation of magazines, comics, posters, and advertising exciting. I adore the colours and imagery of food packaging etc. Neon signs, television, film etc. all these are exciting. Most are things which inspire pop artists, I love Pop art. A lot of pop artists based their art on cheap mass produced products. My collages are made in a similar way to how some pop artists made their collages. However perhaps my main difference to the pop artists presentation of their work is that I change my collages back into cheap mass produced product. I could easily produce a xerox off in thousands, and they are fairly cheap. However another element I add to my art is to number the pieces, which then states although this could be a cheap mass produced product it is actually only available in a limited number, and at that, only a very small number.

RJ : You always undersign your letters with M. or M. Greenfield; never your first name. What is the reason for that?

Reply on : 15-8-1995

MG: An unusual question! I do not remember signing M. Greenfield on any mail art letters. The only reason I use just M is for ultimate informal!

At one time I did use M. Greenfield in all projects and did not give out my first name or any personal details. When I first got involved with mail art there were quite a lot of persons using pseudonyms, some using the name of an object as a name. One of the qualities of mail art is it is not necessary for the receiver to know any personal details of the sender. The sender does not also need to know any personal details of the person they are sending to. The amount of personal details you give out is a matter of 'choice' for each individual mail artist, like I said this can be none. This should avoid any discriminations. There should be no discrimination in mail art. However perhaps it is far less discrimination when you know the full personal details of the mail artists and the receiver or sender still decides to have no discrimination.

I discovered too many people know my first name for it to continue being a secret, and after consideration it did not appear relevant to keep it secret.

RJ : You say that it is a matter of 'choice' for each individual mail artist how much personal details they are sending out. For me it depends on the receiver how much personal details I send out because it is a two-way communication. So if I receive personal information, I normally also send out personal information. Your choice seems to be not to send out that many personal details (although I noticed some changes over the years). Is it possible to send out even 'no' personal information? Doesn't the art you send out show a lot of personal details for the receiver?

Reply on 31-8-1995

MG: This all depends on your definition of personal details. My art does communicate a kind of personal details to a certain extent. You can tell from my art what appeals and interests me, sometimes my personal viewpoint on a subject can be strongly expressed.

I suppose it is possible to psychoanalyze a piece of art. You could predict what an artists personality is like from what colours they use, 'how' the artist 'creates', their technique and style.

I can not tell from a piece of art (apart from a few exceptions" whether the artist is married or not, whether they have children, what religion they are, what political party they vote for, and other similar kinds of details, which were the personal details I was trying to discuss in my previous answer.

You mention that for you it is a two way communication. Although most of my mail art is a two way communication, a large amount of my mail art does not fit into the description and limits of just two way communication. I do not particularly like restrictive statements about mail art.

RJ : I didn't say that mail art is a two way communication. I was only talking about why and when I send out personal details to some of my mail art contacts. But somehow I must admit that this kind of mail art has gotten the overhand and is more important for me than the taking part in mail art projects. How is this for you. Do you take part in all the mail art projects you receive, or do you select in answering all that enters your P.O.Box?

Reply on 14-9-1995

MG: Due to a recent event this is a good question to follow on from the previous two. I have received an invite to do art work for a project supporting a political party. I am vehemently opposed to the political party involved and there is no way I would do anything in anyway to support them. So as another statement to add to your questions about personal details. I would add that although I would not hate anyone because of their beliefs, this does not mean I support or believe the same. I might even strongly disagree with those beliefs.

I would not consider taking part in a project where they ask for money. A recent example of this is a french artist invited me to take part in his project expecting you to pay to be in a type of booklet that he is arranging.

I now also do not take part in projects by total newcomers who just send a B+W xerox flyer inviting me to take part in their project and this is the only mailing I've ever had from them.

Certainly, I'm now quite selective about which projects I take part in and this answer is by no means a full and comprehensive list of the numerous reasons why I might not take part in a project.

I am now extremely 'aware' of the amount of loss of art which I've sent out to various projects so I'm now much more careful what I send to.

Having run several projects myself I think one of the main mistakes newcomers make is that they do not set any finance aside for return documentation etc. Even putting together some very basic documentation and return postage I find the cost can be crippling. The cost of sending anything much heavier than a couple of postcards to the USA is ridiculously high, and normally one can expect to get a very good response from the USA. I presume this is similar for newcomers in the USA who find it very expensive to reply to us in Europe, hence probably the reason why I loose so much to USA newcomers (?)

A lot of newcomers send out flyers in which the theme and details are very wide in what you can send and often the deadline is very long so they're probably going to get a very high response which could be very expensive to reply to.

I would like to add that if anyone has taken part in any of my projects and not received any reply please write to me so I can find out why this happened and I will send the relevant documentation.

RJ : It is funny to hear that you think 'you loose your mail art' when there is no reply or documentation. I know of wonderful projects with wonderful exhibitions where the documentation never got finished because of different reasons. In my eyes the project then is a success. We aren't taking part in a project to get a wonderful documentation only are we? Also the most beautiful documentations I have are mostly from newcomers. I guess everybody has a different view about mail art. I have published my views already often. You seem to have not done so in the last years (and this interview will be a nice change). Do you like the mail art statements other mail artists write? How important are words in mail art?

Reply on 4-10-1995

MG: It is insulting having known me for so many years that you could even think that I could possibly do mail art just for the documentation. However, I do not know of any 'wonderful projects with wonderful exhibitions' where there is no documentation. How could I? If these people take my art and do not even bother to send any return. They do not even have the decency to send a postcard acknowledging receipt of my art let alone communicate anything about the project or exhibition itself.

I suppose your argument could be that you with all your travelling have visited a number of these non documented projects, but even if this is your argument not all projects flyers state when the exhibition is and where.

Oh, just in case you are still in the insulting mood, perhaps I had better state that I do not just do mail art for the exhibition. It is not necessary for a mail art project to have an exhibition. In your 'Thoughts about mail art', you yourself state (and I do agree with these statements) "There will always be a balance between what you send and receive. The more energy you send into the network to mail artists, the more energy they will share with you." So you are a really great person to talk about not expecting a return. A bit hypocritical!

Another important factor is what I consider to be documentation. For me to discover what a 'wonderful project and wonderful exhibition' it was, the organizer would have to communicate this with me in some way. The lowest cost form of communication is probably mail, so if the person writes acknowledging receipt of my art and tells me how 'wonderful' etc. then really I would class this as the extreme minimum of documentation. However I would not like anyone to read this and think that it is normal, it is an exception to normal, it is poor documentation but it is far better than receiving nothing in return.

Although I do not just do mail art for the documentation I suppose I was lucky that the first mail art projects I took part in sent some excellent documentation. I would probably found it very off putting if their returns had been poor and may have been completely put off taking part in future projects.

I strongly disagree about the most beautiful documentations being mainly from newcomers. The best documentation normally is from good artists or someone with a genuine interest in art, it does not matter whether they are a newcomer or a mail art old timer.

To the final part of your question. Words are another tool available to the mail artist, of course they can be very important. The only problem is with writing about mail art many people try to write something resembling a "manifesto" and in trying to do this end up writing a complete load of garbage. Ever heard of the expression 'drowning in pretentious drivel?' The majority of articles written about mail art are pretentious drivel.

I'm also always extremely suspicious about the reasons for these people writing texts about mail art, most of the time the 'reasons' have little to do with mail art,

RJ : I guess you are now trying to insult me because I have written a lot of texts about mail-art in the last years. But in this interview it is not the place to fully explain why I write about mail art. Writing ABOUT mail art has nothing to do practicing mail art, but both fit together. The same goes for the mail art I make for a project, the exhibition, and third: the documentation. They fit together but yet they are different things. After I mailed my piece of mail art for a project the action from my part ends. A mail art project is a process, and sometimes the proces is stopped because of reasons that are not controllable for the organizer. Well, I felt I had to react to your answer with some personal thoughts, but for the interview I rather ask you a completely new question. You mention 'The lowest cost form of communication is probably mail', but there is a new communicationform: e-mail. I can send out 5 e-mail letters to the USA for the costs of one single air-mail letter of 20 gram. It seems in USA a lot of networkers have entered the internet's e-mail. What are your views about this communication-form?

Reply on 1-11-1995

MG: My answer about texts was sincere. E-mail is again another tool. It is a very costly tool to set up. I like the fact that mail art has a potential for full international. E-mail alone would deny the opportunity for people less financially well off. I'm sure we both know peoples for whom it is a luxury to be able to afford the cost of postage. There is no way these people could afford computers, modems, printers.

E-mail is also irrelevant to me because most of the artists that I regularly keep in contact with do not have access to the facilities for E-mail.

If the e-mail artist wishes to ignore me and not communicate with me, then that is their loss. Most people who use E-mail and have a genuine desire to communicate, normally do so in more than one way, for example by snail-mail and E-mail. E-mail is another tool available for communication.

RJ : With your latest answer you included the flyers in which you ask people to return the 'large Marilyn envelopes'. I remember of some time ago that we also used to exchange the Marilyn-poster. Why are you so fascinated with her, and what was (is) this project about?

Reply on 22-11-1995

MG: The Marilyn Monroe idea is not a mail art project. It was an idea to do some collaboration art between some of my best mail art friends (the word 'some' is important, I definitely missed at least three).

The flyers I sent out do not ask for participants to take part in a mail art project, they ask for the return of a few of these art pieces that went astray. A few of my friends due to the fact that I do so many add and pass pieces of art apparently thought these also were. A couple of others still remain lost in a pile of mail waiting to be returned by the artists concerned.

The first idea came about because I am a 'bargain hunter'. I enjoy purchasing a useful quality products for next to nothing. A bookshop was selling off extremely cheap posters, several of which were Marilyn Monroe posters. I decided that these had potential for a good add to piece. Later I produced my own 'start' xerox posters of Marilyn Monroe.

Why do we love the Marilyn Monroe image? Please read any of the numerous books written about Marilyn Monroe. Its far too complex magic to explain here. The legend is still as strong as ever. The public are still fascinated with everything to do with Marilyn Monroe.

Several Pop Artists created art with Marilyn Monroe as the subject, the most famous image is by Andy Warhol. One of my Marilyn Monroe art pieces is a reworking of a Marilyn Monroe image by Willem De Kooning.

I wanted to produce new versions of Marilyn Monroe for the new Millennium. It is all to do with M!! I also liked the idea that the Marilyn Monroe image is seen as being related to Pop art because my art is a development from Pop art. Perhaps this is something I wanted to say. It is difficult to write critically about your own work. I wanted to produce colourful, exciting, sexy, mail art.

RJ : Were you active in the DNC (Decentralized Networker Congress) in 1992? Have you had some encounters with other mail artists?

Reply on 15-11-1995

MG: Ah, I suppose the reason I'm being asked this question is because I took such a strong stance on this subject. However the person you should be asking this question is Keith Bates. Keith wrote a very good text on this subject in one of his project documentations.

At the time a Switz guy had an idea that 1992 was going to be Networking Congress year. This was well published and got blown out of all proportions by the self important group of text writers!!! 1992 was the year of mail art visiting, the year of mail art tourism. Quite frankly it got completely out of hand, to the extent that total strangers felt that they could turn up on my doorstep and expect to have a place to stay. In some cases I'd had absolutely no prior contact with the person in anyway whatsoever.

I hate dictatorship, some 'people' had decided that they were going to enforce that 1992 was Networking Congress Year and what this meant and that I had no say or control on this subject! Sorry Guys, I'm a strong believer in Freedom of choice.

I'm very protective of my family and there was no way I wanted these strangers, some of whom were total weirdos, coming scarring my family, especially whilst I was out. Also my house is fairly small and I've not got the finance to 'support' these visitors. Another point is that I just did not want to meet these people.

I did not believe that this meeting or visiting other people was an important part of mail art. In a matter of fact I thought it was completely irrelevant! It is not a necessary part of mail art. Keith Bates text made this very clear.

I produced a single sheet based on Keith text. I used a section of his text headed 'Networker Statement', a few other sentences from his text, some relevant visuals, and to this I added the statement 'I agree with Keith Bates'. I xeroxed one hundred copies originally, although now the total I have xeroxed must be over a thousand copies. What I did was to put his statement all on one side of an A4 size paper, this made it 'user friendly' and I know that a number of people also copied and used my version of Keith's text.

Certainly I'm not opposed to this visiting or meeting but it has to be in the right way 'asking and receiving an invitation being part of the process'.

RJ: So, did you ever meet another mail artist? How was it like?

Reply on 5-1-1996

MG: I think it would be extremely difficult to be a serious practicing artist for as many years as I've been, not to meet any artists. However I do not wish to "list" here all the artists I have met and do not want to comment on what I thought of those meetings.

As to the future I would like to meet artists whom I have more affinity with. Certainly the artists I most respect in mail art I have not met yet, I think this may change in the coming year. I just hope by meeting that I do not destroy some excellent friendships.

RJ : This is actually quite interesting. Most contacts by mail give a certain "view" about the person one is writing to. When both meet it can be that the "view" is just an illusion and was made up in ones head and that the mail only showed a part of the life of the mail artist. On the other hand the "view" might be even more beautiful in reality than one could imagine.... But OK, lets focus on you rather than the other mail artists. I also have a certain view about you with the mail & art I get from you. Are there also things you do which has nothing to do with mail art and is interesting to know?

Reply on 26-1-1996

MG: The question you ask is too unspecific. There are lots of aspects of my life which could be of interest, most of my life and family has nothing to do with mail art. But I think that what you are trying to imply is what art do I do that has nothing to do with mail art?

The term "nothing to do with" mail art may be incorrect to use concerning pieces of my art which are not mail art. Of the pieces that I create which are not mail art, they are actually normally related nowadays to my mail art.

Probably one of the last sculptures I produced was called "Soldier Box". From the title you can guess that this is connected to the subject of the 'Y' project. This sculpture however was not intended to be about just Yugoslavia but about wars in general. The wax medium of the soldiers I found made it a fairly unmailable piece of art, because the wax was too brittle.

A lot of the art that I produce which is not mail art is also related to my mail art because it is very similar, "it's just not mailed". I love the xerox medium and use this in several ways, for example to produce single sheet pieces of art, to producing booklets. Booklets in particular I will use various printing methods, again these I will also use in mail art. Another method I have recently used to create art is collage, and again this medium I obviously make use of in mail art.

RJ : Well, an unspecific question mostly reveals a lot about the thoughts of the one that is interviewed through his answer. As you will have noticed the interviews I do aren't just questionnaires, I would like to see what someone makes a mail artist, and what it means for someone to be a mail artist. Some artists are only involved in the network for a specific time-period and after exploring it they leave. Others get 'hooked for life' to the unexpected communication that arrives at ones mailbox. What is the case for you? You could answer with "I don't know", but I am curious to the essence of what mail art brings for you?

Reply on 20-2-1996

MG: The answer is that I'm so extremely busy creating art and enjoy this creation that there is little time to contemplate the future of mail art. I never know what the future holds! If there is an end to mail art then I'm sure we'll know about it when it gets near! We all have a restricted time span in so much as we will all die one day, so it is not possible to do mail art for ever.

Much of my present art is a form of communication by mail and I would like to think that I could always remain friends and in contact with some of the persons that I have had very good contact with.

The format of my art will probably change. At present I'm enjoying producing xeroxes and rubber stamping and all the other various methods I use in my mail art. If a new format or method became available which I was able to enjoy using artistically then I would use it. I could give up xeroxing and the formats I presently use. I like the freedom to use whatever medium I want whenever I want.

There is a far larger audience available rather than just other mail artists. By communicating with only other mail artists we are only communicating with the "converted", and many of the people I keep in regular contact with have similar views to myself on a range of subjects as well as art. If a more effective way of communicating my art to a wider audience became available to me, I would use this, but as previously stated I would like to stay in contact with some of the people I'm presently communicating with.

RJ : Well, I guess this is a good moment to end the interview. I sure hope that we will stay in contact and will exchange our ideas and art. Thank you for this interview Mark!

Address mail-artist:

M. Greenfield
P.O.Box 409
Newcastle
Staffs - ST5 3LW
ENGLAND

Adress Interviewer:

Ruud Janssen
P.O. Box 1055
4801 BB Breda
Netherlands
r.janssen@iuoma.org

Mail-Interview with Michael Leigh - A1 - UK

2006-10-02T13:03:00.000-07:00

hardcopy of the interview

Mail-Interview with Michael Leigh - A1 (UK)

2006-10-02T12:59:00.000-07:00

This interview was done in 1995 by Ruud Janssen. Address: TAM, P.O.Box
1055, 4801 BB Breda , the NETHERLANDS, e-mail : r.janssen@iuoma.org. It is
possible to spread this information to others, but for publications you will
have to get permission from TAM and the interviewed person! Enjoy reading
this interview.

THE MAIL-INTERVIEW WITH MICHAEL LEIGH (A1 Waste Paper)
by RUUD JANSSEN

Started on: 6-11-1994

RJ : Welcome to this mail-interview. So far we met twice and have discussed
certain things about mail-art already, but I still forgot to ask you what your
'firm' A1 Waste Paper Co. Ltd. is all about. When did you found it and what
is it all about?

Reply on: 17-11-1994

ML: Well, it was soon after I had chanced upon the mail art network in 1980
at the Artlink International exhibition at the Greenwich Theatre Gallery in
London that I decided I too could have a weird and wonderful nom de plume
that many of my fellow mail artists had contrived for themselves. Also it
would be nice to have a name other than my own to attach all my mail art to
so as to distinguish it from the other art I was doing at that time
(Landscapes and animals in oil on canvas).

I forget just how many names I'd thought up at the beginning but two I
remember were ART ACHES REPOSITORY and the BAD ART
DELIVERY SERVICE. Both remained on the back burner until I chanced
upon a couple of battered rubber stamps at a flea market in London's East
End - both were the address stamps for a defunct (I assume so since they
didn't crop up in the telephone directory at that time) recycling firm called
the A.1.Waste Paper Company Ltd. I couldn't believe my luck - just the name
I had been looking for! Not only did it sound good but could also be
shortened to A.1. and covered all aspects of the recycling ethic I had seen as
a key element in all the networking material that I had used or was going to
use in the future. It also has the happy ability to put itself at the very front
of any address lists made in an alphabetical order!

RJ : This recycling is something I recognize in most mail-art I have seen
from you. Some mail-artists keep all the mail they receive in their "Archive".
Do you have an "Archive" or is almost everything recycled?

Reply on: 26-11-1994

ML: I think most sensible people realize that RECYCLING in everyday life
is very important now if we are to put back something rather than take take
take from the Earths limited resources. In art too this has become more and
more important - not only from a ecological point of view but as a way of
saving valuable time and money.

My "archive" consists mainly of dozens of cardboard boxes from the
supermarket which are stuffed full of old mail in no particular order or
design. I've never been very good at organizing such things and so I'm afraid
if I need something from my "archive" it takes me ages to find! Fourteen
years of correspondence takes up a lot of space so I've been very ruthless
just lately (since Archie was born) - sorting through it all and sending the
stuff we didn't want to Michael Lumb's archive in Ipswich. On a day to day
basis I still recycle envelopes and boring xeroxes get letters written on the
back of them.

RJ : So this 'boring xerox' gets personalized and probably will end up in
someone's elses "archive". Do you think that these "archives" are important
for other people than the mail-artists? Is it possible for a 'non-mail-artist' to
understand that mail-art is more than art sent by mail?

Reply on : 8-12-1994

ML: Archives are important because they contain the history and
development of mail art. Artists can benefit by using their archives in a
constructive manner - making exhibitions from them and showing the work to
outsiders who don't understand what the postal network is about. At the
moment Hazel and I are showing our artwork in conjunction with pieces
from our mail art archive at the WEIDORAMA show in Walsall Museum and
Art Gallery in the West Midlands of England. This exhibition is an attempt
to show how mail art interacts with the other work we do and to show
outsiders just how diverse and multi-disciplined it is. Archives should contain
the best work and ideally made available to other mail artists and interested
parties who wish to see it or part of it or the works of one particular artist
for Commemorative works or book projects etc.

These outside the mail art network will never understand what mail art is
without becoming part of the mail art network. I'm not so sure we should
crusade to make the mail art understandable to those outside its circle.
Those interested enough will discover it for themselves eventually. It's not a
RELIGION to be thrust down peoples throats. One must carry on doing ones
best and hope that others will see for themselves through mail art shows like
WEIRDORAMA just how much fun their is using the postal system as your
artistic medium.

RJ : You talk about 'the postal system'. Does this include the new
communication-forms like using FAX and Computer for communication or
isn't this mail-art in your eyes? What are your thoughts about the
TELENETLINK 95 project that Crackerjack Kid started?

Reply on : 28-12-1994

ML: I'm afraid I must admit that FAX and computer art doesn't really fit
into my idea of Mail Art - it's not something I'm interested in. If you can't
stick a stamp on it and post it, then it's not really Mail Art. It's a different
medium and should be called something else. I don't know anything about
Crackerjack Kid's TELENETLINK project.

RJ : Well, let's stick to the communication-form with postage-stamps. The
postage-stamp plays an important part in mail-art. In your work I've noticed
the use of rubber stamped postage-stamps. Is there any special reason for
that?

Reply on : 7-1-1995

ML: I like anything to do with postage stamps and rubber stamps. So it
seemed natural for me to combine the two. They are quick to apply to
envelopes and one can knock out sheets for projects and such like quite
easily without having to spend ages fiddling around with a xerox machine.
Also you can use those tiny collage elements that don't fit into any other
format. I seem to collect hundreds of these and so that's why I have so many
designs for rubber-stamp postage stamps that have as yet to be turned into
rubber dies.

RJ : Another wonderful rubber stamp I noticed on one of your envelopes is
'ADDITIONAL ARTWORK BY ARCHIE LEIGH-JONES'. Is Archie
growing up to be a mail-artist raised by two other mail-artists? To ask the
question more specific: How does the mail-art that fills your days affect the
raising of Archie?

Reply on : 18-01-1995

ML: Well, we like to think that Archie will come to appreciate the finer
points of mail art and alternative culture in general through his seeing us
work and play with all this stuff. Hopefully he'll find it useful in future years
and maybe find a little network of his own to explore. At the moment he is
only two and a bit so his attention span is short - a few scribbly envelopes
and he's off with a toot toot train or his cars! Children tend to go against the
wishes of their parents so I expect Archie will see our interest in mail art as
his poor putty parents wasting a lot of time that could be spent on Game Boy
or Cartoons.

RJ : So; why are you wasting so much time on this mail art. Why do you
spend so much money on this 'strange' hobby? What brings mail art to you
that you keep on doing it?

Reply on : 27-1-1995

ML: Good Question! I really feel I'm not wasting time, after all, I spend
more time sleeping then I do mail art! Mail is just as relaxing and
therapeutic I think as sleeping, but unlike sleep I have something to show for
it at the end of the day! We just had a 2 day mail strike here in London and I
realized how much I missed the post when it didn't arrive - I started to get
withdrawal symptoms! Yes, mail art is a drug! The more you do - the more
you need! I'm a hopeless case I suppose.

RJ : Yes, you are a hopeless case (never argue with a drug-addict...). But to
feed your addiction I'll ask another question so you get some mail. On your
envelope you used your new stamp in memory of RAY JOHNSON, who
suddenly died two weeks ago ("If it wasn't for Ray Johnson, this work
wouldn't exist, mail art pioneer 1927-1995). It seems Ray was an addict too.
He kept sending mail till he took his own life. I know of more mail-artists
from the first years who are still active. What would be the essence of this
mail art that it is so addictive. What is your view?

Reply on : 4-2-1995

ML: It's hard to say why Mail Art is so addictive. Some people seem to kick
the habit quite easily, like smoking, they just go on to something less
addictive but just as costly - like sucking mints or herbal remedies like
slippery elm grass or fever few.

The essence of mail is really the response you get from your sendings. If
nobody replied then it would be quite easy to give up I guess. Luckily (or
not!) I keep getting back stuff - flopping on my doormat every morning and it
seems churlish not to reply.

A reporter came from a national newspaper recently to interview me and to
find out what all this networking and mail art was about. I found it very hard
to tell him exactly what it was that got me se excited and what still keeps me
at it some 14-15 years later. It's communication I suppose and feeling part of
a fellowship that knows no boundaries.

Now that Ray Johnson is no longer with us - it seems an ideal time to take
stock of what has gone on in the past 40 years, since the early days of the
New York Correspondance School of Art, and re-affirm our commitment to
the mail art ethic and its concerns. But hopefully not in a boring, pretentious
and crusty way but something more in the spirit of play from which it was
born.

RJ : It sounds beautiful, what you say, but how will it be in reality? What is
the future for the network in your eyes?

Reply on : 10-2-1995

ML: Who can say what tomorrow may bring? I don't have a crystal ball - I
wish I had! The network is an organic, growing, shrinking, changing thing -
full of surprises! Hopefully it will draw new recruits from different
backgrounds, cultures and talents. It does that already of course but perhaps
the future will broaden this spectrum even more. It is up to the networkers
who already enjoy this wonderful world of art exchange to use their influence
in a positive way - to find more time to do mail art, to expand its horizons, to
open up new tracks of perception, to glory in its ubiquitousness, unravel the
strings of pure art that connect us all!

RJ : In the recent years galleries and even museums are becoming more and
more interested in the mail art that some 'famous' artists made and are
trying to get this 'art' in their collection or are trying to get works for loan
for a future exhibition. Will mail art become traditional art when things go
on like this?

Reply on : 20-2-1995

ML: I don't think mail art will ever become "traditional" as you call it, simply
because its so hard to define. The occasions when galleries or museums
express interest in mail art are few & far between - they cannot cope with
the anarchic elements in it, or the idea that its based on mutual exchange &
co-operation.

RJ : We have discussed the subject 'Archives' before. If a mail-artist decides
to keep an archive (which normally happens when he decides to keep the
nice things he gets by mail), what should happen with it after his death? I
know of the archive of Ulises Carrion which was sold and plundered for work
of 'famous' artists? Any idea what should happen to the archive of Ray
Johnson?

Reply on : 28-2-1995

ML: Ofcourse its a shame that archives fall into the "wrong" hands and get
plundered, but what can you do? Maybe artists should make provision for
their work and archives when they are still alive and have some control over
what happens to all of it when they die.

I would like to see Ray Johnson's archive kept intact ofcourse, in a museum
or library somewhere but I won't loose sleep if it doesn't. Afterall its the art
that happens now which is important, not the boxes of old dusty stuff-
crumbling away in some gloomy mausoleum!

RJ : Your new project (A1 Waste Cassette Co.) has also a typical recycling-
aspect. You write that you will use the cassettes people send to you for
recording the final result. In this way you keep your own archive very small
indeed. How is the new project going? Can you tell a bit more about it?

Reply on : 6-3-1995

ML: This new project was inspired by Morgan Fisher's "MINIATURES"
project of a few years ago. His was nothing to do with the mail art network
but it had a similar easy going attitude and commitment and the
documentation within the LP sleeve was very like a mail art show
documentation, or a sort you'd get if only people had the funds to pay for it!

I did a cassette project a couple of years ago where I asked for songs on a
particular theme. This THEMATIC TAPE EXCHANGE went on for several
months. 90 or so participants from 8 countries got involved. Everyone got
another tape back from the list I sent out - they could choose whatever music
they liked.

This time the idea is that contributions must be no longer than a minute so
that I can squeeze 60 or so tracks onto one tape when I come to compile it in
June. The reason I opted to send back the tapes I'd been sent was to
eliminate any people who like to send cheap or very short tapes. This way
they only have themselves to blame for the rubbish they get back! Most
people so far have sent good quality tapes and so it makes my task somewhat
easier. The theme of the project is POSTAGE and people can interpret this
in anyway they like whether its a song, jingle, poem, rant or spoken word. So
far the spoken word seems the most popular but I'm hoping for a few songs
and music to break up the verbiage before the deadline on the 20th June
1995.

RJ : Well, I guess it is time to end this interview. Maybe there is something
more you would like to say?

Reply on : 14-3-1995

ML: Just that it was nice being interviewed this way - your questions helped
me think about my work and try to articulate some of my thoughts - hard to
do, but fun! Thanks!

RJ : Thanks for the interview!

Ended on : 14-3-1995

Jenny Soup interviewed by Ruud Janssen

2006-10-02T11:29:00.000-07:00

Cover of the hardcopy-version of the Mail-Interview with Jenny Soup (USA) by Ruud Janssen (Netherlands).

Mail-Interview with Jenny Soup (USA)

2006-10-01T02:00:00.000-07:00

Interview done by Ruud Janssen

THE MAIL-INTERVIEW WITH JENNY SOUP

Started on: 7-3-1995

RJ : Welcome to this mail-interview. First let me ask you the traditional question. When did you get involved in the mail-art network?

Reply on: 2-5-95

JS : I first got involved with mail art and the network back in 1987. I was living in San Francisco at the time, going to Art School. I was introduced to the addicting world of mail
art by my boyfriend at that time, and thus the enigmatic Gagliones, the wacky and wonderful Radio Free Dada, the ever present (and past and future) John Held Jr., and others. I was
instantaneously sucked into the network with full devotion. I have always enjoyed art and correspondence/ writing, and mail art became a perfect way to blend the two. Good friends were made through mail art, wonderful ideas were exchanged and a lot of stamps were used....

RJ : What kind of ideas (wonderful ideas as you mention them) do you mean. Can you give some examples?

Reply on 22-5-1995

(Together with her next answer Jenny Soup sent me her new poetry-booklet "SORROW'S VELVET GARDEN , Corridors of Madness Publishers, Studia City, CA , USA.)

JS : I couldn't do justice in talking about all the wonderful ideas that spawned from the mail art medium and from my personal history in corresponding with many great artists. Though justice will not be served.... I will relay a few. When I first started receiving mail art, I took great notice, not only in what was within the envelopes I received, but also the envelopes themselves. This sparked a passion in me, and for a few years, I adorned envelopes with the greatest of time and
care. Maybe a simple "hello" would be written on a slip of paper within, but the real Art lay on the envelope itself. I would spend hours on one envelope, collaging, painting and fully decorating each piece. It was a real joy. Now I don't find the same pleasure in doing the Art on the envelopes, though occasionally I will succumb to the urge to do so. The past envelope decorating, eventually led to my color collage Artwork, which has been shown in Galleries here in Los Angeles, the East Coast, and Germany. And along the same lines, the color collages led to my creating full size oil paintings of the same images. How beautiful the lines of progression.

Now, I find the greatest of pleasure in the letter writing, and the written correspondence among those in the network. Though this limits the number of people I correspond with. I enjoy it so much and it adds immeasurably to my life. It is through the letter writing that I enjoy sharing and receiving personal ideas from artists around the world. Within the last couple of years, I have had the most wonderful of opportunities to meet a few of those people, including yourself Ruud, which I find a great pleasure and it adds to the depth of all the correspondence with such people.

Another example would be in the realm of "Projects". Through the mail I have seen and heard of so many different projects, some fascinating, some very simple, yet all have the possibility of influencing an idea I may have at the time. Sometimes it can help solve a problem, or be a catalyst to take an art piece to another level. A wonderful part of all this has been the introduction to a combined effort in a single idea. A great influence are the "Mail Art Shows", in
how many people contribute to one thing. The collaboration effort is a glorious thing. One singular person does not take all the credit, or a "First Place" of sorts. Each contributor
is as important as the other.

When I started my Poetry and Art Magazine "in remembrance", I incorporated this idea; to have others contribute to the Magazine, that it wasn't all one person, that it was the
efforts and talents of many that would make it so succesful.

I hope I have conveyed a few examples of how much mail art has effected (infected) my life, and how ideas have formed and grown through this medium.

RJ : Could you tell a bit more about your magazine "in remembrance". When did you start it? How do you select the work you include in your magazine?

Reply on 27-6-1995

JS : I started my magazine "in remembrance" while in San Francisco. It was around 1987 & at the time, in art school, I was working on extremely large paintings, more like tapestries. These paintings took a lot of time, energy and materials. The work was physically and mentally exhausting to complete. The paintings involved a heavy use of collage and different textures, and each one incorporated the use of language. Through, and because of these paintings, "in
remembrance" evolved. My magazine became a small, simple way to express the same ideas as in my paintings. These ideas could then reach more people because of the accesability
through the mail, which I was discovering through the mail art network.

I have always enjoyed Poetry and language. Ever since I was a young child, I can remember writing poems and short stories. The enjoyment from writing and from reading other works has
been a large part of my life, always. I carried this love into my magazine. As the magazine reached more people, in turn, more people would write to me about it. They would send in
their work, poems, art, ideas and comments on what they thought of the magazine. All of this helped shape the magazine and helped it to evolve.

I took into consideration all of the submissions I received for "in remembrance". I included those which personally affected me, those which emotionally moved me. In this
selection process, a family started. The result of this "family" , was a group of artists who shared the same "visions" and thoughts as I and as I achieved in "in remembrance". The magazine has the feel of haunting beauty. It researches the loveliness that is found in many different
areas, by many different means. Many of the works I receive by mail, don't fit the themes, or feel of "in remembrance", and it is hard to turn down these works. Just because they don't
fit in the realm of "in remembrance", does not mean they are not strong pieces. Because I choose not to use them doesn't mean they are not good, or worthy of being published. But that
is the job of an editor. To choose what completes and complements the original intentions of the project. It's not always easy, but it is neccessary. I want to keep "in remembrance" true to itself, and this is the only way to do that.

RJ : How large is the network you have discovered so far?

Reply on 6-8-1995

JS : The full size of my correspondence is in the hundreds, though it's not a completely consistant network. There will be steady lines of communication for a period of time, and then
months without. This depends on factors in my life whoever I am writing to/with. Sometimes I've been wrapped up in a project that will take me out of circulation for months! Same
with the other person(s). When I was in Europe last year, though I kept writing to close friends, when I returned 5 months later I had a box full of mail with many letters saying, "where are you? Why haven't we heard from you?". Or sometimes, even years later, I'll receive a letter from someone I lost contact with, and they'll have written about what kept them out of circulation for so long. My network also changes and reforms itself. People send me artwork and write, its all so ephemeral. I doubt I would ever have the energy to accumulate and organize all the addresses of people I've corresponded with over the years. All of it is stored in boxes
and boxes.

I do enjoy the variety of the experience of correpondence, though. That I can have contact with a network of people around the world, is truly an exciting realization.

RJ :Is there a difference in the mail-art here in Europe and in the USA?

Reply on 33-8-95

JS :I think there is a difference in art of all senses, in Europe than in the USA. There is a greater involvement and respect for art, in Europe. Children are raised to believe there is an importance of art in daily living, they are surrounded by it. Or so I observed,in my travels through
Europe and during my stay in Paris for 5 months. I was delighted to see very young children in the museums, drawing on paper, on the floor, from great masterpieces of Picasso, Matisse, and others. Art seems to be everywhere in Europe. From money to stamps to phonecards, to bus stops, murals, galleries, great gardens and architecture. As an artist, I can see the beauty of much of America, but it is very different. There is less of a general social appreciation for 'art'.

As far as mail art goes. I believe there is such a connection in the network, that any differences fade. Sometimes it seems that European mail artists are much more consistant in their
correspondence. Not that us Americans are "flakes" per se, or are we? Just kidding. I feel the mail art network, at least the core of folks I correspond with, are of the same breed,
that we all find each other because we are different from everyone else.

RJ :I know you sometimes do work with a computer. Do you also use it for your art? And for communication?

Reply on 26-9-1995

JS :I use my computer for many things. It's for letters, poetry, writing and artwork. Though in my artwork, I am still very "hands-on." I will use the computer to outline a design
or for exact measurements in boxes/lines/type, but for the rest, I love to draw by hand. I'll take what I started on the computer and finish the drawing with ink, pencil, paint,
whatever. And with my paintings, I never use the computer for anything! The image goes from my mind straight to the canvas - no "middle man"!

I do enjoy the computer, don't get me wrong, and I see wonderful artwork come from such electronic means. But I still respect the "old-fashioned" method when I see art that's been
drawn/painted by hand, I feel there's a more "human" aspect to it. Same with letters but when it is hand written, there's more of a connection with the person, the human-ness of the
act of writing.

I think computers have seperated us from much of our "humanness" of our relationship with "nature", and lean us toward the "artificial". In no way do I believe computers are "bad"
or technology is "evil", but there is a good balance between science & nature if we keep our heads together.

Computers are a marvel, they're fabulous, and I see a lot of potential for their use, beyond what we have now. But for now, I'll just use mine as I do for work & play. And I will still
be in awe at the work of a human hand, whether it be digging in the dirt of a garden or a child finger-painting, or a drawing of Mary Cassatt, or a surgeon at work, or someone
typing at a computer.

RJ : Where do you find your inspiration for your art?

Reply on 10-11-1995

(With her new answer Jenny Soup included a set of 4 photo's of her paintings ans also an announcement of her newest "in remembrance #14 which is ready and can be ordered)

JS :The word "inspiration" is so fleeting & ephemeral, to me. I try to find ideas for my artwork, in a multitude of places. Most of my paintings are done out of necessity to create. Of
course, many of my ideas first come from my head, from memory or fantasy & go directly to canvas. Sometimes I look through old photographs to get ideas & some image will jump out at me.

I am not a consistant painter. I lack discipline in this sense. I think much of painting is this discipline... combined with "inspiration". I will go through periods where I'll paint
for weeks straight, one painting after another, and then months of nothing at all!

I believe that everything is worth painting. From a piece of fruit, to the human face, to flowers, fantasy or everyday life. It all "inspires" me to create, yet I'll paint whatever I feel "in the mood" to paint!

RJ :Lets go back to the mail art. Globally there are two different attitudes towards the mail art people get. Some want to keep everything and start to create their own "archive"
while others rather like to pass on the things they receive and recycle most of the things the get from the network. What do you do?

Reply on 3-1-1996

JS :Well, I'm the third attitude! I tend to pick and choose
what I keep and what I pass on. I used to keep literally
everything, but as space ran out and box after box got full, I
began to reconsider keeping everything.

Whenever I receive two of the same things I will pass on one
to someone else. If I receive an abundance from one person, I
tend to pass on a few pieces. But mostly I will keep what I
receive - especially when I see that a lot of time & energy
has been put into making it. Often times I will receive
"trash" in the mail, seems people will just rip up a piece of
paper or what not, put it in an envelope and pass it on as
"mail art". I often don't keep it and frankly, I don't pass it
on either. I am not trying to be "elitist" by saying that,
because I'm not one to judge what is or is not mail art. I
just tend to save the items I receive that I see time and
effort in.

I have great respect for those who save and archive the mail
art they receive. You, Gaglione, John Held Jr., and others,
are providing a great service to all of us by documenting and
preserving such a unique communication and genre.

RJ :Well, I'm flattered by such comment. I know that there are
many more mail artists that archive a lot of what they
receive, and the biggest archive is without doubt that of Guy
Bleus in Belgium. Is documenting really that important? Do you
document all your art activities (for instance, do you keep a
list of all the mail you send out)?

Reply on 21-2-1996

JS :Forgive my initial exclusion in not listing one of the
greatest Archivists, Guy Bleus. Where was my mind?

Your question "Is documentation really that important?" brings
up a variety of emotions and thoughts. I learned many years
ago in Art School, from various sources the
phrase...."Documentation is everything". whether a
performance, a painting or an impact of a piece of work. And
this can be advantageous for the Artist in many circumstances.
And for historical value, documentation is a great aid in
preserving a "happening" or a piece or body of work.

But now, 10 years after I was told "Documentation is
everything", I don't believe it. On the other hand of the
documentation coin, I see it as a great restraint. Such
importance is placed on the past, on what has alrady happened.

It seems ironic to me, that mail art, such an ephemeral,
temporary art form, always in transition and a state of flux,
is held in boxes, and files, and forced into an archival
existance.

When I first started out in mail art, I did document a great
deal of what I received and what I sent out. I would
photograph decorated envelopes I made, and keep folders full
of xeroxed artworks I mailed out. After awhile, I questioned
why I was doing all this documenting. Why was I saving the
remnants and shadows of my sendings? I took on a different
view, and lived in the sending and receiving, not the delicate
perservation. When its sent, it's gone. Though I do have a
great deal of trouble throwing things away, to this day. Never
thrown out a letter. It all goes into boxes, largely
marked....MAIL, and thats it. I enjoy the now, and not in
reviewing and filing what's in the boxes. So.... why do I hang
on to the box? Who knows, maybe one day soon, I will build a
giant catapult and send each box off into space, one by one,
with a big bang! Or bury each box deep in the ground, to be
discovered by archeologists hundreds of years from now. And
whatever I choose to do with these boxes of mail, the bigger
question is, "Will I document the act of what I do with them?"

RJ :Well, at least you should invite some other mail artists
for such an occasion.....! There is another side to
documentation of course. The people who don't know anything
about mail art normally want to know about what has been going
on and what it is all about. The only sources nowadays are the
mail artists themselves and (if they keep any) their archives.
The books about mail art mostly are written by mail artists,
and non-participants just don't seem to understand what mail
art is all about. How would you reply to a person that asks
about your "mail art" when you know he/she doesn't know what
it is about?

Reply on 16-3-1996

JS :I agree with your point about the documentation - that's
why I mentioned that it does have historical value. Much of
history is based upon such preserved remnants of an era, or
genre of subculture. Of course the other side of that coin is
that what "we" base history on, is a very small portion of the
overall scene. Historically - the archives that are being kept
and written about and looked at, are only a percentage of the
overall picture. Usually "history" comes out very one sided &
biased. Are the "big names" in mail art, that every one notes,
and writes about, are they giving an acurate account of the
mail art scene, entirely? I don't know, I'm just throwing out
the question. And do people within the scene include or
exclude certain people at a whim, when they choose?

From my experiences and observations, I notice the 'cliques'
in mail art, the closed circles that are very difficult to
enter. I wonder if this will affect the historical
representation of mail art. Mail art hasn't truely hit the
mainstream of society, so few people do know what it's about.
The popularity of rubber stamps & art made from them did open
up a lot of people into the mail art realm, that weren't aware
of it before. Many of my friends over the years have admired
the mail I receive and ask about it. They see the decorated
envelopes, rubberstamp art, xeroxed stuff inside or whatever,
and they are very intriged. They think it's wonderful & ask
what it is all about. The easiest response is that its art
that gets about through the mail. Big art, small art, xeroxed,
painted, written, anything goes. And like a chain letter, once
you've sent out a few pieces your name and address are picked
up and the network process kicks in. You'll always have
someone to send things to, and you'll always be receiving
something.

I would be so interested in the observations of non-mail-art
participants. I would almost be more interested in reading
that, than a book written by a mail artist. Hmmmm. A good
theme for a mail art show?

RJ :This is probably an essential point, this last remark.
Mail art is still for the people that participate in the
network. Others who get to see it, haven't gone through the
process of networking, and only see the piece of mail as a
final result. Exhibiting mail art in a museum or a gallery is
therefore always quite difficult. And maybe it isn't even
necesarry at all. Maybe your theme for a mail art show is
interesting. Ask someone in your surroundings to observe the
mail artist for a specific time, and make a report........
Hmmmm. Actually, I kind of stopped with doing those
'traditional' mail art shows, where you ask the 'network' to
send in their works to a specific theme. How about you?

Reply on 13-4-1996

JS :I honestly do about 3 to 4 Mail Art shows per year. For a
long time I did every show I heard about, and for awhile it
was fun and interesting. I like the general idea of rounding
up a variety of perspectives on a singular subject, but I feel
the mail art show falls short of what it's potential could be.
For example, a call comes through the mail for works on the
theme of... Whatever. Maybe it's a trendy theme, such as a
certain war that exists, and everyone is really against this
war and the violence, and all the work submitted reflects
their views on this. All this artwork is sent to one person,
who types up the contributors names on a list, puts together a
nice booklet and sends them back to those who sent in the
work. This seems like a very small, closed circle. Even if the
work is shown in a gallery or library or other venue, people
come in and look at the work, agree or disagree with the
issues set forth, and then they go home. If we can all get
together on some level to express our ideas, as in this
example, for instance being against a certain war, then let us
use all this energy to make a change, make situations better.
Use our voices in channels that can cause an affect on a given
situation.

I am not implying, in any way, that Art has no power, in fact
it can be a very powerful tool and medium to affect the
masses. But it must be directed to do so, and done
efficiently. An incestuous mail art show is not using all that
creative power efficiently. If a mail art show was arranged on
the subject of war or child abuse or even trees, instead of
sending all the work to just one mail artist, have everyone
send something to a figure in a position to do something about
it. Send all the tree mail art, and why we are sending it, to
the person or people in charge of our national parks or
government officials who can pass stricter environmental laws.
If the issue is war then send all the works to the government
officials initiating and perpetuating the war. Use this
marvelous creative energy to DO SOMETHING, not just fatten
ourselves in the glutenous files of mail art and show
documentations. I see all of us falling short of what we are
capable of doing, of what can be done along the same lines of
the mail art show, but it really meaning something.

To further this point, if I was involved (involuntarily) in
the war around Bosnia and I heard of someone putting together
a mail art show about the war, and thought of all the money
and energy and time to mail it all out, collect, document,
etc., and all the energy of those sending work to someone
somewhere in another country most likely, I would be so
utterly offended. I would think and say to myself, "So what?
My family was just killed by gunfire, what do I care of
artwork in a file, and names of contributors on a list. I
could die tomorrow because of this war." Instead of mailing a
xeroxed art piece to another mail artist, I write letters to
government officials.

In the large scheme of things, what is the big deal of a mail
art show? I believe the mail art show and the mail art scene
need to evolve. They need to evolve for many reasons, to
continue their existence, to create importance, and to keep up
with evolving mail artists.

RJ :How did YOU evolve through mail art? What did mail art
teach you when you look back at almost ten years of being a
mail artist?

Reply on 28-5-1996

JS :When you learn and experience a great deal, you
automatically evolve (or devolve). I learned a great deal from
mail art itself, as well as individual people in the network.
Mail art was such an unusual medium at the time, for me. I had
always been a "letter-writer" by nature, I do a lot of
writing, poetry, stories, journals, etc. But the "mail" became
an incredible outlet once I discovered mail art, not just a
pen-pal thing anymore. I learned by observance, and
experimentation that "anything goes!". It was scary, yet
releasing feeling. I began to "push the envelope" pardon the
pun), and this testing of the boundaries naturally reflected
into my Artwork, my paintings and collages. Mail art taught me
to express and try new things, not to be scared if they didn't
work out completely, that the journey and the action, the
"performance", so to speak, was the real essence. There was no
real success or failure, it was not a black and white world.
At the time it was all gray, and all open for discovery and
exploration. I danced in the realms of Dada and Fluxus, began
to appreciate Performance Art, and pretty much the Art of
Life!

I am so thankful for what I have experienced through mail art.
The people I met and exchanged with. The personal aspect I
experience in mail art, is the real appeal for me. The artwork
received and exchanged is wonderful, but for me it is the
people and their lives that I grow fond of, that I wish to
stay in touch with, with or without the realm of mail art.
There was a real transition through the years for me. At first
I was absorbed by the Artwork, what I received, what I sent
out, and then over the years it became the people. The lives
of those I exchange work and letters with, held so much more
importance than the work. In that holds the key to how I have
evolved in mail art.

RJ :Well maybe this is a nice moment to end the interview, or
is there something I forgot to ask you?

Reply on 27-6-1996

(together with Jenny Soup's answer she sent me a copy of her newest "In
remembrance" #15.

JS :I would like to say how very much I have enjoyed doing
this interview with you. What a tremendous project. In looking
back, it has almost taken a year to complete! Your questions
set a lot of thoughts into motion, about mail art and life! I
had a great time thinking about and answering your questions.
I hope your readers enjoy our correspondence, too. Thanks
Ruud.

RJ : Thank you too for this interview Jenny!

Address mail-artist:

Jenny Soup,
P.O.Box 1168-584
Studio City
CA 91604 - USA

Address interviewer:

Ruud Janssen - TAM
P.O.Box 1055
4801 BB - BREDA
Holland
e-mail : r.janssen@iuoma.org

Mail-Interview with Ken Friedman (Norway)

2006-10-01T01:56:00.000-07:00

INTERVIEW
WITH
KEN FRIEDMAN
BY
RUUD JANSSEN

(NORWAY)

This interview was done complete with the use of internet in the period May till December 1995. The illustration are made by Ken Friedman, and the appendixes contain some texts connected to the interview.

© TAM-PUBLICATIONS 1996

TAM-960104

INTERVIEW WITH KEN FRIEDMAN

RJ: When did you get involved in the mail‑art network.

KF: In 1966, when I came into contact with Fluxus and with Ray Johnson.

RJ: How did you get in contact with Ray Johnson?

KF: Dick Higgins introduced me to Ray. In 1964 or 1965, Dick published Ray's book, The Paper Snake. I already knew the book. In August of 1966, I was visiting Dick in New York. Dick had a huge production camera in his basement where he worked every night, listening to Beach Boys records and shooting plates for Something Else Press books. One night, he used the big camera to shoot a portrait of me, the portrait that was published in Jon Hendricks's Fluxus Codex. Dick suggested I ought to send something to Ray. I chopped a negative of the photo into a jig‑saw puzzle and mailed it. That was our first contact.

In those days, corresponding with Ray was more personal than after he got his Xerox machine. We exchanged a lot of work over the years. Everything was one‑to‑one with Ray in those days. Even after he got the Xerox machine, Ray remained a spider at the center of his web and tried to mediate as many of the interactions between his contacts as possible. Ray had no philosophical relationship to the Eternal Network. He wasn't interested in social issues or public space. He was interest in a forum for his poetic activity.

Ray's approach was private, personal, poetic and it was different from those of the Fluxus artists who aspired to broad social discourse. That discourse was a key aspect of the Fluxus approach. It was an implicit network approach, a public and social way of working with art and communication. That was one reason I became active in Fluxus. I got involved in the mail art network through Fluxus and Dick Higgins. Dick introduced me to Ray Johnson and the New York Correspondence School. There was a lot of overlap between the groups but different kinds of activity took place in each.

RJ: Fluxus seems to have earned a place in history. Lots of books have been published, most of them by people who aren't Fluxus artists. With mail art, it seems to be different. Almost all books, magazines, articles are written by mail artists. Whenever someone who is not a mail artist tries to write about mail art, it comes out as a strange story. On the other hand, what mail artists write is often misunderstood by outsiders. Will it stay like this? If so, why?

KF: The first people to write about Fluxus were the Fluxus artists ourselves, describing our ideas, our work. Several Fluxus people are skilled writers. Some have worked as editors and publishers. Over the years, we defined Fluxus, writing our ideas and our history in our own words. These writings shaped the first wave of Fluxus literature. Intellectual focus and literary skill were two reasons. The third reason was that we felt we had to do it. Thirty years ago, people didn't know how to respond to the work and it was easiest for critics and historians not to respond at all. If we wanted to put our ideas into play, we had to do it ourselves. We organized our own exhibitions and performances, published our own art and music in scores and multiples, wrote published our theories of art, music, literature and design in essays and books.

We published through several presses, but there were two central Fluxus publishers. One was Fluxus, the publications and multiples organized by editor‑chairman George Maciunas in New York, producing mostly multiples. Something Else Press was the other, producing books. Fluxus objects ran in editions of a few dozen and Something Else Press books ran in editions ranging from 1,000 to 3,000 copies. These circulated widely enough to affect the cultural life of the United States and Europe. Along with our own presses, we were occasionally given special magazine issues.

The second wave of writers on Fluxus was typified by Fluxus friends and enthusiasts. This included critics such as Thomas Albright or Henry Martin, curators and gallerists such as René Block, Jon Hendricks and Harry Ruhé, archivists like Jean Sellem and Hanns Sohm. Fluxus artists continued to write in an environment where there were more artists in Fluxus than critics or scholars who wanted to write about us. The third wave of writing on Fluxus began in the 1970s when trained scholars began to examine Fluxus in papers and articles. The first doctoral dissertation on Fluxus was in anthropology, written by Marilyn Ekdahl Ravicz at the University of California at Los Angeles in 1974. Art historians first became interested in Fluxus in the 1970s. The first was Peter Frank. By the late 1970s they included Stephen C. Foster, Estera Milman and Jan van der Marck along with scholars in comparative literature such as Georg M Gugelberger Philip Auslander in theater.

In the 1980s and 1990s, available literature on Fluxus began to expand. Growing interest across several disciplines was one reason. Another was the wide availability of publications by Jon Hendricks. The availability source material made an important difference as scholars and writers who became interested in Fluxus had the chance to examine images of work that had often been a rumor more than a fact.

By the 1990s, art historians and critics began to discover Fluxus and intermedia and make the major focus of their work. These included Europeans such as Marianne Bech and Ina Conzen‑Meairs, Americans such as Kathy O'Dell and Kristine Stiles, Asians such as Hong Hee Kim Cheon, and Keiko Ashino. These were the years of the first significant body of writing by trained scholars specializing in Fluxus: Simon Anderson at the Royal College of Art in London, Owen Smith at the University of Washington, Ina Blom at the University of Oslo, David Doris at Hunter College, Hannah Higgins at the University of Chicago and Karen Moss at the University of Southern California.

The growth of Fluxus writing from the artists to independent scholars was characterized by overlaps between Fluxus artists and their friends; between artists and scholars; between artist‑scholars and scholars who began to make art. That era has come to close. Scholars and critics now come to Fluxus as outsiders. Curators and editors now work on the basis of secondary material and they can't always discuss issues and ideas with the artists, composers, designers and architects whose work they present. Even so, there is much source material available. Higgins, Filliou, Williams, Knizak, Flynt, Vautier, Paik and I have all written extensively. Brecht, Beuys, Christiansen, Klintberg and others have written from time to time.

Most important, the Fluxus writers knew their own history and many have been broadly conversant in general culture, culture theory and art history. This makes a qualitative difference between Fluxus and mail art. Few mail artists know their own history well. They tend to oppose historical writing and thinking. They are often anti‑experimental and judgmental about intellectual issues, believing that scholarship, theory and intellectual process are the antithesis of the network spirit. As a result, they don't know that many of the authors writing on Fluxus have also written on mail art.

Mail art seems to be different for several reasons. Most of the books, magazines and articles these days are written by mail‑artists. Only a few have a scholarly tone or even a public tone. That tone and a way of communicating so that others can understand gives the basis for others to write on a subject. Only a handful of mail art writers make sense to outside scholars. You can count them on your fingers ‑‑ Chuck Welch, Mike Crane, Judy Hoffberg, Anna Banana, Jon Held, John Jacob.

Even so, it's a bit of a myth to suggest that there are always mistakes whenever non‑mail artists write about mail art as compared to writing on art in general. Mail artists do as well as any group of artists. There are a dozen excellent writers whose articles were central to developing the network. Those articles often introduced the idea of mail art to new mail artists.

Mail art people have their own, strongly held opinions. When you combine strong opinions with a lack of historical knowledge, what outsiders write on mail art can seem strange. There's another reason people don't write about mail art. It's easy to be attacked. From time to time, a writer or curator who generally does an excellent job offends part of the network. When the offended parties involve their friends in harsh response, the noise grows to deafening proportions. I recall several highly visible examples and they've been a reason for some excellent writers and historians to stop writing on mail art. Mail art is a minor field for art historians and art journals. You don't get much credit for working on mail art but you can get a lot of anger. In a situation with few rewards and plenty of ways to find trouble, there's little reason to write.

Will this stay like this? It will until mail art people learn broad, public language. Mail artists often claim to seek broad public discourse. They claim to be open to issues and ideas. But many behave like small‑town gossips complaining over the strange doings in the next town. There's little tolerance for differences of opinion, style or culture. The reasons for that kind of culture aren't clear. I have some suspicions but no answers. You'd expect a different sensibility on the network, broader, more international, more intercultural. Every times I imagine that things are improving, an unpleasant encounter suggests that the mail art network is what it's been for two decades now. The mail art network has developed a stable culture with a fairly stable population at any given moment and a certain number of relatively stable ways of interacting. It leads me to wonder about the degree to which the mail art network and the Eternal Network coincide. I can't see the Eternal Network in the village morals and parochial behavior patterns of the mail art network.

RJ: You say that the mail art network has somehow developed a fairly stable structure. The last years there have been some new aspects to the network. The use of the FAX‑machines, and the introduction of the Internet for some of the networkers. I remember your reply to Guy Bleus's FAX‑project in which you explained why you don't take part in network Telefax Art Projects. Do you take part in Internet Art‑projects?

KF: No, I don't, but not for any particular reason. There haven't been many well thought out art projects on Internet. Most art mediated by Internet or e‑mail aren't exciting. E‑mail works well for correspondence and literature. Web sites make visual art possible. But most artists using the medium aren't doing work that interests me. If the work isn't interesting, I won't take part just because it's presented in cyberspace.

RJ: Since the beginning, the term "mail artist" has been used in relation to correspondence. Now everybody is talking about "networkers" and "networking." Somehow I see that the focus isn't as much on art as it is on communication. What do you think about this?

KF: My use of terms "mail art" and "correspondence art" is flexible. I don't use the term "networking" to describe art. The term I use depends on the aspect of the work to be emphasized. I also use the term communications art. My work with mail or correspondence isn't my main interest. It's part of a larger inquiry. The idea of a network of people doing mail art, correspondence art or E‑mail art as "networkers" or "tourists" bothers me. Any group of people communicating with each other constitutes a network. What makes one network different than another? The focus and content of their communication. When a network begins to focus primarily on the fact that it is communicating, it becomes a group of pen‑pals, a small‑town social club. The larger networks we can form allow us to step outside the boundaries that were once imposed by time and space. Even though we can transcend the restrictions of local culture, the mail art network has built its own small town culture. This culture is enacted in a fragmented but linked environment. It's described as the mail art network because it grew up around the mail art scene. The culture celebrates its local heroes. Its members set up their own rules and interact in a restrictive and problematic way. The "networkers network" and the "tourist network" are contrary to what interested me in the broad, open‑ended phenomenon ‑‑ cultural, intellectual, spiritual ‑‑ that Filliou termed "the Eternal Network."

I don't talk about networkers or networking. The network doesn't interest me as a network. It's no better and no worse than most social clubs. Networks are interesting for what they can do, what they transmit, what they can achieve.

RJ: What IS the primary focus of your work ? What is the larger inquiry you mention ?

KF: The broad focus of my work is art as a tool for research, creative and rigorous experiments in different domains of culture, meaning and consciousness. Every search has many levels. Some levels are abstract. Some are concrete. I stake out problems that interest me and work them through in different ways. That sounds abstract but the work is quite concrete, a response to specific ideas and situations. The situations and ideas change like conversations or food. There are issues that interest you or foods you like but you don't want the same conversation or the same meal all the time. That's what makes what I do quite different from what many artists do. Most art is based on a style or format. People play with the style format. It defines their work as artists and enables their public to recognize them. That way of working is characteristic of artists in most media, including mail art.

The whole point of research and experimentation is developing useful tools and interesting ways of approaching problems. The issues that interest me change. The question of tools and problem solving has been constant. Some of my experiments shaped tools or approaches to art that others can use. At one point in the 1960s, I was interested in how experimental artists were communicating, how they worked with one another, how they interacted. That interest led to a series of projects involving mailing lists and 'zines. The lists gave birth to projects such as the File magazine lists and to directories such as Art Diary. 'Zines such as Amazing Facts or the New York Correspondence School Weekly Breeder helped to define a way of publishing mail art that has widely used since then. Next, I began to wonder how to open mail art network to a broad public. That gave rise to three mail art exhibitions at The Oakland Museum, Henry Art Galley in Seattle and the Joslyn Art Museum in Omaha. Those experiments gave rise to useful paradigms that others were able to adapt and use.

According to Chuck Welch, these three shows became the model for most the mail art exhibitions and projects since the early 1970s. My purpose with mail art wasn't to do mail art but to engage larger issues. Intermedia and Fluxus projects predominate in the total range of my work. Like everyone, I take part in projects I like. Every situation sparks ideas. I often work in response to an idea from another artist. Sometimes an idea just pops into mind. Every artist has both experiences. The scope of my interests has been evolving for over thirty years. I did many of these things as a child. George Maciunas saw some of those things when I was sixteen and invited me into Fluxus. Thirty years is a long time. That's 360 months, 1,560 weeks or 10,950 days. You can get a lot done in thirty years if you keep busy. The specifics change. The overall approach and philosophy has been the same.

My philosophy and activities are described in a number of articles and serious interviews. They'll answer the question better than a quick reply.

RJ: When I sent the first question for this interview, you sent me a bibliography of books and articles where I could find your thoughts on paper. Here, again, you mention your attempt to describe your philosophy and activities at any time. Why is documenting your activities important for you?

KF: Documentation is the place to look for ideas, art works or events from the past. We continually construct and reconstruct our reality through thought and memory. Documents are a tool. This is natural for artists who work with intermedia and or concept art, including mail art, 'zines, lists, tapes, letters, even interviews. Art media that function at a distance or over time require documents. Even so, while the document offers an entry into dialogue with the work, it's not the same as the work. The score to an event is the score. It has a valid function as a document and in some cases, it is also a work in its own right. There is also the realized event, and the realization exists in another way. Documents were aspects of art long before the era of concept art and intermedia. Earlier documents include the musical score and libretto for an opera, the text of a play, the blueprint of a building. They're all documents and they're all works in their own right for people who can read them and comprehend them through the act of reading. It is nevertheless true that few people can successfully read and comprehend a musical score or the blueprint of a building. For most people, these documents are more important as keys to a realization.

You can say that I began working with documents of art when I saw the books Dick Higgins was publishing, Ray Johnson's Paper Snake, Dick's own Postface/Jefferson's Birthday, the Great Bear Pamphlets, Daniel Spoerri's Anecdoted Topography of Chance, Robert Filliou's Ample Food for Stupid Thought. These books were documents and through them, a body of work and a way of thinking came to life for me. The Fluxus multiples and publications worked in much the same way.

I'd ask your question another way. We live in the age of information and intermedia. Can any serious artist work without documentation? Don't most contemporary artists cross back and forth between ideas, the representation of ideas and the realization of ideas?

RJ: I couldn't work without documentation. But there may be a danger in documentation if it forms its own truth. Reality ‑‑ things that happen in a specific moment ‑‑ can never be captured by objective documentation because reality is different for everybody who observes it. Everyone recognizes his own truth through the act of observation. Isn't there a danger in the possibility that those who create the documents dictate the shape of history? Is documentation that powerful?

KF: This is a danger. It's a basic problem that we face in all forms of documentation, no matter who makes them and no matter the purpose for which they're made. It seems to me that there is a strong argument to be made for a variety of clear, understandable sources of document from several views. In the recent past, most documentation on art has been compiled or presented by a handful of journalists, critics and finally by art historians. I suggest that there can be valid approaches to art documentation by scholars from several fields and by artists themselves.

The better, the broader, the more clear and conscious a body or documents is, the better we can understand what's happened. I believe that documentation has valid goals and purposes. These purposes can be realized or abused. How we handle documentation, how much and how well, makes the difference.

RJ: How active are you in mail art at this moment. Do you still send "snail mail," or has the Internet taken over? This question comes out of my personal curiosity. I haven't had any exchange of mail art with you and I'm not sure if you are still active. I guess that future readers of this interview will be interested, too. I see your name in lots of Internet‑related materials and I have only received e‑mail from you, so that's the reason for my question.

KF: These days, other projects take most of my time. I'm not active in mail art. I exchange with friends like Dick Higgins or Jean‑Noel Laszlo and I follow the work of important figures like Chuck Welch or Dobrica Kamperelic. Even so, I haven't been directly active in mail art for a long time. I do something when I'm inspired by an idea or a message. Mail art always took two forms for me. One was exchange when someone sent me an idea or a work. The other was when I had an experiment I wanted to attempt. Not many people send me mail these days, individual pieces meant specifically for me. I don't respond to printed things or mass‑produced objects meant for thousands of people. Once in a while, someone does develop an amazing mass‑produced piece, but the normal mail art going about these days consists of photocopy collages that don't interest me.

There are no experiments I want to try using the mail these days, either. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, I set out a program of projects and experiments using the mails. I look on much of what I do in art as a form of research. You can consider my mail art experiments as a research program. I completed the research a long time ago. Part of what I set out to do was to test the limits, possibilities and paradigms of the post office with projects like the pieces of furniture that I mailed or finding different ways to send objects that stretched the limits of postal regulations.

The other series of experiments was an attempt to find ways to define mail art as a system, an opportunity, a network. I described some of these experiments and projects earlier in our interview. Internet is a terrific communications tool, not an interesting artistic tool. The technology is still too crude to make good use of Internet for art. Or, to put it another way, the technology that is sophisticated enough to use for art is time‑consuming and expensive. I've like simple, inexpensive tools. That's one of the things I loved about mail art. With Netscape and Eudora, Internet is a simple, inexpensive communication tool. That's what I use it for. Pioneers like Joe De Marco see Internet and the World Wide Web as good art tool, but even the best projects to date have actually been communication projects, communicating art. I don't know what's next.

If you see my name in connection with Internet, it's because I give wide permission to circulate my work. It's likely to be related to my work on the faculty of the Norwegian School of Management. Internet has become an important tool for my work as a scholar and as director of the Nordic Center for Innovation. The reason you and i communicate by e‑mail is that we both have it. For those of us lucky enough to have e‑mail, there's no better or faster way to send words back and forth.

RJ: I have noticed that most people don't archive their e‑mail as properly as they do with the printed matters they receive. I myself save all e‑mail on diskette, and I even print out the important parts on paper because I like to re‑read things on paper rather then on the monitor of my computer. How do you deal with the e‑mail you get and send?

KF: E‑mail is easier to archive than snail mail. Paper builds up ... books, letters, files. There's never enough time to file and organize. E‑mail is easy. It shows up on my screen. My computer is well‑organized and filed because it's easy to handle everything sitting at the keyboard. There's no need to find a file or shelf space or to move around the room sorting and seeking. If I want to save e‑mail, which I often do, I copy and paste it into a word processor file. Sometimes there's a reason to make a paper copy. When I do, it gets lost with all the other paper. The electronic copy is easy to find. It's right on the computer where I left it.

RJ: How much do you know about computers?

KF: Very little, really. I use a Macintosh because it works the way I do. Computers are a powerful, sophisticated tool. Now are they becoming smart enough to be useful to most people for most jobs. The breakthrough came with the Mac.

I started using Mac in 1988 when the Mac got smart enough to handle big jobs, including serious design work. A client wanted me to create a design program his staff could use for internally‑generated publications. I went to his office to help him draw up the design. He showed me how easy it was to use Aldus PageMaker and Microsoft Word to do it myself. It took about two or three hours of coaching and then I was working productively. There are people who are excited about what they call computer literacy. Not me. I want the tool to be smart enough to do what I need it to do with minimum special skills on my part. I've done some research and publishing on the ways that the new information will affect society and culture, but I've focused specifically on the human and behavioral effects of information, not on information technology or information processing. Would you like to read the chapter that I've written for a new book on the subject just published by Scandinavian University Press? The title is: Information Science: From the Development of the Discipline to Social Interaction. My chapter focused on social interaction. It won't tell you too much about my ideas about computers. I don't have that many ideas about computers. It will tell you what I think about what computers mean for the rest of us.

RJ: Since I work with computers it would be interesting for me to read, but probably not for all readers of this interview. At the moment, with Internet, it is also possible to publish your texts in a digital form. Is this something you would like to do?

KF: Absolutely. Internet and computers make it possible to transact enormous amounts of valuable information on a useful and selective basis without paying to overproduce. Unlike books, you don't need a minimum number of orders to break even. That means individual thinkers with proper technical support can publish as easily as best‑selling authors. Nam June Paik predicted the information superhighway years ago. He even created the name! Fluxus, mail art and Internet go back to the beginning, before the beginning. Narrowcasting and narrowcast publishing on the net are new version of Nam June's Utopian Laser Television. Before long, computers with small cameras and optical fiber cable will be so common that we'll be able to set up our own television cable broadcasts, the true realization Utopian Laser Television.

Thanks to Nam June, I've been publishing on‑line for since last year. When Nam June organized the New York ‑ Seoul Fluxus Festival, he arranged a web site where our work was available on‑line. In typical mail art fashion, I'll brag about being first to say that Nam June's show was the first on‑line art exhibition. I presented some scores. Now, Joe De Marco is developing a major on‑line web site for Fluxus. There are scores, art works, and there will later be documents, texts, historical material. Joe has been in touch with historians like Owen Smith and he's getting in touch with major collections and archives. He hopes to put up a Fluxus archive and museum on the site. There will also be pages for work by individual artists. The Fluxus Home page is <> We already have The Fluxus Performance Workbook on‑line. Interested people can visit the site to browse, copy and download scores by Ay‑O, Genpei Akasegawa, Eric Andersen, Robert Bozzi, George Brecht, Albert M Fine, Ken Friedman, Lee Heflin, Hi Red Center, Dick Higgins, Toshi Ichiyanagi, Joe Jones, Bengtaf Klintberg, Milan Knizak, Alison Knowles, Takehisa Kosugi, George Maciunas, Richard Maxfield, Larry Miller, Yoko Ono, Nam June Paik, Tomas Schmit, Mieko Shiomi, Ben Vautier, Robert Watts and Emmett Williams. The workbook was planned in 1987 or so. I edited it. It was published by Guttorm Nord°, a Norwegian artist who has been active in mail art. It took almost four years to raise the money and publish the workbook. It took about four days between the time Joe De Marco contacted me and the time it was ready to use on the net. You can also find Dick Higgins's Cowboy Plays on the Fluxus Home Page and there's lots more to come.

The most use I make of Internet involves scholarly research and communication. I recently completed a survey using Internet. It took me a few weeks to compile the empirical data at a cost of a few hundred kroner. Before Internet, the same survey would have taken months of work and cost at least twenty times as much. Getting decent results, stimulating people to answer the questions and engaging their interest still requires training and skill. Writing is still writing. But the Internet is a great tool. If you have organization, research and writing skills, every step of the physical process is more simple and the costs go down. Just a few minutes before you sent me the last question, I released the on‑line pre‑print of a study titled Books in the Age of On‑Line Information: Will We Read Fewer or More Books? Statistical Summary and Preliminary Conclusions. The Norwegian School of Management will publish the working paper next month. People can get it on e‑mail request and decide if they want the working paper by snail mail. Everything just moves faster and more effectively. (A few weeks after this questions and answer took place, the study was published as a special report by the American Association of Higher Education. The study was also discussed in the "Cyberscape" column of the International Herald Tribune on Monday, December 4, 1995.)

RJ: Speed is a relative thing. I'm not referring to Einstein's theory. I've noticed that if one can do things more quickly with computers, one starts to do more work in the same time, makes new tasks for oneself in the free time that is given through the use of the computer. Communication used to be a slow process. All technological advances speed up the communication process. This results in more communication, but only for those who have access to the technology. Isn't this scary?

KF: There are two issues embedded in your question. The first issue is that we do more work in the same time. That's not scary to me. The second is that we face the challenge of a world of unequal access to information. That frightens me for many reasons. If you want me to go into it, I will, but to do so, I've got to consider political economics and closely reasoned argument. It's up to you if you think the readers of a mail art dialogue will find that interesting. Let's consider the first issue, the speed of work. I'm happy for the gains in speed. I love to work. The computer enables me to be more productive as a researcher and writer. The information superhighway enables me to travel farther, to gather information faster and more effectively. My one problem with the infobahn is that it's poorly organized. The structure is frequently confusing and uninformative. We'll see things improve vastly in the next three or four years.

Poor structure is annoying to me. New ways of solving problems, new ways of accessing and organizing information, new structures that emerge from the flow of information should, in theory, permit us to address and use the power of questions more effectively. The ability to work with more kinds of information across broad ranges of time and space and the opportunity to seek information from more sources make it possible for users to work in different ways than were previously possible. Some of these ways are more effective, some are less. Those who have had to work with remote libraries and closed‑stack systems find the new information technology a tremendous opportunity. In some ways, it is not much different than the libraries they have been using except that it places access control in their hands. In some ways, it is superior: it puts a vast amount of information and the contents of many documents directly on their desk with far less waiting time than was required when ordering through a library.
Those who have had the opportunity to work in major, open‑stack libraries may find the new information technology something of a lateral move. An effective information user with field‑specific expertise and solid general reference skills can navigate a multi‑million volume library and make use of the materials far more effectively than is yet possible through the new technology. The difference is simple. A good, large‑scale library permits effective browsing and grazing as well as hunting. The physical medium of the book and the way libraries organize books near one another allows rapid access to the domain of what one does not know that one does not know. This allows one to ask general, open‑ended questions in a wide variety of ways. While the information superhighway is loaded with documents and ways of finding material that can be surprising and serendipitous, finding useful connections to expert sources can also be surprisingly hard. The infobahn isn't indexed very well. Developing effective indexing and abstracting systems has always been a key problem for information. This is also true for the medium of physical books and documents in paper‑technology libraries. The difference is that physical artifacts present themselves organized in some way that rapidly begins to make sense to the user. As a result, the intelligent information user soon structures a conceptual library access pattern. This pattern is an information overlay and navigation chart that becomes an operating system for a multi‑million volume paper analog information network. Few information users can master the conceptual content of the Internet. It is possible to master the structure and understand the basic content of a physical library. It simply takes examination, practice and footwork. The Internet is too big, and undergoes too much rapid change to make that kind of mastery possible. Good indexes and abstracts together with good links and pointers will be the only way most people can master the conceptual content of the Internet. There's a big difference between being afraid and being annoyed. As these problems are solved, I will welcome the improvements. If I want to work more, it's fine. If I just want to do more in the same time, it's fine. I may want to do less and use the time in other ways. We have choices. I've been thinking about these questions for a week now, the week since I released my preprint report. It's been an exciting, productive week. I was able to do more work and better work in less time at lower cost. Within three or four days of my preprint getting out, I've had requests for copies from nearly two hundred scholars and researchers in over twenty nations around the world, including people I didn't meet or contact through the original study. Major international magazines and newspapers have contacted me asking for copies. The American Association for Higher Education asked to publish the preprint on their Web Site. I'm finally beginning to understand why the physical scientists who have used Internet have been so much more productive and resourceful than social scientists or humanists. It's impossible to describe the profound difference in productivity this technology permits. It allows teams, it allows for sharing, it allows people who ought to be thinking and working together despite great distances to do so. It's one thing to read about something in a magazine and think, "Yeah, that's a good idea." It's a another to do it. When you work this way, you understand why this technology is a major development in our ability to serve each other. Information technology is the first significant technology that enables us to increase our standard of living while reducing our material resources consumption. That, for better or worse, brings us to your second question. Do you really want my thoughts?

RJ: The problem of access to this digital superhighway is obvious. You have to live in a country with the infrastructure for Internet, you need to have access to a computer, you need to have the money for an account subscription and the phone. I enjoy the possibilities of this new tool because I live in a rich country with the infrastructure and economy to make this possible. The government in Holland also sponsors servers that make Internet access and e‑mail cheap, too. I am interested in your thoughts about unequal access to information. Many mail artists see Internet as a next step for mail artists, the newest way to communicate.

KF: There are two issues to consider. I'll take the simple one first. Most mail artists don't understand what Internet is good for. I'm not speaking in a technological sense. I'm speaking in terms of culture and communication. Mail art has hardly ever been about broad communication. It's based on small town culture writ large. The mail art network is insular, internalized, self‑centered. There's little understanding of history and culture, even little knowledge about the history of mail art. The idea of artists who think this way using Internet as a new way to communicate is a joke. The results aren't interesting.

Mail art has become boring. Mail art mottoes don't disguise the fact that mail artists are in many ways a social club. They're like any other club. We don't ascribe any kind of great value to groups of pen‑pals or people who visit each other across borders. What would we think if a group of pen‑pals claimed to be changing history, revolutionizing art and advancing human progress? Tourism? Networker conferences? The Scouts have been doing it for a century.

Mail art will remain a disappointment without a richer foundation in knowledge, culture and communication theory. The effects of the information society and the knowledge economy are revolutionizing the world. Mail artists haven't recognized the nature of those changes. They're working out of old paradigms that don't make sense today. Perhaps mail art and correspondence art were revolutionary in the 1960s. The world was different. In that distant and more primitive world, mail art was startling and innovative. Mail art had already become self‑centered and internalized by the 1970s. The world was shaking. The Cold War was still on but change was in the air. Mail artists were still doing the same old thing, sending the same old messages back and forth to each other. I got into big trouble with a series of essays and pamphlets titled Freedom, Excellence and Choice. I became an outcast in the mail art community. I was startled by the nasty letters and hate cards that I got. I had pursued the same agenda from the start. The network was irritated over the same philosophy and ideas that put me at odds with the art world and gave birth to many of the mail art media now in use. By the 1970s, pursuing those ideas in a thoughtful and critical way put me at odds with the mail art network.

Mail art has no major role to play in the world today. There's no need for mail art on the Internet. The net's a different kind of medium. It needs play, ideas and exchange. It doesn't need mail art. People who see the Internet as an arena for mail art are missing the point. Information technology has opened old fields to entirely new approaches. The technology is helping us to transform information into knowledge by making it possible to work and play in new ways. The information society is shifting the boundaries of most professions, transforming job descriptions and reconstructing businesses. It would be amazing art were to be left untouched.

The world has moved farther than mail art has. The old paradigms don't hold. Mail artists make too much of their supposedly radical nature without a solid grounding in common human issues. Radical artistic efforts that react against vanished paradigms seem quaint, irrelevant.

RJ: And the second answer, the difficult one?

KF: The second question is extraordinarily difficult. The idea that part of the world will have access to information technology while much of it won't is profoundly disturbing. If the developed world leaves the rest of the world behind, we'll have to build a huge wall to keep out the billions of people who want what we have. That won't work. On the other hand, shaping sustainable development for everyone is a huge problem, just huge.

The flow of information through societies, through organizations, through companies can make a profound difference. But things are difficult. We must make things work in an interlocked system of public policies, business policies and private desires that are headed in directions that don't lead toward the world we need to shape. I am convinced of the importance of these issues and aware of the extraordinary challenges that face us if we are to achieve enough in the next half century for the human race to survive on this planet.

The flow of information and the development of a good life for all are linked. The development of a good life for all with sustainable development is not the altruism of the rich for the poor, but a key to a good future for everyone. This excites me more than mail art. Back in the 1960s, it was possible to believe that art and the postal system could reshape the world.

To some degree, it was possible then. Those challenges excited me when they seemed possible. It was always kind of a dream, but it was a useful dream. Today, other dreams are more productive.

RJ: I think this is a good place to end the interview. Thank you for your time and energy !

Addresses:

Ken Friedman, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, Leadership and Strategic Design
Norwegian School of Management
Box 4676 Sofienberg
N‑0506 Oslo, Norway

Ruud Janssen - TAM
P.O.Box 10388
5000 JJ Tilburg
NETHERLANDS

e-mail : tam@dds.nl

APPENDIX-1

(Sent in by Ken Friedman together with his first answer)

There are a number of texts and documents you may wish to read:

Friedman, Ken, ed. Art Folio. Boston: Religious Arts Guild, 1971. [Religious Arts Guild "Circular/Packet: 2."]

Friedman, Ken. The Aesthetics. Devon, England: Beau Geste Press, 1972.

Friedman, Ken, ed. An International Contact List of the Arts. Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada: Fluxus West and Image Bank, 1972.

Friedman, Ken and Stanley Lunetta, eds. International Sources (Source Magazine, vol. 6, no. 1, issue 11) Sacramento, California: Composer/Performer Editions, 1972. [special issue devoted to Fluxus and intermedia, also the catalogue of the exhibition International Sources]

Friedman, Ken. "Flowing in Omaha." Art and Artists (London), vol. 8, no. 9 (Issue no 89, Aug 1973): 6‑9.

Friedman, Ken. "Where is the Art Going Today?" The San Diego (California) Union, November 11, 1973: E‑7.

Friedman, Ken. "On Artists' Stamps." Art et Communication Marginale. Herve Fischer, ed. Paris: Editions Balland, 1974.

Friedman, Ken and Georg M. Gugelberger. "The Stamp and Stamp Art." International Rubber Stamp Exhibition. Carl Loeffler, ed. San Francisco: La Mamelle Arts Center, May 1976. [exhibition catalog]

Friedman, Ken. "A Discourse on Community." Art Contemporary (La Mamelle), vol. 3, no. 1 (Issue no 9, 1977): 12‑14, 73.

Friedman, Ken. "Notes on the History of the Alternative Press." Lightworks, no. 8‑9 (Winter 1977): 41‑47.

Friedman, Ken. "Correspondence Art in Perspective." Gray Matter. Eve Laramee, ed. San Diego: San Diego State University Art Gallery (1978): 3‑6. [exhibition catalogue]

Friedman, Ken. "Storia dell'Arte Postale." Mantua Mail 78. Romano Peli and Michaela Versari, eds. Mantova, Italy: Assesorato Cultura Comune di Mantova, 1978. [exhibition catalogue]

Friedman, Ken. "Post Haste: Reflections on Mail Art." Umbrella, vol. 3, no. 3 (May 1980): 56‑58.

Friedman, Ken. "The Retrospective was Cancelled." Fuse, vol. 4, no. 5 (Jul‑Aug 1980): 304‑306.

Friedman, Ken with Peter Frank. "Fluxus: A Post‑Definitive History: Art Where Response Is the Heart of the Matter." High Performance, #27 (1984): 56‑61, 83.

Friedman, Ken. "Fluxus and Company." In Ubi Fluxus, ibi motus. Achille Bonita Oliva, Gino Di Maggio and Gianni Sassi, eds. Venice and Milan: La Biennnale di Venezia and Mazzotta Editore, 1990, 328‑332. [book published in conjunction with exhibition]

Friedman, Ken. "Fluxus and Company." Lund Art Press, Vol. 1, No. 4, 1990: School of Architecture, University of Lund, 289‑299.

Friedman, Ken. "Rethinking Fluxus." (in) Fluxus! Zurbrugg, Nicholas, Francesco Conz and Nicholas Tsoutas, eds. Brisbane, Australia: Institute of Modern Art, 1990, pp. 10‑27.
Friedman, Ken with James Lewes. "Fluxus: Global Community, Human Dimensions." (in) Fluxus: A Conceptual Country, Estera Milman, guest editor. [Visible Language, vol. 26, nos. 1/2.] Providence: Rhode Island School of Design, 1992, pp. 154‑179. [Special issue devoted to Fluxus, also exhibition catalogue]

Friedman, Ken. "Vytautas Landsbergis and Fluxus." Siksi. 1/92. Helsinki: Nordiskt Konstcentrum, Sveaborg, 33‑34.

Friedman, Ken. "Why I Don't Take Part in Network Telefax Art Projects." (in) Bleus, Guy. A Networking Fax‑Project & Performance. Eindhoven, The Netherlands, 1993.

Friedman, Ken. " Fluxus Idea" (in) The Electronic Superhighway. Travels with Nam June Paik. Paik, Nam June, Kenworth W. Moffett, et. al, eds. New York, Seoul and Fort Lauderdale: Holly Solomon Gallery, Hyundai Gallery and the Fort Lauderdale Museum of Art, 1995, 87‑97.

Friedman, Ken. "The Early Days of Mail Art." In Eternal Network, Chuck Welch, ed. Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 1995.

Friedman, Ken. "Eternal Network." Eternal Network, Chuck Welch, ed. Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 1995. [Introduction.]

ALSO

Crane, Michael and Mary Stofflett, eds. Correspondence Art: Sourcebook for the Network of International Postal Art Activity. San Francisco: Contemporary Arts Press, 1984.

Albright, Thomas. "Correspondence." Rolling Stone 107 (April 27, 1972): 28‑29.

Albright, Thomas. "A Guerrilla Attack on Traditional Art Ideas." The San Francisco Chonicle, February 9, 1972: 49.

Albright, Thomas. "Informed Sources." Art Gallery Magazine (Ivoryton, Connecticut) vol. 15, no. 7 (April 1972): w1, 7.

Albright, Thomas. "New Art School: Correspondence." Rolling Stone 106 (April 13, 1972): 32.

Poinsot, Jean‑Marc, ed. Mail Art Communication: A Distance Concept. Paris: Editions CEDIC, 1971.

Welch, Chuck, ed. Eternal Network,. Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 1995.

Cohen, Ronny. "Art and Letters: Please Mr. Postman, Look and See... Is there a work of art in your bag for me?" Art News, vol. 80+, no. 10 (December 1981): 68‑73.

Zack, David. "An Authentik and Historical Discourse on the Phenomenon of Mail Art." Art in America, vol. 66, no. 1 (Jan‑Feb 1973): cover, 46‑53.

Artists' Stamps and Stamp Images. James W. Felter. Burnaby, British Columbia: Simon Fraser Gallery, Simon Fraser University, 1974. [exhibition catalogue]
APPENDIX-2

WHY I DON'T TAKE PART IN NETWORK TELEFAX ART PROJECTS (by KEN FRIEDMAN).

A Reply for Guy Bleus

This text was sent by FAX as a reaction to a FAX-project held by Guy Bleus, Belgium, at 'De Fabriek' in Eindhoven, Netherlands, in which Ken Friedman writes about his views to FAX art.

Guy Bleus's statement on Telecopy Art is intelligent and interesting. Much of what Guy writes is true. Even so, I don't take part in telefax exhibitions. I want to explain why.

The telefax is a one-line instrument. When my fax is busy, I can't send or receive other messages. Most network messages are broadcast messages using narrowcast tools. The mailbox is a paradoxial receiver: it is a narrowcast receiver that can receive a large number of broadcast messages at once. Receiving one item in the mail doesn't prevent receiving another.

The telefax is a true narrowcast receiver. When you are receiving one item, you cannot receive another. Today's fax technology is still primitive. The fax cannot receive multiple messages and stack them for later feedout. My fax is a fax, and not a computer. I cannot read messages, choose to print, select among them and dump the rest.

Today's telefax communication is always narrowcast, and I use my fax as a tool of private communication. I want to keep my fax open for incoming private messages. When I travel, I want the paper supply left available for specific communications intended personally for me, not for the network. I am a businessman as well as an artist. I cannot afford to miss a direct communication from a client because the fax is busy all day - or because a full roll of paper runs out on the third day of a six-day trip.

A friend who directs a gallery was once asked to take part in a fax-show. She agreed. Her fax was busy for four days solid. She ran through several dozen rolls of paper. Her colleagues couldn't reach her. They phoned her to find out why the fax was broken. She wasted hours on the phone every day explaining the problem rather then spending her time getting messages and acting on them. Her colleagues had to spend hundreds of dollars sending urgent information by courier that could easily have been sent by fax if the fax has been available.

This was an instructive lesson to me. The fax should be a tool, not an intrusion. I decided then that I would not take part in telefax exhibitions or projects until the technology changes enough to make it possible for me to avoid these problems. Right now, this isn't with my cheerful, old-fashioned telefax.

I use my telefax as a personal tool. I do use my telefax to send and receive information for art projects and exhibitions. In some ways, it is the tool that Guy Bleus suggests. At this time, it is a private tool, and I am not willing to open my fax line to the network.

I only want faxes from people who want to communicate directly with me as an individual. I do not want telefax communications from people who see me as part of a network or an undifferentiated member of the category of artists who own telefax machines.

Privacy is an important right. I welcome letters and telephone calls from network friends. I accept network broadcast mailings. I am willing to receive letters and calls from people I don't know; they may be people I want to know. I don't want to use my fax as a tool for mail art. Telefax and mail are very different-processes. I prefer to use them in specific and different ways.

(Ken Friedman, March 1993)
APPENDIX-3

SAMPLE OF AN E-MAIL MESSAGE:

PINE 3.90 TEKST VAN BERICHT Postvak:INKOMEND Bericht 57/59
Date: Mon, 25 Sep 1995 12:36:24 +0200
From: "ken.friedman"
To: tam@dds.nl
Subject: Answer

RJ :

Well, I couldn't work without documentation. But isn't the danger of documentation that it forms its own truth, and that reality (things that happen on a specific moment) can never be captured in an objective documentation because this reality is different for everybody who observes it, and everybody recognizes his own truth by observing. Only the ones that document then would form the 'history.' Is documentation that powerful?

KF:

This is a danger. It's the basic problem of all forms of documentation, no matter who makes them and no matter the purpose for which they're made. It seems to me that there is a strong argument to be made for a variety of clear, understandable sources of document from several views. In the recent past, most documentation on art has been compiled or presented by a handful of journalists, critics and finally by art historians. I suggest that there can be valid approaches to art documentation by scholars from several fields and by artists themselves. The better, the broader, the more clear and conscious a body or documents is, the better we can understand what's happened. I believe that there documentation has valid goals and purposes, and that these can be fulfilled or abused. How we handle documentation, how much and how well, makes the difference

Ken Friedman, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, Leadership and Strategic Design
Norwegian School of Management NMH
Box 4676 Sofienberg
N‑0506 Oslo, Norway

Telephone Direct: +47 22.11.56.10 (tone) 505
Telephone Switchboard: +47 22.11.55.60
Telephone Private: +47 22.60.85.60
Telefax: +47 22.11.56.20

[EINDE van de tekst van her bericht]
APPENDIX-4

E-MAIL about the E-MAIL projects

STATEMENT: Why I Don't Take Part in E‑mail Art Projects

I don't take part in e‑mail art projects. I want to explain why. I use my e‑mail as a tool for research and communication. I subscribe to several listserv lists that have a combined posting of some 200 or so messages a day. In addition, I usually receive another 30 or 40 messages a day to which I must respond, more if a project is under way.

When I travel, I come back to a full mail box. It takes me an average of two hours for every day of travel to get through my mail. I need the communication ‑‑ and I value my time. There's too much impersonal e‑mail art communication taking place to interest me.

E‑mail should be a tool, not an intrusion. I use e‑mail as a personal tool and a research tool. It is a private tool and I do not want to open my line to the network.

I only want posts from people who want to communicate directly with me as an individual. I do not want e‑mail communications from people who see me as part of a network or an undifferentiated member of the category of artists who have computers and e‑mail access machines.

Privacy is an important human right. I welcome letters and telephone calls from network friends. I accept network broadcast snail mailings. I am willing to receive letters and calls from people I don't know; they may be people I want to know. I don't want to use my e‑mail address as a tool for mail art. E‑mail and snail mail are very different processes and I prefer to use them in specific and different ways.

THE POST THAT I GOT ‑‑‑‑

Subject: Jive Ruud
To: tam@dds.nl (Ruud Janssen)
Date: Thu, 16 Nov 95 7:59:53 CST
From: Chris Dodge
Cc: interjam@art.niu.edu

If ah' only had time
If ah' only had
If ah' dun didn't need da damn bre'd
I wouldn't do wo'k fo' oders
I would wo'k all de time
fo' mah'self and produce sump'n supa' fine
If ah' only dun didn't need bre'd
If ah' only had 25 hours some day
If ah' had da damn time
to answa' all de quesshuns
dat mosey on down down in mah' mind.

‑‑Karen Elliot for DeSirey Dodge Peace Post

‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑
Chris Dodge cdodge@hennepin.lib.mn.us
Hennepin County Library phone: 612‑541‑8572
12601 Ridgedale Drive fax: 612‑541‑8600
Minnetonka, MN 55305
‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑

Ken Friedman, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, Leadership and Strategic Design
Norwegian School of Management
Box 4676 Sofienberg
N‑0506 Oslo, Norway

Mail-Interview with Julie Paquette (ex posto facto) - USA

2006-10-01T01:38:00.000-07:00

Interview done by Ruud Janssen - Netherlands

THE MAIL-INTERVIEW WITH JULIE PAQUETTE

Started on: 24-01-1995

RJ : Welcome to this mail-interview. First let me ask you the traditional question. When did you get involved in the mail-art network?

Reply on: 17-02-1995

JP : Since you asked this question I've been trying to remember dates. Since I became aware that the network exists I've jumped in with both feet and it's hard for me to remember a time that I wasn't involved.

I've determined that I was introduced to the network in 1991 by 'arto posto' in Atlanta, GA (she was in Chicago, IL, USA at the time). I had been looking at posts on bulletin boards on Prodigy, a computer service network, and found the ones on rubber stamps especially interesting.
Some of the discussions weren't, but when I asked a few questions I was immediately drwawn to mail art. In fact, I issued my first mail art call within a few months from a documentation list arto had gotten from A1 Waste Paper in London, that she shared with me. My first call was THE SHOW MUST GO ON and I hung it in the rehearsal space of a theatre I worked with.

I've always loved checking the mail (I've done arty things to mail since about 1967 when, as a kid, my family moved and I began corresponding with the friends I'd left behind), but when I was receiving mail for THE SHOW MUST GO ON I couldn't wait to get to the mailbox! I still feel that way.

RJ : You undersign your mail with several aka's like "ex posto facto", "Anne Maybe", etc. Did you use these names before you entered the mail- art network already? What is the story behind the many names?

Reply on : 17-3-1995

JP : I do have a thing for new names, don't I? No, none of the names I use for mail art are any I've used anywhere else. Well, exept for one that was a childhood nickname (I don't use it for anything anymore and wish I never had!). Each name has meaning for me and I think demonstrates flux in my life. As I got involved with mail art I was also very involved with e-mail and a network of rubber stampers on Prodigy (*P*). Many people there had given themselves mail art names and I found it charming. arto posto struck me as a perfect nickname for a mail artist and when I was doing some reading I ran across the phrase ex post facto. This was me! I'm always late (after the fact = ex post facto) and I liked very much that it had the word post in it. I annonced on *P* that I had finally found my name. I got a responce from Willy Nilly that it sounded good to her, but didn't I want to add an "o" to "post" in honor of arto posto Yes, I did. She has truly been my mail art mentor and I was delighted to be able to incorporate a
little thank you into my name. ex posto facto is the name I've used the most in the Eternal Network. Besides all of the sentimental stuff, I find that it's useful to be sexually ambiguous now and then. I think there has been a certain amount of "good ol' boy" networking and a name that is not sexspecific can be a good thing in breaking into a bit.

I went through a time that felt very tenuous and uncertain. I became Anne maybe. I got divorced. I became Nobody's Wife! I became very close to a friend who was also an active mail artist - together we were the Fake Socorro Sisters, Fate and Destiny. When she dropped out of the movement I assumed both identities. (This was an idea JEM and I had that never really went anywhere.)

I don't know if I will continue with all the different names or not. I was amused by it when I saw Rudi Rubberoid's odd list and thought it would be fun, but didn't think I could come up with names I'd like well enough to want to claim. As it turns out, I could probably rename myself almost monthly. Fluxus is with us. Certainly it is evident to me in my little life.

RJ : Could you tell a bit more about that "good ol' boy" networking. Is there a difference between your mail art contacts with males or females?

Reply on : 31-3-1995

JP : This could be a loaded question.... Very different. And as I type that I think it's likely that someone somewhere is getting defensive. I want to say right off that because something is different doesn't mean it's better or worse. The good ol' boys only have as much power as we give them. I wanted to be part of the movement in a big way when I was beginning and I
thought I had to be in touch with the powers that be. Now I'm feeling much more settled in. The power thing is definitely over-rated.

I'm not sure how much one's gender has to do with how easy it is to get involved in the network, but I've heard both men and women say it's tough. I didn't find that to be the case at all. Some suggested that it was because my mail art name didn't tell that I'm female. Since I could see many more active men, I thought they had some control over it all. I now believe that mail art is truly what you do with it. No one has CONTROL. Isn't that the point? Some people like to think they're "leaders of the movement" and spend time and words to make it so. They are whatever they perceive themselves to be, as we all are in this eternal network.

I don't think I'll get into this topic any further. I value my male and female contacts very much and I'd hate to over-generalize and annoy any of them. I'm not involved with mail art to bicker and fight.

RJ : Since you began in mail-art the amount of mail you get must have been increasing all the time. Are you still able to answer all the things you get in mailbox?

Reply on : 18-4-1995

JP : I believe that SENDERS RECEIVE. Since I like receiving so much I figure I need to send, so getting things out is a priority. I document my Fluxus Bucks project when I accumulate ten participants and that has happened every week and a half to two weeks lately. I try to be especially timely with that documentation so that it doesn't build up and totally overwelm me. Besides, I'm getting some very interesting things due to that and I want to keep it rolling along. It has really expanded my network in a huge way.

As for the other mail I get, it all gets some sort of response eventually. Sometimes the stuff that I'm most impressed with is hardest for me to respond to. Then my answer can be very slow (I'm waiting for genuine inspiration or something).

RJ : Can you tell a bit more about your Fluxus Bucks. How did you think of this project, how did it start, and how is it developing?

Reply on 28-8-1995

JP : Whew! Quite comprehensive questions, my friend! Since Fluxus Bucks have taken over much of my mail art time, I think about why I'm doing them when I get frustrated that I can't do something else. Lately I've been figuring out a more effecient documentation system that will allow me to keep the record on the computer and hopefully not take so much time to produce and reproduce. Since I generally get about 10 responses a week, I'm doing a Fluxus Bucks documentation weekly. This seems like a lot sometimes, and not nearly enough other times. Documentation seems to take longer all the time because I've started writing notes to some (many) of the participants and I want to be able to continue to do that but it can hold me up when I want to get mail out. The responses are coming from all over the network -- most of the time I get 6 responses from the USA and 4 from other countries (people in Italy, England, the Netherlands, Mexico, Canada, France, Belgium, Malta, Czech Republic, Korea, Ireland, Uruguay, Japan, Denmark, Yugoslavia, Guatemala, Germany, Ukraine and Finland have sent the bucks home). To date (18 Aug. 1995) I've received about 290 responses! Just incredible. I'm thinking I may do a little zine thing on the back of the documentation. This is still an idea more than an actuality so I reserve the right to change my mind!

Ok, your questions. How did I think of this project...hmmmmm. It had a lot to do with my day-to-day money concerns at the time. Let me grab the ol' journal.

On 27 October 1994 I wrote that the idea of a mail art currency had gotten my attention. "I ought to get a Ray Johnson image on there maybe. Or something Fluxux, DaDa -- I want my address on there somewhere, too, but I don't think it needs to take front and center. I've cut 150 bills. My idea is that they need to circulate amongst the Mail Art Community. I want
artists to carry them in wallets or purses, doodle on them, add their addresses, send them to other artists and then redeem them with me. Or not."

On 1 November 1994 I wrote" "Fluxus Bucks, make them show the changes around you, them, etc."

On 10 November 1994 - "My fluxus buck is happening. They're rubberizing my buck while I'm not there at Acme. I've cut and bundled 150 more (sheets of paper). In lieu of a dollar sign I want a fluxus buck symbol. For Global Mail? -- ARTISTS! Tired of worrying about money? Request any amount -- it will be filled in Fluxus Bucks. Ongoing project --
Documentation and Bucks to all."

13 November 1994 - "I've done 550 Fluxus Bucks. I'm mailing a whole bunch of them out. I'm pretty happy about how they turned out, but when I gave them out at the 3'O clock mail art Choir meeting I got a very subdued reaction. I think they were sort of confused...."

Well, there's some of the stuff I was thinking when I started mailing Fluxus Bucks. The response I've gotten has been so good that it's really encouraged me - which brings me to the last of your questions" How is it developing?

I had a fantasy as some point early with the Bucks that people would like them well enough that I would need a couple thousand eventually. And that has happened already (there are over 2800 bucks in existance so far). I love the way my network has grown and broadened. I'm consistantly surprised and delighted by the variety, talent, depth and silliness of the
people in the network. The work/play I get in my mailbox inspires, distracts and informs me. Fluxus Bucks may come and go, the network just goes on and on and on.

RJ : You probably have heard of the statement "mail art and money don't mix" which tries to explain that in mail art you shouldn't ask for (the official) money. What do you think of this statement?

(Via e-mail I got a message from Tim Blackburn (Zetetics) telling me that he asked Julie about the progress of her interview. She told him that she lost the last question, and asked Tim to send me this info by e-mail. So I printed the latest question again and sent it to Julie together with another sample of a finished interview).

Reply on 6-12-1995

(Together with Julie's answer again some Fluxus Bucks and the documentation-sheets. Also included was a nice gift, a rubberstamp about her Fluxus Bucks project. Julie has sent me before such nice gifts).

JP : I LIKE IT! Money seems to take over in too many areas of life. What you can and can't afford even determines who some think you are. Even though mail artists are people (and people are the ones who make judgements based on $) I find it delightfully refreshing that for the price of a stamp anyone can enter and participate in an international, eternal network. For me the network has been a warm community of generous, talented & amusing individuals. There's gossip, romance, controversy, feuds, ART & anything else you might find in a group of intelligent people. We enjoy entertaining each other and ourselves. Fluxus Bucks came about to do that.

Unfortunately, the realities of life are that we need money. I can't fault people who try to make money in areas related to mail art (rubber stamps, artistamps, zines, etc.) but I think it is important - and sometimes difficult - to avoid taking advantage of the network for personal gain.

An unrelated aside: Fluxus Bucks have been around for a whole year! In that year, I've seen over 400 responses to the project & sent out as many replies. Wow! That's it for now. I gotta run to work and earn some actual currency so I can continue to afford to play in the network.....

RJ : Yes, mail art is an expensive thing to do, and most mail artist I know have always some kind of job of study they do besides it. I have found out that sometimes the things people do besides their mail art is quite different in comparison to the mail art they send out, and sometimes it combines perfectly. How is this for you?

Reply on 3-2-1996

JP : For me mail art is a distraction from the regular day-to-day stuff that threatens to wear me out. I was so enthused about rubber stamps when I was first getting into the mail art thing I went into the fun rubber stamp biz with a partner. It was going o.k. when I sold my half to her, but I needed to get a job with a paycheck. And I did! Working for an actual rubber stamp company where they made business rubber stamps. In a lot of ways this was a very good thing, but it was also something that took a lot of fun out of rubber stamps. But! I learned a lot about the whole process and I'm glad to know it! It may even come in handy in the future.

Anyway - these days I work as a cashier at Bingo for a couple of different charities. In fact, handling all that money - especially the PAPER money sort of inspired Fluxus Bucks. I loved the feel of bundles of paper money! Stil do. Since it's pretty unlikely that I'll have bundles of real cash laying around to fondle, well, why not come up with my own? Even better - get my friends in the network to help make these slips of paper valuable. That's the genesis of the idea, but it's developed in other ways that have surprised me.

The best: I think I've mentioned before how my network has grown by leaps and bounds and while some folks send bucks once or twice and fade away, many others have become good, dear postal friends.

The worst: Since I recirculate the bucks I receive I rarely have enough bucks around to bundle - they go away much faster than they come in - just like real cash.

To get back to your question, I don't think I've got a job that "combines perfectly", but I manage to blend the two wherever possible.

RJ : To my surprise there is yet another mail artist living in your P.O.Box under the name "Atmospheric Cookie". What does he/she do there?

Reply on 6-3-1996

JP : Your question about "atmospheric cookie" has an easy answer. I heard the phrase on a weather report & it stuck me funny. The description of pressures & counter pressures that followed reminded me of my life so I "borrowed it" Next?

RJ : Together with your answer you sent me again some fluxus bucks. Thank you. The numbers on the bucks indicate that already lots of them are circulating. You always also send me some of the ones you got back yourself, so you are recycling the bucks again. Are you never tempted to
collect the nice ones? Are you a collector of mail art items or are you recycling most you get?

Reply on 15-4-1996

JP : I do get some nice ones! Sometimes I have to keep a buck that speaks to me. Since I originally saw them as ever-recirculating I wasn't sure how I felt about keeping some. I mentioned this to M.B. Corbett and he told me not to worry about this and to consider the bucks I kept to be my salary. I liked it!

Usually though, I like to recycle. I'm seeing the Fluxus Bucks more and more as a networking tool. When I send out documentation of participants and their addresses I am often introducing mail artists to each other. That's why I started making notes about what I got from the people
sending bucks besides the bucks. Then artists could get an idea of those who were doing things they might be interested in. I often hear from people who have contacted one another using the Fluxus Buck documentation and that is terrific! I didn't see, ahead of time, that this
documentation would be so effective in this way. But it is! As much as I enjoy receiving the bucks themselves, I think the real contribution to the movement might be in the on-going documentation and the way it provides current information on active mail artists to other active mail artists.

Meanwhile the bucks give an opportunity to do some quick (or not so quick) art that generally goes back out into the network flow of things. More and more people are adding their address to the bucks so that sometimes their address will be out there even if they weren't on the
current documentation. I don't think FB resemble most currencies much at all in the way they're used but I think they're every bit as valuable! Yesterday I stamped out 250 more of them - a time consuming project since each buck is stamped at least 4 times - and there are 3850 of them now! I know I'm not the only one saving them because more go out than
come back. It's OK with me (people can do what they want with them once they leave here as far as I'm concerned), but I'm thinking about asking - maybe by issuing some sort of mail art call - for mail artists to tell me how RICH in Fluxus Bucks they are. Arte A la Carte (Joan Coderre) told me early on that she was keeping them & I know that John Held Jr. archives
EVERYTHING. While I don't mind that some people are doing this collecting I'm sure glad so many don't!! I recently got some of this earliest ones I did (over a year & « ago) back an I was interested to see how the bucks have evolved as I stamp more and more of them.

My favorites are bucks that have managed to travel the world and have evidence of the many places they've been and the artists they've met. I think I've mentioned before that this is how I travel for the most part - vicariously through the movement of the bucks.

Your second question is about mail art collection in general - do I save stuff or recycle? Both. When I first got emersed in the mail art magic, everything I got took my breath away. I was so exited and amazed by the whole process that I just couldn't imagine sending ANY of it away and marvelled at those who did. Lately though, I'm re-thinking that. Practically speaking it's impossible to save everything without building another room on my house - and I can't afford to do that unless they'll let me pay for it with Fluxus Bucks. Also I really like the looks of mail art that a number of mail artists have added to; so more all the time I am recycling my mail art.

RJ : All the mail art I get from you shows no trace of the use of computers in your mail art. Yet you mentioned with your first answer in this interview that you got hooked up to the network through Prodigy. What is a computer for you?

Reply on 18-5-1996

JP : Dear Ruud, I'm in the gymnasium of a Junior High school for my middle son, Sam, to start his basketball game. I'm not really a big sports fan (it's noisy in here & smells funny) but I like to see Sam play. I meant to bring your latest mail art interview question with me but forgot to. I
remember enough to answer, I think you asked about me and the computer. My answer:

My computer was very important in my introduction to the mail art network. I was on-line in the early days of Prodigy and there were a lot of people there interested in mail art. For me the most important contact I made was arto posto. She opened the door to the vastness of the network. Now, however, I'm not on-line at all, and although I miss it occasionally, I
find that for the most part I'm more than satisfied with all the great stuff that shows up in my mailbox. I really enjoy the tactile experience that's part of creating and receiving mail art. The potential magic of the computer doesn't escape me, though, and I anticipate plunging back into
the on-line network again some day (fairly soon). Having had the opportunity to work with arto posto on artistamp sheets on her computer, I look forward to spending time doing that sometime, too. Next Question?

RJ : It seems that your concept of Fluxus Bucks has been taken over by others too. Besides the Fluxus Bucks I produce myself (with your name on it), there are also: the Quid (A1 in England), the Winged Money (Dragonfly in USA), another Fluxus Buck (by Posto del Sol in USA). What
do you think of this development?

Reply on 29-6-1996

(Julie's answer came as a computer print-out. She just entered the internet with the e-mail address Julie8P@aol.com and tried to mail her answer to me. She typed my e-mail address as tam@ddl.nl while it actually is tam@dds.nl, so the message bounced back, and the result of that Julie printed out and sent to me).

JP : I think it's great! There's some saying about "duplication is the sincerest form of flattery" (I know that's not exactly it, but you get the idea). That mail artists all over liked the Fluxus buck idea enough to endeavor to do their version of it delights me. There are a whole bunch more than you mentioned and as I write that, I think I've already answered this question. (Not part of interview -- Did I do that? If so, where were we....????)

Let me know if I've got a more current question, ok? Like I said, I can't find anything. If this IS the current question, I'll expound more. Bye for now, ex posto facto, the muddleheaded.

(after this part of the e-mail, some 'headers' followed to indicate the route the e-mail had taken. It shows that the e-mail was eventually returned, but a copy of course remained at the 'postmaster' of the NLnet)

RJ : It is quite interesting that you entered the internet again during this interview. Your latest answer came by snail-mail just because of one single typing-mistake. That is typical computer-communication. A postman would just have brought it anyway. What are your experiences
with the current status of the computer-communication?

(I mailed the new question in printed form in an envelope and also sent it
to Julie's new e-mail address. The message bounced too, and a day later I
found out that Julie had a new e-mail address. I remailde the complete
text with all the addings by the computers again to Julie)

Reply on 2-7-1996 (via e-mail)

JP : I'm finding it overwhelming, very exciting and inspirational all at the
same time. Things haven't changed completely since I was last on-line,
but there is MORE of everything: people, places to go, things to see and
do, things to get (download). There aren't enough hours in the day to
check everything out. It may take more self-discipline than I have to get
anything else done. And since, like many mail-artists, I'm always thinking
of MORE stuff I want to do through my mailbox, I'm going to have to work
on that discipline thing so I don't get too lopsided.

RJ : The word MORE is quite interesting. How much time do you actually
spend each week now on mail art and the electronic communication?

Reply on 15-7-96 (e-mail)

JP : More each week.

RJ : Could you be more specific?

reply on 28-7-1996

epf: I don't think so. I don't keep track of hours and minutes very well.
I've noticed that a lot of maintenance stuff (laundry, dishes, washing out
the bathtub, etc.) goes longer and longer between getting done. What IS
getting done is lots of art related tinkering (which seems to create even
bigger messes), some mailings of documentation for the Bucks, and
now--answering e-mail. I've found, with the help of my friend, arto posto,
a group of people interested in discussing mail art (IMAT--International
Mail Art Thread) on-line. I'm not fascinated by every word, but darn
close. I'm wondering if this is a distraction from the stuff I'm interested in
getting done or a great asset that will help me. Either way it's how I'm
spending a lot of time these days.

RJ : I myself have had e-mails from newcomers to mail art, and I must say
that I never get a clear picture of someones work unless I get some snail-
mail from that person. The electronic mail for me doesn't have that much
information about the persons I am communicating with. Words and
digital graphics are just a fraction of what I can encounter in the
traditional snail-mail network, and for the time being I am focussing
mainly on the snail-mail still and have the electronic part only for speed
and quick communication and spreading text-informations. How is this for
you? How much has the electronic mail taken over the snail-mail?

reply on 19-11-1996

JP : I agree wholeheartedly. E-mail and the electronic world seems more
suited to information than art for me. I see art when I surf the net, but it's
not a medium I'm comfortable with yet. It COULD happen, but I don't see
that happening any time soon. Personally, I love the whole process of
receiving mail art in my post office box. I like the look, the feel, the smell.
I think I get a much greater sense of who I'm communicating with when I
hold the artist's mail in my hands. One way that the electronic world has
intruded on my mail art is that it takes over too much of my time. I know
that I make the choice, but sometimes time just slips away when I'm using
the computer (kind of like when I do art at times).

FLUXUS BUCKS UPDATE: I've been thinking about this all for a long
time and I've come to a decission about creating and documenting fluxus
bucks. I'm done once I reach buck #5000 and participating artist #1000.
Both of these numbers are right around the corner so I figure I can move
on to other projects. This month marks 2 years of fluxus bucks! I'm
thinking I might issue a special series now and then for events or non-
happenings, but the amount of documentation is taking too much time for
me to do some othet thing I want to do. SOOoo... I guess I'll move along.
many people are making bucks these days. I'm happy to participate with
theirs (yours included) and whatever I see of the ones I've made.

RJ : Yes, I guess there is always a good moment to end things. Also for this
interview with you. We have take almost two years now to do this
interview, so unless there is something more you wanted to say, it is time
to publish these words and let others read them as well.

(together with my question I sent Julie a print-out of the interview text so
far, my latest design of a fluxus-buck value 100,000 and a copy of my report
of the travel I did undertake to San Francisco in USA)

reply on 12-12-1996

JP : Hi Ruud! Well, finally the interview is finished, at last! Wow. Thank
you for your patience and persistence. Thanks also for the over-view of
your SF trip you sent. I hope you are finding time to enjoy some things -
you sound so busy!!

RJ : Well, I must admit that I am busy, but I sure do enjoy doing those
things that keep me busy. Thanks for the interview Julie, and may the
fluxus bucks come your way.......

Address mail-artist:

ex posto facto

JULIE PAQUETTE
P.O.Box 495522
GARLAND , TX 75049
USA

Address interviewer:

RUUD JANSSEN
P.O. Box 1055
4801 BB Breda
Netherlands
e-mail: r.janssen@iuoma.org

Mail-Interview with Al Ackerman (USA)

2006-10-01T01:27:00.000-07:00

Interview done by Ruud Janssen (Netherlands)

THE MAIL-INTERVIEW WITH AL ACKERMAN. 70

Started on 17-6-1996

RJ : Welcome to this mail-interview. First let me ask you the traditional question. When did you get involved in the mail-art network?

Reply on 29-7-1996

(Al's first answer came typed on a paper with a copy of one of Al Ackerman's famous drawings with the text: "Sigh....My most gifted pupil.... too bad her head is bean shaped" on it).

AA : At the time I started doing mail art I had already tried a lot of other things, with zero-to-little success. As a kid I'd early on become addicted to the old pulp magazines Weird Tales, Trilling Wonder, Planet, Doc Savage, Dime Detective and so forth -- and my earliest aspirations had to do with becoming part of this world, which seemed to me to be a nicely hermetic three-ring-circus & pocket universe thing where marvels were still allowed to happen.

I'd developed this pulp-ghetto ideal where, by turning out reams of pulp under various pseudonyms for very low pay, you could live a precarious but romantic existence. That was the idea. But by the time I was actually old enough to begin my hand at it, 1953-54, most of the pulp mags had folded, the whole pulp market collapsed, leaving me and my dream bereft. Along with this I had been having some correspondence with Fredric Brown, the late-great scifi and mystery writer. And one of the things he told me, by way of helpful advice, was, "always try to be lucky enough to work in a despised medium." I wasn't quite sure I knew what he meant but I filed it away, at least subconsciously, for future reference.

So -- time passed and I drifted into quite a lot of writing for the confession magazines and then did some TV work, had a nightclub & TV act, did some theatre, wrote plays, etc. None of it very satisfactory from my pulp-dream standpoint. Finally, in 1972, I happened to pick up a copy of Rolling Stone, the issue with the Thos. Albright article "Correspondence Art." I read that and all the names and addresses of these people mailing things, I thought that sounded like it might be right up my alley. I had like this very possitive 100% yes-response. To me, the whole mail art thing seemed like an ideal way to realize my long-cherished pulp dream, that is, to do a lot of fundamentally rapid work and use a lot of different pseudonyms and not make a dime.

So I started right in mailing out these nitwit Gnome Club and Clark Ashton Smith Fellowship Chapter doodads. I got a nice response, people like The Northwest Mounted Valise and Dr. Brute and John Dowd and Image Bank and Irene Dogmatic, and later on Billy Haddock and John M. Bennett, and then Image Bank put me onto Dave "Oz" Zack, etc. And on that basis I got hooked. And now here it is, nearly a quarter of a century later, and I'm still hooked. I also understand what Fred Brown meant when he said "Always try to be lucky enough to work in the despised medium." I've had a very lucky run. In fact, looking back on it all, I have to feel luckier than a moth in a tampon factory.

RJ : It is always good to hear that someone feels he had a 'lucky run'. At "The Online Blaster - Meanderings of an American Ling Master" the text about you starts as: "A master of pseudonyms and of schizophrenia,...." How far do the pseudonyms influence you?

Reply on 23-8-96

AA : Here again -- for me -- the use of pseudonyms is something that goes back to my first early fascination with the pulps. In the old days, when a pulp mag used more than one of a writer's stories at a time, it was common practice to put a different byline on each story -- this helped give the reader the illusion he was getting more for his dime. If a writer was at all prolific -- and some of those guys, like Kuttner and Woolrich, were singlehandedly writing entire magazines -- he very often found himself operating under a half-dozen or more pseudonyms. And somehow this was a convention that held a lot of romantic appeal for my younger self. Probably because of its shady, less-than-honest aspects, the multiple-name dodge became in my mind a sort of cicerone or ideal. Years later when I began doing mail art I carried the idea of using multiple names over into that. The fact that the mail art network had long favored the use of weird and intriguing pseudonyms -- Dr. Brute , Anna banana, Rain Rien, Andre "The Scientist" Stitt, Art Tar, etc. -- seemed made to order for what I was up to.

I started out mailing under the name of "Blaster Al"-- and I was also "Mrs. Blaster" and "Leonie of the Jungle" and Ralph "$50,000 Party" Delgado and the critic Ernst Stroh-Symtra (to get what "Stroh-Symtra" was about, read the name backwards) and Eel Leonard ("The Newark Cannibal" -- don't ask him what he had for supper) and Glans T. Sherman and Jana Peruda and Emergency Room Metcalf. (The last named mail art phantom was also known as "The Bleeder" because he suffered from hemophilia and could bleed to death from the slightest paper cut or prick from a postage stamp) plus quite a few other colorful and bogus handles I've mercifully managed to forget.

Along with all of this there were the different club names - Clark Ashton Smith Fellowship Chaper, Scientific Electricity Foundation, various incarnations of Gnome King and/or Kink Club, among others, and, later, when things went really out of hand, the Harry Bates Club scams done in collaboration with Gene Laughter and Lon Spiegelman. It was fun. Eventually the Harry Bates Club doings became so twisted that it would require a whole book (some would say a lengthy court deposition) to detail all that went on, including the postal inspectors being called in to investigate charges of "menace" and the seeming establishement of Pepeland, a top-secret Harry Bates clinic for maimed and crippled pets.

You mention the Ling Master -- that name came about because I had promised my pal R. Kern a story for his magazine DUMB FUCKER. That first story was called "Confessions of an American Ling Master." I did others. Ultimately, Ling and his mystic pillowcase hood with the single eyehole went from being a character in a series of stories to a pseudonymn I adopted as part of a mail art offer ("LING ANSWERS ANY QUESTION FOR $5!"), something I was hoping would generate a little extra income. As it turned out, Ling was one of those creations that become somewhat autonomous, and go on to lead a life of their own, meaning that as time went by, the Ling persona was picked up and adopted by a number of people who started using it for their own agendas. For instance, there was a seriously distubed man in London who went around calling himself "Young Ling" until the police stopped him for questioning and found all sorts of unspeakable floatsam taped to his body. More recently, Steve Sleaze Steele's Provident Hot Check Productions Ltd. has done a film adaptation of the Ling story "I, the Stallion!" It just goes to show what small nuts the mighty okum runneth down and around all over the place seeking whom it may to deflower.

Of course, I could go on and provide a long song and dance that would freight across some fairly portentious academic-type theoretical blather having to do with the use of multiple names. I could talk about alternative realities and personalities as used for mimetic framing devices to create metafictional constructs ( and vice versa); also the philosophy behind "Plagerism", "Neoism" , "Carrotism" and "Fletcheritis." Fortunatly, though, life's too short. Besides, the truth of the matter isn't all that hard to glim: in the final analysis using a lot of fake names is a neat thing because it allows you to experience more than one reality, and dick around a lot in the process. I recommend it.

RJ : Sounds like a good advice. You have been doing this mail art now for quite a long time (nearly a quarter of a century as you mentioned it yourself). Probably you have noticed some changes in the mail art network over the years. What changes strike you the most?

Reply on 18-9-1996

AA : Well of course the two most obvious changes that come to mind are 1) the hellish ( and seemingly never-ending) increases in postage, and 2) the sheer growth & proliferation of the mail network itself.

Back in the early '70s, when I was just starting out, it really was possible to know most of what was going on in the mails, to have at least a fair handle on 80% of the names, the personalities, the shows & scams & projects that were happening. Back then, mail art was very much a world unto itself & not all that populous, either. Plus postage was cheap enough to allow you hit the lists and range pretty widely. It made for an intense -- and intensely rapid -- situation, in which exchange and dissemination seemed to occur practically in the same breath. Things were very concentrated (hm, I almost wrote "consecrated".)

Whereas today, it all seems a lot more spread out. More diffuse. More "hobbyist" orientated, perhaps. Or maybe after 20+ years I'm no longer quite so able to react in fresh ways. Joyce said we go through the world meeting Kings & Queens, thieves & baby pigs & incredible glycerin beings on legs that keep trying to dart behind us -- meeting all these things but always meeting ourselves. So that may be all that I'm reporting here. I don't know -- as far as today's teeming mail-edifice goes, it's perfectly possible that someone super-industrious, like, for instance, my pal Ashley Parker-Owens over at Global Mail can keep up and keep track of the scene, maintain some sort of coherent overview..... I can't. From my point of view, it's simply grown too huge. These days there seem to be as many practicing mail artists as Wheaties has flakes. Maybe a good thing, maybe not. Who knows. (I tried asking the 14 Secret Masters of the World about it once, but the best they could tell me was, "Think about the life you would like to lead, and will lead, just as soon as you start selling reefer.")

Anyway, I still try to enjoy what small corner of it comes my way. Changez les draps, as Decartes says somewhere.

RJ : You mention "the 14 Secret Masters of the World". Who are they?

(On September 27th I received some copies from Al Ackerman's book where some texts he wrote explain some details of the things he told about in his answer).

reply on 5-11-1996

(Al's answer was typed on paper that started with a special cartoon with title: "I often wonder, am I........mad?" made by Al Ackerman)

AA : I have been thinking about this one all day, and I wonder if I can come anywhere near answering it without sounding like The Bat Staffel.

I think, for our purposes here, it would be best to stick to the immediate accertainable mail-art side of things, which means eschewing the palmier and in some ways more fascinating background of ancient mystic lore and eldritch hoodly-doodly that permeated the 14 Secret Masters like white permeates rice. The surreptitious powder theories of Thomas Dalton. The Egbo Assembly, said to have originated at 13th- century fairs. Various ideas about legominism and critomancy. Borges insisting, quite correctly, that "the secret is sacred but it is always vaguely ridiculous."The Mordacaii Brotherhood, so weird and drooling. Leviticon and Maat Kheru, the true intonation, the Flying Legion and Charles Williams and Chullunder Ghose and Mrs. Guppy's famous transit and the eerie Hastraun sect.... Some time I'm going to write a book about the 14 Secret Masters complete with all the esoteric trimmings, but this isn't it.

To begin with, then, let's just say that the 14 Secret Masters, in certain ways, was a lot like RayJo's Buddha University. That is, a handy all-purpose cover-name for a number of mail and mail-related activities, not all of them strictly "real". In the case of the 14 Secret Masters of the World (to give the thing its full sobriquet; hereafter abbreviated 14SM) the emphasis was on the sort of shadowy secret society that exists somewhere between the dingbat methaphysical realms of the Golden Dawn Society and the more lurid down-cellar activities of Fu-Manchu. The 14SM was meant to seem screwball, but it definitely had its meaningless aspects.

In this respect -- and taken purely as a mail-art entity -- the 14SM functioned on several levels. Sometimes it simply served to designate my favorite core-circle of mailers... or as a convienient letterhead for whatever correspondence scam happened to be going down at the moment. Sample from '75: "Dear Richard Nixon -- ways of filth stand by you and land smell naz creep figure span down toward how long your finger been exhaustingly pleasing little things in big twin hillocks.... (etc., etc. for three more pages). Signed, 14 Secret Masters of the World."

At other times, especially as the 14SM action became more elaborate and mazelike, there would be actual meetings. My favorites were the ones held at Dave Zack's house ("Manderlay"), in Portland, Oregon; this was around '78-'79, when Istvan Kantor was in town. We did a fair amount of plotting, affecting sinister disguises, etc. Zack, for instance, used to don his Arthur Caws mask. I had the beautiful Edgar Allen Poe Head, big and purple and built entirely out of paper mache. Andre "The Scientist" Stitt would cover himself in garish filth. There would generally be someone dressed in the mystic Ling pillocase hood -- lots of colorful and dramatic outfits.... Some have said Istvan Kantor ("Monty Cantsin") was a bit eccentric. He used to come to the meetings dressed as the Oscar Meyer Wiener, and he may have thought he was that character. Talented guy, though.

In those days, Zack had a crazy man named Jerry Sims living in his basement and Jerry used to rush upstairs, burst in on us and jabber things like "I'm very ashamed of my tiny bone structure! I'm very ashamed of my tiny bone structure!"(For some reason he liked to repeat everything twice.) I remember I used to tell him, "Don't worry, Jerry -- your bones are larger than a chicken's." At this, he would look relieved, somewhat, and return back downstairs. Point being: this sort of umplanned manic interruption was as much a part of what the 14SM was about as anything else that might have been going on at those meetings. maybe more so.

The -- for me -- nice thing about the 14SM was that when I started writing the Ling Stories, in the 80's, I found I had this whole readymade background to draw on, this meticulously built-up pocket universe I could dip into for purposes of verisimilitude. Very handy. Still, what I remember most fondly are the scams and mailings and meetings of the 70's , when things were at their peak, it was all.... I wouldn't say overwrought, but it was definitely stimulating, and there were times when, as the saying goes, we stimulated each other practically to the point of nervous breakdown.

I guess that's all I'm at liberty to reveal about the 14SM.

RJ : Well, the things you write down now reveal already a part of the 14SM. What ever happened to Dave Zack?

answer on 5-1-1997

AA : Dave Zack, now, that glittering guy. There are times when I think he was the most wayward-tragic-doomed figure I ever met, and other times when I think of him I can't stop grinning. (Hm, something not quite right about that last sentence, but hopefully you get my drift.)

"It doesn't make it if my postman doesn't get it," Zack would mutter, shuffling toward the mailbox, his arms overflowing with envelopes, each day's astonishing, and astonishingly arted, output.

"This is this," and as he moved, things would drop from his beard and shaggy jacket: cookies crumbs, flakes of gold glitter, twigs and old leaves. When it came to grooming he was a sort of latter-day Swamp Thing.

There are mail artists, quite a few, maybe the majority, who manage to practice their art and in the same `breath are able to coexist peacefully and even succesfully with the workaday world: they pay their bills and hold down jobs and have families, and never go to jail, and this and that. Not so Zack. Zack was a law unto himself. He was what the scifi people mean when they use the term "mad genius", and what Aesop had in mind when he penned that cautionary fable about the grasshopper who got punished terribly for dicking around on his fiddle when winter was fast approaching. Zack was brilliant, madding and great. Difficult, visionary and cracked. I would go over to his house in the late- 70's , in Portland, and find him busy as a bee collaging phone and utility bills. As I later explained it in an article, "In those days Zack knew he would never be able to pay all the bills that came to the house, so rather than show any favoritism or partiality he made it a practice to pay none of them, equally. Rather, he would take the various gas and water and electric bills (also the subpoenas and summonses -- never any lack of those) and construct these beautiful 10-foot-high assemblages, which he would then title 'Tall Carefree Clown #27,' 'Tall Carefree Clown #28,' whatever number it happened to be in the sequence, and these he usually sent out and about as part of his mail art. It was a quite amazing continuous year-round project...." Or I'd go over and find him busy petitioning officials at the state capitol, pestering them with his different nutty fundings proposals. Or he'd be playing his cello upsidedown. Or he'd be writing something for the art mags.

At the same time he gave the imprimatur to mail art by being one of the first to write about it at length for a major slick-paper journal (Art in America), he was finding time to come over and live for long stretches in my pantry, and in my dreams I can often still hear him in there, munching, munching. (Like Wimpy in the Popeye strip, Zack's motto was always, "I would like to invite you for a duck dinner -- you bring the duck!")

In collaboration with Istvan Kantor, he helped dream up the "Monty Cantsin" name and concept, and what later became Neoism. He was certainly one of the all-time world-class letter writers, right up there with Henry Miller and Fanny Burney. At some point I gave him the nickname Dave "Oz" -- Oz obviously being the only locale that could comfortably accomodate him, Baum's magic fantasy kingdom where even the animals can talk. By and large we had a lot of laughs and he seldom failed to make me want to chew the rug and pull my hair out.

In the late -70's, true to his history of hairbreadth escapes, Zack gave his Portland, Oregon, creditors the slip by moving to Canada. There he operated a sort of quasi-legal rooming house for drunkard Newfies. A few years later, he left Canada one jump ahead of the mounties and used the money I grudgingly loaned him to lam down to Mexico. Ultimately it didn't make a hell of a lot of difference to the Mexican authorities that, in Zack, they had one of the world's top idea-man and practitioners of mail art. The authorities were more interested in the fact that for two or three years he'd been cashing his dead parents' Social Security checks, which was the routine he'd worked out to support his mail art activities. They tossed him in the jug (I tend to lie awake thinking of this by the hour because if things had happened a little differently I could have gone the same route myself). In '91, after three or four years of who-knows-what-hell , they finally let him out, probably afraid he was going to die on the premises -- by then, Zack who had a lifetime history of diabetes was gravely ill, with (among other things) gangrene of the foot. Somehow he made his way to San Antonio, Texas, and all praise to Patty Blaster who took him in and did what she could for him until what little health he had left failed him.

Last I heard he was in a country rest home or some damn place, stroked out, largely unresponsive. not long ago -- last week, in fact -- I had an E-mail from one of his former girl friends, Judith Conaway, who'd done a lot to help him over the years, saying she'd heard that he'd died in the latter part of '95. Maybe so. On the other hand, such was my old pal's cantankerousness, his boundless power for aggravation that I wouldn't be surprised to see him pop up again. The way I picture this, I'll be transporting a heavy piano across a rope bridge in Africa and halfway across the chasm I'll meet a figure in a gorilla suit who'll proceed to jump up and down and mess things up outrageously. That'll be Zack.

RJ : Are you crazy enough to be transporting a heavy piano across a rope bridge in Africa, or do you lead a quite normal life nowdays?

answer on 18-3-1997

AA : I don't know if you'd call it "quite normal" but nowdays my life is definitely quieter. Partly , this is due to natural attrition, the slowing-down process that comes with getting older and no longer being able to sit up all night drinking and bullshitting. These days I find that my nightclubbing activities are likely to add up to no more than two or three nights a week. I am no longer such a rumba addict as I once was. I haven't gone on the wagon but it must be at least four years since I drank enough to fall down in public. I can't tell you how long it's been since I sunk all my money in a get-rich-quick uranium deal, or even bet on a horse. No more harebrained coast-to-coast bus flights with $ 3,50 in my pocket.

Aside from getting up on stage and performing on the last Tuesday of each month at Rupert Wondolowski's Shattered Wig Night, downtown, which I love and which pretty well satisfies my hunger for making a spectacle of myself in front of an audience, I feel happy staying out of the spotlight unless there's a good deal of money being offered. Fortunately, the people who are likely to offer me this kind of money are not, on the whole, the sort of people I feel comfortable or even safe being around, not the sort I'd want to be trapped in an elevator with, as we used to say in the hospital business. So finding myself tempted into strenuous flamboyant displays is seldom a problem. Living a more sensible life, I often think of myself as a little old character who has survived his own bad habits to become rather monkish and retiring, almost flowerlike.

As I say, getting older accounts to some extent for this new-found mellowness. But partly (and maybe largely) it also has to do with finding myself in this very lucky position, where for the first time in my life I'm able to sit down and devote 6-12 hours a day to just writing. Thanks to the fortunate situation I fell into six years ago when I landed here in Baltimore, I now have considerable stress-free time available, something I never had before, and I am able to put in as many hours at the typewriter working on poems and stories as I want to. That's where you'll find me at all-hours -- hunched far over the keys, smoking and sipping, my ears ringing. At such times the true bright nitwit light of the fanatic will come into my eyes, I'm told. And once the day's writing gets done, there's generally enough time and energy left over to persue my mail art activities. At this moment I have a new book out from Shattered Wig Press that I'm definitely happy with in the sense that I was able to go all out on it and not have to stop for anything; I am well along with a new batch of Eel Leonard poems, and this week, in a burst, I finished two other short magazine pieces and am also about to start mailing out my letest "14 Secret Master Reports on Cloning". This last, which ia a mail thing, will give me a chance to do up some strange envelopes showing off the new postage stamp series that I and my charming mail pal DKA recently collaborated on. (Which seems as good a place as any to give credit where it belongs, and say that if I still devote a part of each day to mail art it's largely because of terrefic mailers like DKA. Terrific mailers like Rudi Rubberoid with his inimitable handmade envelopes and gnomic, nearly indecipherable handwriting. Terrific mailers like Suzy Crowbar and Sleaze Stele, who has raised head-infestation to an art, and John M. Bennett and Gerald "Flash" Burns and Jack the Raver Saunders. Aces all, whose work keeps on coming and keeping me interested.). Anyway, when it comes to the stuff I was able to churn out this month, my aformentioned writing and mail output, I'm happy to report that it was mostly accomplished without too much undue strain or looniness, as distinguished from ten years ago when my life was so crazy complicated that this sort of output (coupled with the scuffling I was having to do just to stay afloat financially) would have wrecked me, physically and mentally -- and often did. To say nothing of what I put my family through. I don't kid myself that there aren't things about the old hectic life I miss, but as I come creeping up on the Big Sixty, I have to feel very lucky that I've lived to make the adjustements which have allowed me to remain fairly productive and not vagged or institutionalized as yet. So far so good.

RJ : You say "......... that there aren't things about the old hectic life I miss". You can guess that I am curious to know which things these are, or are they too obvious to tell about?

next answer on 2-5-1997

AA : I wonder. That is, I'm not sure I can succesfully convey all that I mean about missing -- I might as well put "missing" in quotes -- certain things from a time in my life that, in retrospect, now seems hectic to the point of being chimeratic, if not actually deranged. I look back on those days and I have to wonder how I survived them. In a general sense, the period from 1972 to 1990 during which I was living the mail art life on a full-time basis was not unlike having a job where every day you're required to go down in this pit, and for 10-12 hours, sometimes longer, you have to try to control seven maniacs with just a chair. Along with the maniacs, there are flames down in the pit -- and rats and snakes, etc. And every 10 hours or so you get to take a lunch break, which consists of preparing a bat over the leaping open blue flames: a bat sandwich. That's the job. You also have creditors and bill collectors trying to get in at you all the time, and relatives and neighbors who think you maybe ought to be put away. It may seem like I'm being exessively metaphoric here, or morbidly fanciful, but consider: on a typical day when I was at my peak and the mail art "life" was running high -- let's say, for instance, on 5-7-83, in San Antonio, Texas, a Thursday morning, I can remember getting Stephanie, my wonderful daughter, off to school and then setting down in the kitchen to work on six or seven seperate pieces of mail art. (For years, I've worked at the kitchen table, partly because I've never been able to function in a formal office or studio space, and partly because the kitchen table puts me in closer touch with the cold beers that function for me in lieu of breakfast.) As generally happens on such mornings, I'm having a lot of untoward thoughts, doing a lot of writing in my head, thinking about Pego Von Berndt's proposal that the name "Mail Art" be changed to "Spanish Art," thinking about the neighborhood bruja (witch) who's sworn to get me ( a long & complicated story having to do with her mistaken belief that I stole her blouse) etc. On this particular day, I'm also remembering that I have to go over to the stamp place on San Pedro Avenue and pick up my latest rubber stamp. The stamp says "SURFACE FREE LITERATURE FOR THE BLIND" and I'm wondering how that's going to work out, whether it's going to help me realize my dream of significant postal savings or mean more trouble from the inspectors. (Too. there's also the chance that today's the day Dave Zack will pick to arrive from Mexico, he's been threatening all month to pay us a visit) but for the moment I'm in the middle of making these envelopes, when I detect the unwelcome sound of footsteps coming up the wooden staircase and onto the back porch. I know those footsteps. They belong to the landlord, who's intent on collecting his measly $ 200 - 300 in unpaid rent and always picks the early morning hours to come nosing around, a fanatic, fanatic character. Well, I've changed all the locks, so that part's O.K.; he can't get in. But I've forgotten to pull the curtain, so he can see in, and to prevent him spotting me (this morning, for some reason, I'm wrapped in my wife's dressing gown) I have to get down on all fours and, with a partially completed envelope to Lon Spiegelman (or Pat Tavenner or R. Kern or John Evans or the Mambo 6-Fingers Club -- whomever) clutched in one hand and a pair of scissors in the other, crawl rapidly into the bathroom. Where I find Sleaze Steele, our current house guest, kneeling on the tiles and talking to Ed on the Big White Phone. Sleaze has been with us two months now. He has serious nerve and gastric problems, no question about it. He should probably try laying off the wine coolers and cough syrup. In the meantime, having to share the bathroom with him while he's pouring out his esophogeal wealth and I'm waiting for the landlord to give up and go away, is not exactly my idea of a great morning situation but what you gonna do, Ruud? Through it all, between spasms, Sleaze is rambling feverishly in his mind, saying things like, "The car wash in Spokane failed, and Vi and I set out to see if we could build a life together", "I have never been at ease knowing there's a jealous husband in the picture" , "Vi wasn't much of a talker, so I never really had a chance to find out how much Walter knew, or if he'd hired detectives to follow us, or whether he might be back there somewhere on the road himself grimly dogging our trail in his ancient black Buick", "I knew the pain the jealous outraged husband in my grandmother's life had caused my father" , "My brother and I were silent witnesses of it all, the whole neighborhood in on the secret from the beginning when my grandmother grew too passionate about being on top, the unexplained giant rodent, etc."

By then, it's nearly 9:30 a.m. and my mail art is just beginning. So to think of doing this willingly -- even happily -- seems hard to believe, but that's how it was, back when I was younger and had the energy. I think that's probably what I mean when I talk about missing certain things.

I mean that I miss the energy I had back then, the energy that allowed me to get through it all and arrive at this quieter, more balanced state where I'm enjoying, as Philip Whalen would say, "Relaxation to write while hearing / Half-misunderstood foreign language in Grant Street."

RJ : I re-typed your answer today (May 30th 1997), just after coming from the dentist, and because I passed the Postoffice, collected my mail also. Not much mail today so I am able to deal with delayed mail. Mail art is fully integrated in my life, and probably it is the same with you (especially when I hear the details of that specific day in 1983). The question that arrises now might be a stupid one, but who cares. Are you able, nowadays, to pay your rent? Or do postagestamps still get priority?

next answer on 19-6-1997

(Al Ackerman's answer came in a envelope with a drawing on it stating 'you are the ENTITY' - 'MUY PICANTE' , where a typical Al's Adam & Eve are witnessed by a snake in the tree..... In the envelope also a newspaper-article with photo of Al, where Peter Werbe writes -- among others -- about Al's forthcoming reading out of his book 'The Blaster Al Ackerman Omnibus' at the Detroit's Trumbull Theatre)

AA : As Ed Higgins might say, Blood Red Sun. And honeycomb in the shape of the body from my sleeping on sofas, its expanse streched in mid-air, nearly weightless, yet already bending a little from its own mattedness. Looking down at this, all this hair and stuff on my comb, made me think of how it would be to restage the Trial of Socrates with just

crickets.

Or maybe you were 2 years old and you had a friend, name of Vennie Lice, with a brother got some Lady-Fingers still had the bandage on his right arm from slamming some clam....never mind....besides us sails a mighty armanda of rears, crapping the planet on its upper third....HELP ME OUT HERE, RHONDA!

Ah, I love those Higgins Answers.

Actually, making the rent is always a struggle, always a victory (these days, Ann and I split it on a real hovel) and if I was still spending as much on postage as I was spending back in '72-'91, it wouldn't even be close. Nowadays, though, postage only runs me $5-10 per week, a savings of about $60-70. I thought I might go in the hole, last month, when I traveled to Detroit to appear at the Trumball Theater but even though I had a slight psychotic episode on stage (very weird, I suddenly found the spirit of Dwight Eisenhower manifesting itself in my voice and gestures, and ran around trying to light various small fires) the theater management was kind enough to pay me, plus I sold some books, so I wound up doing O.K. on travel expenses and was able to pay my half of this month's rent, i.e. , $160, when I got back to Baltimore. The old story of "Horrible rent / beautiful art , and vice versa" (I just hope Bierce was right about this.) Hi Vennie.

(Perhaps it's snowing?)

RJ : Reading or talking in front of a public is quite different from writing letters or texts which are sent in the mail to others. Do you like to 'perform' in front of a public, or do you prefer the intimicy of the envelope (when there is a choice...)?

next answer on 28-7-1997

AA : The best answer I can come up with runs like this: if you crossed a horse with a spider you'd have an awfull odd-looking thing but at the same time it would be something that when it bit you you could maybe climb on and ride it to the hospital. That's sort of how I tend to view (and do) mail art and performance stuff. There's a lot of overlap. It's not always easy to keep the two activities separate. For example -- a few months ago, I wrote something called "Palookaville" which I sent out as a mail art piece. It's a rather delecate "mood" piece that begins, "The one-way ticket to Palookaville expressing sexual prejudices in witch hunting has been fortunate in that the prossessed and their investigators usually couldn't concentrate. But the true success story has been my leaving the marine Corps to investitate the initial charges from a possessed fifteen-year-old girl --" and goes on poignantly in this vein for a page or so, and ends with the words, "Awoke instantly for my mind crossed a rabbit and a fox to produce a thing addicted to bad public relations to the air force."

Anyway, once I'd mailed it out I had no further plans for it. So, and this is what often happens, I more or less forgot about it. Time passed. Then, several months later when I was in Detroit doing a show and I needed something to read on stage -- something brief that would serve as a bridge between two longer pieces -- I remembered "Palookaville" and dug it out and read it, and as an extra added gimmick I read it with a half-empty cigarette pack stuffed in my mouth. When you read something and you have a cigarette pack jammed between your teeth it can impart a whole new dimension, can make the piece seem even stranger than it was originally, which, in the case of "Palookaville" , seemed to be what was needed and, sure enough, I had the impression that the thing worked better in performance than it had on the printed page. So that's one way -- using a piece of mail to generate a performance or reading.

The other way is like what I do once a month at the Shattered Wig Nights here in Baltimore. I should probably explain that Shattered Wig is, first of all, a really terrific magazine -- The Shattered Wig review -- edited by poet and bon vivant Rupert Wondolowski. It's like one of the very few magazines I take seriously. Fortunately it's been around for a number of years. And over the years there has grown out of this publishing venture a tradition of Shattered Wig Nights, monthly blow-outs that happen at a club downtown, involving poetry, music, performance and what-have-you. (I say "what-have-you" because some of the acts can get pretty weird and it's not always easy to tell. I'm thinking here of things like The Montana Joe Project, which involves eroticism with Sesame Street dolls -- and T. "Justice" Duggan, whose thing is to dress as a Supreme Court Judge and punish people -- anybody who's foolish enough to get up there with her on stage can have their skin flayed with a whip.) So anyway, while I'm nowhere in the same league as these people, I do get up once a month at these evenings and do readings and sometimes I'll push it over into the realm of actual live performance and do things like, well one night I had ten people up on stage with me. They were tied -- they were roped around me in a circle -- with surgical tape. And they'd each been given the task to perform -- : "Crush a bag of patato chips under each arm and go, 'Urg! I'm a party animal!" , "Pretend to knit a straitjacket for Saul Bellow and meanwhile discover turfy things in your hair while squatting and brooding." So I had these ten different activities that were taking place around me while I proceeded to stand up and read this long poem whose text featured the word "muff" over 150 times. It was quite a spectacle. It took me about 45 minutes to read the "muff" epic and meanwhile the helpers around me were carrying out their various repetative actvities and, towards the end, everybody was becoming frankly exhausted -- moaning, falling down, etc.. -- so that the stage took on the appearance of The Raft Medusae, that old disaster-at-sea painting where the survivors are writhing in agony on a raft. But the point is, I wrote the "muff" piece especially for this particular Shattered Wig Night. In fact, I was working on it right up until time to go on, practically. It wasn't till later I xeroxed it for mailing, turned it into a mail art thing, cut it up and pasted it on envelopes and so forth. Made postcards. That's how it works for me.

Sometimes the performing swings the mail and sometimes the mail swings the performing. I don't really have a preference -- how could I? It's more like falling down the stairs than any pre-conceived programatic thing and I'm just taking it as it comes. I'm usually surprised and I'm always the last to know -- but, I don't know, Ruud, does that answer what you were asking? I'm not sure I haven't gone off on a tangent and missed the point entirely. I have the feeling it may be like the old riddle: "Which comes first, the chicken or the egg?" Ed Dorn, the poet, has a nice answer to that one, where he says, "The question is not, which came first / the chicken or the egg / the question is which came first / journalism or tabacco." Hell if I know.

RJ: If you missed the point entirely or not isn't interesting at all. Your answer shows clearly how you work, and I am very much interested in that. Just wondered, do the people who see those performances understand anything of the concept of mail art. Do they participate in the network, or is that part unknown to them?

next answer on 8-9-1997

AA : It varies. I've done readings, especially here in Baltimore, where at least half the audience either had done mail art themselves or knew what it was. So they were certainly aware of the connections. Although I don't know how much difference it made in the long run, as far as my performance went, because, I mean, you can get up in front of a crowd that's primed to bursting with mail art insights and you can still give a bum reading. Again, I've done readings -- at high schools, say, or in front of straight poetry groups -- where nobody had a clue, the 'term' mail art was something they'd never run into before, just a cypher.

In such cases, there are two ways you can go about it. You can either throw out some prefatory remarks, try to explain what mail art is and how it ties in to what you're about to read -- or -- you let it go and just read. I've handled it both ways. I must say that, times when I've tried to explain, I didn't really feel I was making much headway. Trying to briefly explain the concept of mail art to a roomful of people who've never even remotely encountered the term before, is about like trying to explain the concept of model railroading to a Martian. Once, I got up and said: "Mail Art is a sphere whose circumference is infinite and whose center is everywhere" -- and everybody in the audience just looked at me. Nowdays I mostly eschrew the explenations. It saves a lot of wear and tear. Nowdays, I'm likely to begin very softly, I'll have my head sort of lolling to one side -- and speaking in this very affected, very fruity-sounding voice, I'll start by saying something like, "Hello there, poetry povers. I'm Blaster Al Ackerman and I'm not wearing any socks but my ankies are painted with Indian ink. Here's one called 'Yellow Wallpaper Song' that's a favoriteof mine and -- I hope -- of yours?" Then I'll jam a cigarette pack between my teeth and yell:

YELLOW WALLPAPER SONG

I'm goin' down Georgia
I'm goin' down Georgia
pelow on my mind
I'm goin'back stay

I'm goin' back this time
today -- really goin'
I see my tie, childish
from gin I guess I'm
freezin' my palm when

them ripplin' eyeballs
insistent up the wall
from full intent to
wed my penis to some

wealthy invalid. Oh my veins are blue
tongue bulgin'
out like
magma--

sing
this song
wherever they make you
wait in line

--Eel Leonard

RJ : Because you have been so long working with this mail art, you must have received tons of materials. Have you kept it all , thrown it away, or to be short: how does your "archive" look like?

next answer on 15-1-1998

AA : You reminded me of how long I've been putting off shoveling up the mess in here. Things are getting way out of hand in my "archives".

Actually , where my methods are concerned. the term "archives" is something of a misnomer -- venture to say a joke. Just as a hen mysteriously lacks lips -- and a snake a navel -- I have always mysteriously lacked the power or ability or whatever it takes to keep an "archive" going. I seem to be incapable of maintaining any sort of systemized filing system. Rather, over the years I've learned to deal as best I could with greater or lesser "accumulations". Mail in boxes, mail on the floor, mail stacked out in the garage, etc.

"Piles" might be not a bad way to describe it, except for certain spurious medical connotations. For years I used to let things pile up, the glut and overflow relieved only by what I was glomming up on the walls or recycling back into the mail network. From time to time I would make desperate gifts to this or that museum -- the Krazy Kat Archives at St. Andrews (Scotland) got a lot of the early stuff, and later on the Smithsonian took some of it off my hands.

Once, when the walls of my kitchen, in San Antonio, had reached such a state of overload that the layers of mail were threatening to drag down the plaster, I removed everything, peeling it off laborously into a sort of continuous gigantic scroll and, with John M. Bennett acting as go-between, donated it all to Washington University. This vast and lumpy artefact known as "The Ackerman Kitchen Collection", which I packed in a large crate for shipping, comprised five years of nonstop mail art accumulation -- postcards , letters , collages , paintings , manifestos , you name it. Quite a treasure.

Unfortunately, a multitude of roaches had started nesting behind it on the walls and when the art came down and went into the crate a good many "roach hotels" went along for the ride. I never did find out how the people at Washington University reacted to what must have certainly been a lively uncrating scene.

Bequests to museums and universities, frantic recycling measures -- no matter what I tried, I could never keep ahead of the build-up. I wasn't the only one. Nunzio Mifune, another top mailer, was also having problems with overflow. I visited him once at his home and found him staring glassy-eyed at the piles. I asked him if he had any ideas but all he said was, "You may have heard the one about the after-dinner speaker who knew a good story about a gun and wanted to tell it, but couldn't think of any graceful way of introducing it into the speech he was making. Desperate at last, he cried, 'Bang! Was that a gun I heard?' and went on happily to unleash his gag......"

At this point I realized poor Nunzio had gone clean off his rocker. He had become hebeprhrenic -- just another tragic victim of mail-art buil-up. My living situations have always been on the precarious side, with lots of relocations and moonlight flits. Nevertheless, between '72 and '89 I managed to haul a dozen or so jumbo boxes of mail along with me wherever I went, including two hellish cross-country moves that left me shaky as a kootch-dancer.

Seventeen years of this. What to do? Finally , in 1990, a year of unpredictable weather and heavy rains, the matter was teken out of my hands when a flash flood in San Antonio, Texas, wiped out most of my collection. I think it would be a bit inaccurate to say that just because I was suddenly relieved of carting around hndreds of punds of mail art the loss came as nothing but a relief. A lot of what I lost was irreplaceble and to this day I still miss it. On the other hand, there are days -- especially moving days -- when I can't stop grinning.

Anyway , my decision after the flood of '90 was to save no more than I could comfortably carry. I've found this to be a challenge but by recycling most of what comes in I've managed to stay in the clear. As it is I still manage to go on accumulating a hell of a lot of stuff. Even though the clutter and overflow is nothing like it was in the old days, my mail space here at the bookstore is far from tidy. I keep looking around at the piles, which have a way of accumulate glacially, and telling myself that tomorrow, for sure, I'm going to give things a good sorting and cleaning. That's what I keep telling myself.

Well, we live in hope, and when the time eeeeaaaaGGGGHHH!

Excuse me - something just came out of one of the piles and bit me.

RJ : I hope you are O.K. Blaster , this mail art can be dangerous sometimes. I guess it is time now to end the interview so I won't be feeding your mail piles anymore. On the other hand, when I publish the interview it might cause some reactions to your mail box....... Anyway , my last question is always: "Did I forget to ask you something?". But somehow I know I probably did......

Next answer on 14-5-1998

AA : Yes

RJ : I could have known that...... Thanks for the interview Al Ackerman!

Address mail-artist:

Blaster Al Ackerman
c/o Normal's Books,
425 - E 31st Street,
Baltimore - MD 21218, USA

Address interviewer:

Ruud Janssen - TAM
P.O. Box 1055
4801 BB - Breda
Netherlands
e-mail : r.janssen@iuoma.org

Mail-Interview with Andrej Tisma (Yugoslavia)

2006-10-01T01:06:00.000-07:00

This interview was done by Ruud Janssen.

THE MAIL-INTERVIEW WITH ANDREJ TISMA 38

Started on: 15-5-1995

RJ : Welcome to this mail-interview. First let me ask you the traditional question. When did you get involved in the mail-art network?

Reply on: 16-6-1995

AT : I made my first mail-art work in 1973 after a visit to one of the pioneers of Yugoslavian mail-art, Bogdanka Poznanovic from Novi Sad. I mailed to her two bus tickets I used going to her and returning home, fixed on a postcard. I wrote beneath them: "My visit to the DT 20 Studio in the formulation of GSP (City Transportation Enterprise)". I think that in that moment I wasn't aware of the mail-art movement.

Later on that year, before I left for Prague, Czechoslovakia, to study painting, she launched an international mail-art project under the title "Feedback Letter-Box" and she invited me to send in something. The project was about letter-boxes; she sent out photos of her letter-box to 45 people, expecting them to send in their's. The project was open one year, and I sent my contribution in summer of 1974 (a photograph of the building and the window where I was receiving mail in my students' home, and the lady in white coat who was distributing letters). Later, when I returned to Novi Sad for vacation I saw the exhibition which was held in Poznanovic's DT 20 Studio. Participants were, among others, Joseph Beuys, Ken Friedman, Klaus Groh, Jochen Gerz, Janos Urban, Michele Perfetti, J.H. Kocman, Clemente Padin, Sarenco, Natalia LL, and from Yugoslavia Miroljub Todorovic and Balint Szombathy. I was listed under Czechoslovakia.

During my stay in Prague I continued sending mail-art, but only to few friends in Yugoslavia, because I was long away from home (for the first time in my life), so mail-art functioned in my case as continuation of creative contact with dear fellow artists which was interrupted by my leaving for Prague for several years. It was a natural need to stay in touch with some artists, surmounting the great distance between us. Soon after arriving to Prague I bought a rubber-stamp letter print for children, using it to print some words on envelopes and letters. It was some kind of visual poetry and concept art, sent by mail.

Since I studied painting and painting was my main art expression in that time, I used mail-art just sporadically. I also took part in some international mail-art shows in 1979: "Feedback Letter-Box", Zagreb (then Yugoslavia), "Numbers", Allesandria (Italy), "International Mail-Art Fair", Paris (France). Also in the year 1979 I got in touch with Franci Zagoricnik (from Kranj, former Yugoslavia) and Westeast group, which was based on mail-art communication, publishing the "Westeast" anthologies of visual poetry, using the "Assembling" method of compilation of 300 original works, also making exhibitions. Every anthology had its theme, and I took part in many of them. Through that I got in touch with many mail-art works, but the problem was that Zagoricnik jealously kept the addresses as top secret so I couldn't communicate with all those people. I could just watch their works and slowly get into the international mail-art spirit.

My real involvement in the network happened in 1983 when I met Dobrica Kamperelic, mail-artist from Belgrade (Yugoslavia). Even though we had correspondence for years, we met for the first time by chance in a Novi Sad bookshop. He gave me immediately a bunch of invitations for mail-art projects in Brazil, USA, Europe, also some personal addresses, and soon after I eagerly plunged into that challenging, unexplored field called mail-art network. Since then Kamperelic and I stayed closest collaborators and friends.

Soon I began receiving catalogs, info-zines from all over the world and the list of my correspondents was growing each day. The same year I launched my own mail-art project "Mail - Art Olympic Games" , which was organized in conjunction with the XIVth Winter Olympic Games in Sarajevo. In two months I received works by 120 artists from 20 countries, so I began to feel as a real part of the Eternal Network.

RJ : Participating in projects is something else than doing your own project. What did you learn from this first project that you did yourself?

Reply on 1-8-1995 (registered mail)

AT : Yes, it is different. When I began participating in others' projects, or I did mail-art communication on one-to-one basis it was a feeling of great excitement because you send your artwork to somebody unknown, or for some exhibition, for the unknown visitor. There is also a great expectation of some personal reply, or reaction that your work provokes in some spectator's mind, or in mind of a particular and much respected person to whom the work was dedicated. Such reply gives the mail-artist a special stimulus and encouragement for further work. And that is the most important aspect of that kind of communication. Of course important is also exchange of information, also of friendship and kindness. Another important characteristic is that you are choosing your correspondents, even if you are sending out mail massively. Substantially it is GIVING.

A different thing is starting your own mail-art project. The best comparison is with fishing: you throw the fishhook, or even a fishnet, and you wait for what is going to happen. If you are lucky, and if your "bait" is good enough you will catch plenty of "fishes." But in that plenty they will not be all of good quality, and in mail-art there is no throwing back "fishes" into the water. They all must be kept and "eaten." And that sometimes causes little problems. In other words, doing your own project you can't choose your correspondents, except if your invitations are strictly personal. But the charm of doing your own project is just the uncertainty and great expectation. The same as in fishing. Substantially it is TAKING.

But on the other hand, organizing of a mail-art project requires a great degree of responsibility, unlike the participation, when you are not obliged about nothing. When you organize a project, an exhibition, first you have to collect and keep the arrived works carefully, notify them, make the address list, find the exhibition space, produce a catalog or any documentation (time and money problem), and send the documentation to all participants. You become not just artist, but also a gallerist, writer, publisher and administrator. But I always did that as a kind of a little sacrifice for the international network, glad that I can give my small contribution to the collaboration, establishing new and creative contacts within it. I see every such international project and his organizer as a knot in the net, which keeps the whole together. In that sense, organizing of a show is also GIVING (REPAY).

Another problem with the one's own project is that you suddenly begin to receive a huge amount of mail, without a physical possibility to reply to it (a printed catalog after the show is not a real mail-art reply to an artwork). It can also give you a (wrong) impression that you are so important personality in the net because you get ten to fifteen pieces daily from all over the world. That feeling is very pleasant, but when the project is over your mailbox becomes sadly empty. That's the reason, I suppose, why some people in the network are running new projects one after the other. But it is not real creativity.

My first mail-art project, "Mail-Art Olympic Games" in February 1984, was realized in cooperation with the Novi Sad Television Program "Sunday Afternoon." Actually the exhibition was first shown on the television (installed in the studio), and after that it was installed in the "Forma" gallery in Novi Sad. That was maybe the first television mail-art show in the history, and it was broadcasted in the whole country, the former Yugoslavia, during the Sarajevo Winter Olympics, so people from different countries, participants and visitors to the Olympics could watch it too, and the show has had millions of "visitors." In the show there were 120 participants from 20 countries after the deadline of only two months. It was a great experience for me. The next year I installed the show in Sarajevo, and that was the first mail-art show ever in that town. After that, in 1986 the show was hosted by Chuck Stake's CCAG in Calgary, Canada. So my first mail-art project gave me plenty of pleasure and excitement.

RJ : Another large project you did was "Nature gives....". What was the concept of this project?

Reply on 6-10-1995

AT : When you mentioned the word project it reminded me that in fact every artist's project is also a kind of his own artwork. So it can be taken also as self expression. Because the artist is one who chooses the theme of his own project, and he usually chooses the words or sentences that effect him/her the most. So the organizing of your own project is not only taking from the Network, but also playing with it, expressing yourself through others. I found somewhere a very good definition of today's artist, for whom other artists are the media of expression.

I would also like to use this opportunity to mention three of my earlier mail art projects I did in 1979 and 1980 but unlike "Mail-Art Olympic Games" I didn't get any response to them. The project "My Home" from 1979 consisted of sending to a number of artists a groundplan of my apartment, and a short description of circumstances of my living. It was my try to establish contacts with artists, but not based on art exchange, but on life exchange.

Another project, done in 1980, consisted of colorful postcards with flowers, and on the other side was my rubber stamp imprint saying: "How Are You." The addresses, which I had chosen at random from the phone-book were printed with a typewriter, and there was no trace of sender. My aim was to surprise those unknown people, to make them reflect about how they are, are they satisfied with their life? They couldn't reply to me because I didn't give my name and address.

The third of my earlier projects (1980) was "Collective Infinite Work." I sent out an empty square and asked from the receiver to draw a line on it, and send it further on. Every artist was asked to draw only one line, until the drawing is completed, in the last one's opinion. The last one should send the completed work with a list of participants to me. It seems that this work will really be "infinite."

Now the "Nature Gives...." project which was your question. You are right, it was a large, in fact my largest project, with 375 participants from 30 countries, with 1,000 works sent in, and a full color 200 pages book as a documentation, sent to all participants. This project came after my also huge "Private Life" project (320 participants) which was shown in fourteen Yugoslavian galleries, so I was exhausted and decided not to organize any new mail art project in at least one year. But then I got a phone call from a cosmetics factory in Osijek, Croatia. They asked me to organize a mail art project in connection with nature and beauty and they will sponsor it. Well, I was pleasantly surprised that someone so far away heard about me and my mail art activity, and wants to invest money in it. So, what could I do, I accepted it, with few conditions: that a large full color book will be printed at the end,and that they will mail the invitations. They agreed, so we launched the "Nature Gives...." in 1988, and it lasted one year. My aim was to make an homage to nature and make artists and viewers all over the world to read and watch again and again the word "Nature" and become more aware of it. It occurred that, taken on the average, every day of that year one artist was sending in works.

When I collected the works in autumn 1989 I went to Osijek, showed them to the sponsor and they were excited. We made agreement that I prepare texts for the book, chose works for reproduction, find the printing-house, and they will pay everything. I engaged a professor from London, Pierre Rouve, art historian (he wrote the screen-play for Antonioni's film "Blow Up") whom I met in Novi Sad, to write an essay on mail art as foreword. Also I asked a young ecologist from Novi Sad to write on the catastrophic situation in the world, and I myself wrote an introduction about the project.

But as time was passing the situation in the former Yugoslavia was slowly changing. Croatia prepared its secession and soon my sponsor informed me about "financial problems". They suggested that I wait, but things were going worse and worse. Soon, in 1991, military clashes in Croatia began, so it became clear to me that I will have to realize the book myself (I had promised it to participants), and find another exhibition space.

So I had to begin everything from zero, searching for sponsors here in Serbia. It took me one year till I collected the money for printing the book (twelve firms participated). Finally in summer 1992 we opened the show in Belgrade's Cultural Center Gallery. It was a great success and media showed a great interest. It was the time soon after the imposing of the international cultural blockade on our country, so an international exhibition was a great event. The show was later traveling to the cities of Novi Sad, Sombor, Zrenjanin, Sremski, Karlovci, Pristina, Nis,.... all over Serbia during the years of the international cultural blockade.

Once I got an information that cosmetics factory in Osijek was bombed and completely destroyed, because it was used for ammunition storage.

That was a little bit sad story about mixing of art and life, mail art and war, ecology and politics. But I should say that in this case art, Nature and friendship had triumphed. Because in that show, among others, many Croat, Bosnian, Slovenian mail artists participated and the book was sent to all of them, even the war was going on in their republics.

RJ : This international cultural blockade is now lifted for some time. How were the international contacts during the blockade, and how are they now?
Reply on 18-11-1995 (registered mail)

AT : Unfortunately we have to talk about the blockade of Yugoslavia (Serbia-Montenegro), although I would rather talk more about mail art, or Network phenomenon, about art in general, about spirituality, but I hope in this interview we will get back to these issues. The international cultural blockade was imposed on us, so it is logical that the theme of embargo on art is "imposed" to this interview, but it was "imposed" also to the whole Network as a real and crucial problem. So it is worth talking about. The blockade has put the entire networking idea on test, and that was maybe the most important event in the Network (besides the Balkan war) in the last few years. Fortunately, or unfortunately, we the Serbian networkers were here to testify about the embargo's effects and to try to overcome them, with a help of our friends from abroad.

As you might know the international blockade, which included also sports and cultural embargo, was imposed on Serbia on May 31, 1992 (about the righteousness of that I will not discuss now). The United Nations, or their mentors, decided to exclude Serbia and its people from the cultural exchange. For us networkers, who are working for decades on establishing cultural exchange with all parts of the globe, looking for a planetary culture, that was a great shock. We who contributed so much for years and decades to this humane and cosmopolitan idea, were simply put under blockade without exception. The cultural blockade is inhumane, harmful and inadmissible, but on the first place unnatural in today's globalized world. And that was the reason we raised our voices in protest against cultural embargo. So the postal communication was not the problem, because mail was going almost regularly, as before the embargo, but that feeling of injustice was my, and my friends' main motive to act. I took embargo as a symbol of VIOLENCE of the world authorities which endangers our nice and positive idea of an open network, and my task was to fight against it, for the universal reasons, not the selfish ones. Because, as I said, the postal communication didn't stop, but UN's decision to put one state, one group of people under cultural blockade made me react. So I left almost all other art activities and dedicated my time and energy to fight the MONSTER.

In the moment the embargo was imposed I made a hand-carved rubber stamp with the inscription "EMBARGO ART", and I used it on everything I sent out to the network. During these three years of embargo I made more than twenty anti-embargo rubber stamps, did anti-embargo performances, published anti-embargo articles all over the world, organized many anti-embargo exhibitions in collaboration with Aleksandar Jovanovic, publisher of the anti-embargo magazine "Cage" (in Vichte, Belgium, in Dallas, Tokyo, also in Belgrade, Novi Sad). All our anti-embargo activity began in Sremski Karlovci, where I organized the Anti-Embargo Net Congress (September 1-3, 1992) where eight of us Serbian networkers signed the "Deblockade of Creativity" declaration which was distributed into the network. We did so many things since then, that one book could be written on it.

Besides me and Javonovic the anti-embargo group consisted of Dobrica Kamperelic, Miroljub Todorovic (Belgrade), Jaroslav Supek, Nenad Bogdanovic (Odzaci), Ratko Radanovic (Srpski Miletic), Jozef Klacik (Novi Sad), and later Vlado Njaradi (Vrbas), Sandor Gogolyak (Odzaci) and Anica Vucetic (Belgrade) have joined us. But maybe the most important was the support by foreign networkers from about twenty countries, who collaborated with "Cage" magazine, published our protests, exhibited our works, visited us here in Serbia, distributed our stuff, supported us morally in letters and publicly in their countries, made anti-embargo works themselves etc. Among them are John Held Jr. (USA), Peter and Angela Netmail (Germany), Jose van den Broucke (Belgium), Shozo Shimamoto (Japan), Hans Ruedi Fricker (Switserland), Ruud Janssen (Holland), Gyorgy Galantai (Hungary), Crackerjack Kid (USA), Ruggero Maggi (Italy), Clemente Padin (Uruguay), Teresinka Pereira (USA), Livia Cases (Italy) and many others. That brother/sisterhood made us stronger and more decided to fight till the end. In one interview John Held stated: "Yugoslavian networker artists are using their position to signal the condition of their life. They are saying in creative ways that it is wrong to separate people culturally, as well as economically. I'm for an art that is used for a higher purpose than to compliment the colors of a living room couch. Yugoslav networker artists are freedom fighters and are serving as examples to other network artists. They are reminding us of art's higher purpose. (...) Even though it is more expensive now to mail from Yugoslavia, the artists have kept in touch with other network artists. Their spirits have not been defeated, if anything they seem to have gotten stronger. They have done important things with their anti-embargo art actions. I think perhaps this has made their art even more relevant. Certainly it has given them increased respect throughout the world. (...) With their experiences under cultural embargo, and their creative response to it, they have placed themselves at the very center of network attention".

During all these years of blockade the real problem in communication within the network was our difficult economic situation and foreign anti-Serb propaganda. So back in 1993 the daily monetary inflation was 300% (!), our monthly income was about US$ 3,-, but the postal taxes were on the world level. So you had to decide if you are going to send a letter by airmail to the USA or buy for that money twelve kilos of bread (bread was almost everything we ate in that time). Of course I always gave the priority to sending the letter. Because to stay in touch with the Network, especially with some of the friends, meant more than bread. It gave us moral support which was important in circumstances when there was no heating in the winter, no fuel for cars or city buses so we had to go everywhere by foot, and sometimes we had electricity only for four hours a day. With your networker friend's letter in your pocket you feel safer and warmer, really.
I mentioned also some misinformation by the foreign media, so during these years I received few insulting letters in which it was written that Serbs are killers, that I can not be trusted because of Serbs' acts in Croatia, that I am a fascist swine and that my Serbia should be bombed (By the way I had nothing in common with the civil wars which were all fought outside of Serbia, and Serbia as a state was not in war for a single day. But that's a long story). Also many networkers who were invited to come and visit us, because of misinformation and propaganda were afraid to come, although our country was totally safe and peaceful. That was experienced by only few networkers who have visited us since the war began in the former Yugoslavia, like Bob Kirkman (USA), Livia Cases (Italy), Peter and Angela Netmail (Germany), John Held (USA). As Peter Netmail stated in his "DNC Book 92" after visiting Serbia (Belgrade, Novi Sad, Odzaci): "It is dangerous to rely on mass media reports in our countries only. Personal eyesight was definitely better. (...) Everyday life was grotesquely normal, even full of hectic consumerism in Belgrade (...), Novi Sad and Odzaci. Every single day of his life Peter has seen in his own Germany home cities more soldiers than in Serbia now. (...) Our networker friends take great efforts to stay cosmopolitan and pacifist within very narrow horizons. Their biggest heroic deed seems to happen in their own hearts, attitudes and consciousness."

In your question you have mentioned that the cultural blockade is now lifted for some time, and you are right, it was suspended in October 1994. But it seems that it is not working in practice, especially in America, Canada.... I was surprised, even shocked when the Chuck Welch's book "Eternal Network: A mail art Anthology" was not aloud by United States Postal Service to be sent to Serbia. It was in March 1995 when Chuck received his package back with bright red ink imprint "REFUSED". Chuck has informed me, after asking the State Department, that his package was violating the UN embargo sanctions imposed upon Serbia. So the story begins again, and it never stopped, even though we already celebrated the lifting of the Cultural embargo together with John Held on our 1st Post Cultural Embargo Networker Congress, Novi Sad, October 30, 1994. Since I was very angry on such an act by the US Postal Service, and the same thing happened with Canadian too, I wrote an open letter to Welch (on March 29) asking him to protest to his government, and he did so writing to four of his congressional representatives personally (on April 6), asking them "what right have we to create cultural concentration camps of other countries in the world?". Since he was not satisfied with their answers he continued his fight to make possible that his book comes freely to my doorstep. In his correspondence he was informed in October 1995 by the State Department's officer, trough Senator Bob Smith that "last year the United Nations suspended a limited number of sanctions, including those on cultural exchange", but that "under current US law, however, Americans are not entitled to sanctions relief, and are still prohibited from engaging in transactions with Serb entities without permission from the Office of Foreign Assets Control". So as you see sanctions are still functioning in some countries, and our fight for freedom of art and cultural exchange must continue. But we must fight all together, if we want some results. Now Chuck is fighting hard; he launched a project into the Internet asking people to protest by sending letters, post-cards and anti-embargo art to some governmental institutions' addresses in Washington. Let us hope for success. We must first FREE the art and then DO art. Our fight for free art is also art, if it is sincere and humane.

RJ : Just before the falling apart of the large Yugoslavia you started with the "Institute of spreading of love". What was the idea behind this?

Reply on 16-1-1996

AT : Actually I started the Institute when the war in the former Yugoslavia was on its beginning, in November 1991, as the continuation of my previous activities for peace; performances, (spi)rituals, street actions, written statements sent into the Network etc. For example in September 1991, when the war in Croatia was on its peak, I did the public (spi)ritual "Declaration of Peace", in the Peace Chapel of Sremski Karlovci, a Franciscan church, talking about love between people, then breaking knifes and lighting candles symbolically, distributing rubberstamp imprints of a big red radiating heart to the audience. And already in August that year I launched the "Love Offensive" campaign and rubberstamp, as reaction to hatred, nationalism and destruction all around me in the former Yugoslavia. I used every opportunity to radiate love, in everyday life, in my art, in the radio, TV etc. So the founding of the Institute for the Spreading of Love was the result and continuation of all these activities, and also an art project. Because I realized, as I stated once, that LOVE is the greatest ART, and greatest TREASURE in this world. So, dealing with love was pure art for me. The CROWN of it all.

In January 1992 I began publishing the "Love" magazine (bilingual) and sending it all over the world. As I stated in the introduction of the first number, the aim of the Institute was to collect, to record and to study all positive world trends which include feeling, demonstrating and spreading of love. Intention was also to coordinate and initiate events of such kind all over the world, and to radiate love through rituals. The Institute consisted of three departments: for love for the humans, love for the nature and for arts. I sent out invitations for collaboration, and soon I had very good international response. All received stuff was published in the "Love"magazine and sent out to collaborators for free. The Institute and magazine had public presentations in Novi Sad, Belgrade, on radio and TV, in newspapers and even books. In that time Chuck Welch (USA) wrote: "I see Andrej Tisma's Institute of Love as a bold statement and challenge, not without risk, in a war torn Yugoslavia", and Harley (USA) supported me writing: "Your Declaration of Peace performance with its message of love is of vital importance. The constant roar of all the violence and hatred is hard to fight with quiet messages of love and peace - but effort must be made. It is the last refuge of sanity. Please don't give up and lose your faith - my heart is with you".

It was obvious that people all over the world, and especially in the war surroundings of the former Yugoslavia, are very fond of love, and my Institute was treated very seriously; I was invited to TV shows (the Institute was even announced in the evening TV news, strongly contrasted to images of bloody corpses from the war-front) to different meetings, manifestations, the magazine was collected by libraries, included in some magazine shows, even got awards, sponsors etc. All those forms of public life of the Institute were fascinating and inspiring for me. My work of art got its real life, it mingled into the everyday life, brought new friends, stirred emotions (one friend told me that he was crying while reading the magazine), did something positive in the awful life of that time, gave hope to many people, gave another image of Yugoslav people abroad. It was my master-piece of art, but also realization of ideals, of the networking principles, of human principles. I entered some new networks and circles of people, nice and spiritual, good willing persons. Giving love resulted in receiving love, and the circle of love was formed.

But when the former Yugoslavia split up into many small countries (in 1992), which was assisted by Europe and USA, the part in which I found myself (Serbia and Montenegro, or the small Yugoslavia) was put under total embargo. All positive things I did were put aside and I had to suffer equally with all my compatriots: women, children, old and sick people under unseen before inhuman circumstances. So I started the fight against the embargo, together with my networker friends (that was the theme of our previous question), and the Institute for the Spreading of Love had to slow down for a while (unfortunately). I have published the last issue of the "Love" magazine in August 1993. But by then I had already organized the Anti-embargo Congress (September 1992), and the first issues of the "Cage" magazine were edited by A. Jovanovi_, in which I was very active for three years.

Now the war is over, and the blockade is suspended. Reasons for further publishing of "Cage" don't exist anymore. So we will see what will be our next activity. I would prefer to come back to the "normal" networking, exchange of views, art stuff, spiritual issues that are mostly interesting for me. Because spiritual development of mankind is the greatest task of our time. It can be achieved through love, compassion, exchange on all levels. So there are many tasks in front of me, and I'll be glad to work on that new challenge which concerns the whole planet.

RJ : Could you explain what you mean with "spiritual development" without getting too technical?

Reply on 21-2-1996

AT : Thank you for asking me that. Because all my art activities, since mid 70-ies, when I was still a painter, were aimed not towards visual or aesthetic explorations, but toward ethical, ecological and humane messages. Because I think that even thought art can not change the world, it can influence people's minds, consciousness, spiritual level.

I remember in 1973 to 1976, while studying painting at the Prague Academy of Fine Arts (I am one of the few mail-artists who have a classical art education, and for me it was maybe more difficult to "jump into networking", leaving behind all I have learned at the Academy) themes of my paintings were, for example, good deeds of people in the city streets, buses, helping old and sick people, feeding animals, helping poor people etc. After that, when back from Prague, I was painting ecological metaphors, dedicated to the power of nature, of growth, pure energy, etc. That is why discovering of the mail art movement and participation in it was for me a great joy, because I could work with many persons world-wide, apply my ideas and test them in communication. Because for me mail art is not just sending beautiful pieces of paper, but working with living people, spiritual exchanges with them, which leads to mutual spiritual development.

If you remember, the themes of my mail art projects were dedicated to some social, political and ecological problems of our civilization: Mail Art Olympic Games (1984), Private Life (1986), AIDS and Paradise (1987), Nature Gives... (1992), FAX HeART (1994). Also my "Love Offensive" campaign, founding of the Institute for the Spreading of Love, publishing of the "Love" magazine, organizing the Anti-Embargo Net Congress and the three years long anti-embargo campaign world-wide. All these activities I consider to be art, my works of art, which is engaged not aesthetically or visually, but mentally and spiritually.

Besides networking I have since 1984 an other parallel activity I call (SPI)RITUALS. It is direct spiritual exchange with the audience during my performances. In short, it is transmission of my inspiration, or positive energy on people, opening their spiritual channels, widening their consciousness, which is still too narrow. So I am doing my best in its widening. In the last six years I did about forty different (spi)rituals, some of them, since 1991, were aimed to stop the war in Iraque, then in former Yugoslavia, and finally against the cultural isolation of my country. I did it by radiation of love onto the universe, trying to influence all confronted sides to find peaceful solutions. Now when the war in former Yugoslavia is over, I will dedicate my energy to spiritual development of people around me, and further on, everywhere in the world. Because I believe that artists will be PRIESTS of the future world. Or more precisely, artist, priest and scientist will again become one person, as in ancient times.

I think that the mail art network is a good model for the future world, because it is based on collaboration, love, exchange, tolerance, cosmopolitism. Also I can say that my (spi)rituals derived from mail art activity. It began with postal exchange world-wide, then it developed into Tourism which was direct mental exchange with people whom I met (I called that kind of art activity "Meet art", before I heard of Frickers project). After I defined in 1985 mail art network as an "immense collective work of art; pulsating spiritual sculpture that encompasses the world", I began considering all my meetings with networkers to be works of art - spiritual sculptures. After that I realized that I can also meet ordinary people, and that it will still be a spiritual sculpture. So I began with public performances in which I was "meeting" people, unknown people, trying to exchange my inner world with them. And it was working so well. I found a huge new territory for artistic work I call (spi)rituals. I use them for the "spiritual development of mankind" you were asking me about.

I will not get too technical, I'll just say that in my (spi)rituals I mostly use talk, in form of lecture or monologue. After, or during that I distribute some printed materials: flyers, post-cards, xeroxes, or I apply stickers, badges, or some other material - in order to break the communication barrier with the audience. Sometimes I put rubberstamp imprints on people's hands, or other parts of the body, or I draw or write on them. It is all mental game to open their attention for the present, and to make them active and collaborative. Then I give them my spiritual content, I inspire them, with words or by direct transmission of spiritual energy. You can find more about that in my article Art As Telepathy, Meeting And (Spi)ritual published first in the "ND" magazine No. 14 (February 1991), then in Chuck Welch's "Eternal Network" book (1995). Of course, by doing that I believe I influence not only the present audience, but the more wider territory, using the audience as transmitters of my spiritual energy, by telepathy. That is also one kind of networking, but by using non-material and invisible means.

So, by "spiritual development" I mean that with time people could become better, more compassionate, loving all creatures, less envious, evil, destructive. I mean spiritually more developed people with whom we could realize a new world, a better world to live in all together and in love. I think all of us networkers are striving for that. In some happy moments of networking it seems to me that we are already living in such a world.

RJ : You mentioned before the term Internet, and I know that your views, as stated once to an open letter to Chuck Welch, were quite specific. Some mail artists are now using e-mail for their communication, others just don't want to use it, and some just see it as a new communication-tool like the FAX is. Are your views about the Internet still the same?

reply on 22-04-1996

AT : In short I would say: in mail art, and especially in Tourism, you are dealing with EMOTIONS, and in Internet with E-MOTIONS! As I consider Tourism to be the greatest artistic achievement in the field of networking, maybe also in the 20th century art, I can't see anything better than personal contact between artists, or the artist and the audience (in performance). Internet can be just a very good tool for bringing people together, but can not SUBSTITUTE GATHERINGS. Because Internet can not guarantee sincerity, can not transmit expression of love, nor can lead to real love (especially between different sexes, as Tourism can). Also you can't feel someone's smell, can't observe his emotional reactions, and so on and on. As I stated to Chuck Welch, back in 1993, Tourism philosophy is a child of a new world of COMPASSION, and Internet is a child of the sterile world of ILLUSION.

Instead of Internet I suggested another solution for the networking, more advanced than Tourism: The Networkers' Teleportation System (By definition given in The Aquarian Guide to New Age, 1990, teleportation is ability to transport physical bodies instantaneously to a new location without moving through the intervening space). In that case, if such vehicle will be available to us, meetings will be immediate, without exhausting traveling, and it will make creative communication faster, more direct, amusing, unexpected and richer than Tourism and Internet are. It will enable creative people, compassionate people, loving people and happy people to gather in any moment, to stay together as much as they like, with whom they like. To live in Paradise on Earth.

Of course I am not against e-mail or Internet, because I think they are very useful, as telephone or fax are. Sometimes I think I couldn't live without telephone. But when I want to meet some dear person, I prefer to meet her/him personally. Also mail artists, I had many phone talks with some of them, but until we met personally I always felt these contacts to be incomplete, because I couldn't use all of my senses. I felt alienated. On the video screen it could seem less alienated, but in fact it is also only an illusion of contact. Such contacts can only function as additional ones, not the only ones. Of course in the field of artistic communication.

RJ : The problem of course is that teleportation, as you described it, is a fiction, while snail-mail, Internet, e-mail, fax and Tourism are all reality and have existed for several decades (including Internet). Communication is only possible in reality. To be honest I don't believe that from a technical view, teleportation is possible. In your previous answer you mentioned telepathy, and I wonder, is this reality or fiction?

Reply on 2-7-1996

AT : Well, dear Ruud, if you don't believe in telepathy, even though it is obvious to majority of people that it is reality, I can't convince you about that. I just want to remind you that scientific experiments with telepathy have been done for decades in USA and USSR for example, of course for military purposes, and as I read in some scientific magazines, they were very successful. People were sending messages from laboratories where they were totally isolated and under control, to other people who were also isolated thousands of miles away, using only their thoughts. They communicated through some mental energy, some waves which were immediately received on the other side. This ability of living beings (plants can also read our thoughts) is unfortunately neglected in our civilization, which rather relies on communication by language, image or text. For me as an artist it is interesting and challenging to use telepathy in my art, because it gives new possibilities to my expression, and opens a new field of research, which is extremely interesting to me.

Actually I am interested, and working on it, in transmission of emotions, radiating love on people and everything around me, and transmitting my inspiration directly on people without using any classical media for that. I am trying in my (spi)rituals to give people my artistic inspiration directly, to make them feel inspired the same as me. Because in use of any material media the great percent of the initial idea and inspiration is lost. So I am trying, by means of mental resonance with the audience to "tune" their mind to the state I'm in in that moment of enlightenment and try to enlighten them too. I feel I have success in that.

Now concerning teleportation, it is also reality, and experiments proved it. I read one such experiment was done by US Navy in October 1943 in the Philadelphia harbor. They were using Nikola Tesla's electromagnetic fields of low frequency induced by lasers to make one warrior ship (Eldridge DE-173) invisible. In few seconds, after becoming invisible, the ship appeared in the harbor of Norfolk (Virginia) 350 kilometers far from Philadelphia. After the electromagnetic field was disconnected, in few seconds the ship appeared again at the same place it was before, in the harbor of Philadelphia. I am sure such experiments have been done many times, but they are still kept in secret. I hope this technique will be soon improved and will enable networkers to travel faster through space, doing Tourism. I didn't say that Networkers' Teleportation System is possible today, but I was suggesting it as a solution for communication better than Internet. It is not just a fiction.

RJ : I remember seeing a Science Fiction film about the Eldridge, but for me it really is fiction. I studied Physics for six years and have learned to analyze things quite well. For me teleportation is impossible judging the basics of physics. But I guess it wouldn't be interesting in this interview to see what is possible or not. It also has to do with belief I guess. Maybe readers of this interview could give their own opinion on this issue to both of us.

Well, I guess it is time to end this interview now, or did I forget to ask you something?

Reply on 29-7-1996

(Together with his answer Andrej sent me some more of his rubber stamp prints, and the catalog of his recent exhibition at the Association of Artists of Applied Arts and Designers of Vojvodina in Serbia, Yugoslavia).

AT : So we came to the end of our mail-art interview. I think it was a great pleasure for both of us. Our "conversation" took more than one year, and I'm very glad if you thought it was worth doing it through such a long period. Congratulations to both of us for patience, persistence, good will and energy for exchange of our thoughts, which we had to do besides many more other things we were occupied with.

Of course we could discuss more things, for example my rubber stamp activity which is going on for more than 20 years, and I exhibited stamps this year in the Stamp Art Gallery in San Francisco (250 imprints), and these days in Novi Sad (100 imprints). But maybe you know too much about stamps, since you are one of the greatest collectors of them in the world. Also we could talk about my writing on art, since I am a professional art critic, also about my activities in the field of photography, video-art, about my poetry and prose which I publish for 16 years under the pen-name Andrej Zivor (I have ten books published, two in USA and one in France).... but it would take much more space and time. If you feel I told you enough about things you were interested in, I'll be glad to finish this great interview, and I'm eager to see the book ready, in my hands and in the hands of my networking friends. SO LONG and THANKS!

RJ : Also thanks to you Andrej, for this interview. Maybe some other interviewer will ask the things that aren't covered by this interview. I'm sure we'll stay in touch.

Address mail-artist:

ANDREJ TISMA
Modene 1/IV
21000 Novi Sad
YUGOSLAVIA

Address Interviewer:

RUUD JANSSEN
PO Box 1055
4801 BB - Breda
NETHERLANDS

Mail-Interview with Jose vanden Broucke (B)

2006-09-30T04:17:00.000-07:00

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