Mail-Interview with Andrej Tisma (Yugoslavia)

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)

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

Mail-Interview with Keith Bates (UK)

#50

Started on: 15-8-1995

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 19-9-1995

(Together with his first answer Keith Bates sent me the documentation of his 'ARTISTCHEQUE'-project, an artistchequebook, and also some info on his newest project)

KB : I started doing mail art in 1983. I attended an Open University Summer School in which the Polish artist Henryk Gajewski ran a course called "Networking". Some things in life, you know immediately are for you - it was like that for me with mail art, I fell in love with the concept!

RJ : It seems everybody has his or her own views about mail art. Which concept of mail art do you mean?

Reply on 3-1-1996

KB : I simply love the idea that there existed a network of artists who worked in physical isolation, but exchanged their work, It seemed a superb social outlet for creativity, not tied up with money and profit; a social function bound up with ideas of mutual respect, tolerance, democracy, the lot. And it was fun!

I tend to organise one mail art project every year or so. In addition I try to answer all the mail I receive (except for thank you's and confirmation of receipt letters, etc.) and to participate in all the projects I hear about (unless they really didn't interest me). I do however work very slowly; life is busy with other things, so I prefer snail mail to the electronic variety. I'm also not that into letter writing, writing is hard work and for me the occasional letter is an extra to the exchange of mail art.

RJ : Well, when you are slow in answering, this just will mean that this interview will take some time to finish. No problem really. In your answer you mention some interesting things. It seems that you focus mainly on the mail art projects. To give the readers of this interview some idea of what you have done so far, could you mention a few of your projects and tell me what they were about?

Reply on 10-1-1996

KB : I like the way modern art movements have reappropriated graphic design techniques. Mail art does this all the time with artistamps and rubber stamps. A lot of my projects have focused on different graphic design formats and I have based mail art projects on comic book frames (1983), stamps (1984), tickets (1985), jigsaw pieces (1990), shop receipts (1991) and bank cheques (1995). I have also organised projects using fragments of mail artists' works - Elements in 1986 and my current "Studio Floor" project with Leanda Ryan.

Some of my projects have just been realized as documentation - a booklet, catalogue, photographs and address-list, cassette tape, etc. In 1991 I did a project called "Jackson Pollock's Shoes" asking mail artists to send me accidental masterpieces by their favourite artists. That project was realized as a spoof Christie's auction catalogue.

Other projects involve a show or exhibition. My last project, Artists' cheques, not only involved making Artistcheckbooks for contributors but also exhibitions in Covent Garden (London) and York. My "English Suppresionists" project (1993) about an imaginory movement resulted in an illustrated booklet about Englishness and an exhibition in Brighton.

RJ : Lots of activities since your start with mail art! I notice that the years 1986 and 1992 are not in your list with activities (tourism-year and DNC-year). For me these years were full of meetings with other mail artist (actually also the years 1985 and 1991 for me personally). I remember you had quite specific ideas about those two special international projects, about meeting the other mail artists. Are these views still the same in the year 1996, which has just started?

Reply on 19-1-1996

KB : Yes, I don't think it should be expected or assumed that mail artists will wish to visit each other.

I did attend a Congress meeting at the Tate gallery in 1986, it was a bit of fun but I don't think I gained any deep insights from the experience. The whole Tourism thing was hailed as a logical next step for mail artists, almost obligatory. I just tried to defend the corner of those who wanted to mail art, those who couldn't or didn't want to congress.

RJ : Another "logic step" some mail artists think of, is the e-mail and the internet as a new way of communicating. I myself have explored this form already, and still prefer the traditional mail. I only use e-mail if the digital form is essential (as in not having to retype texts) or speed is essential (a large text of 20 pages gets at the others address in a few minutes). Have you any specific thoughts about this new communication form?

Reply on 22-3-1996

KB : E-mail and the internet can be used as an extension of the mail art network by those who have access. I don't at the moment, but I wouldn't preclude the possibility for the future. It's worth remembering that a lot of people who do mail art don't have a computer let alone access to the internet.

I admit to being a sucker for hard copy rather than the screen image. I like the whole mail art thing of envelope, stamps, the colors and textures of papers, inks, paints, the mixed media extravaganza. I'm not convinced that e-mail compares to the richness of the snail mail experience.

E-mail would also be too fast for me. I mail art slowly, I can't be a high-powered, mail-the-entire-world zealot. I enjoy doing mail art when I want to and when someone has asked for something that inspires me. I try to keep it fun, and part of the fun is the relaxed exchange over several months, not a few hours. I suppose I must piss some people off but you can't please everyone.

RJ : When you regard mail art as a relaxed exchange than probably the network you are in contact with isn't that large at the moment. Or am I wrong and are you (like a lot of mail artists) not able at all to answer all the mail you get in?

Reply on 10-4-1996

KB : Funnily enough I've just found a few invitations to mail art projects whose deadlines I've missed! Guilt trip.

To a certain extent a mail artist can control the amount of mail art he or she receives, the best way to ensure a full mailbox is to respond to communications quickly, the easiest way to back off a bit is to allow more time for your response.

I am afflicted by the dual mail art miseries - time and money. Because of my job as an art teacher, I often get knackered[1] as a term progresses and I do more mail art during school holidays. In addition to that, I am feeling rather poor at the moment, and since I seperated from my wife I don't have as much spare cash to give to mail art. Nevertheless, even as I write, Leanda and I are preparing to collage the studio floor and the documentation for this project will put me deeper in debt. I am still addicted.

RJ : The final documentation of a mail art project sometimes is just a xeroxed address-list. Your documentations are normally quite special. What is improtant in a mail art documentation?

Reply on 22-5-1996

KB : Thank you for the compliment. I do put a lot into my project documentations. They are works of art. Works which could not have existed without the contributors.

Although putting together project documentation is hard work, I enjoy this aspect of mail art. I like to get some personal touch into each documentation if possible. I have nothing against photocopiers, I use them all the time for my tickets and labels, but if I just receive an address list as a documentation to a mail art show I've participated in I consider it to be a sign of life, no more. On the other hand, exciting documentation is for me a real reward of networking, I love it! It is not essential if my work is used in documentation, but it is much more exciting if it is, it's nice to feel appreciated and valued.

The perfect documentation would show every contributor's work, but sadly mail art exists in the real world and most mail artists are not rich. Money is scarce and sponsorship for mail art projects is rare, particularly here in Britain. If a xeroxed address list is all someone can afford, that will do - especially if a personal 'thank you' or something is enclosed.

RJ : You mention 'particularly here in Britain'. Are there other things in mail art that are 'typical British', or is this a stupid question?

reply on 23-8-1996

KB : I don't really know if there are things that are typically Britisch about mail art. I suspect the kind of silly, surreal humour that runs through the work of Michael Leigh and Don Jarvis is maybe typically Britisch. My "English Suppressionists" project was an attempt to define my Englishness and I suppose I wondered if my opposition to Tourism might be linked to an English reserve and island mentality.

RJ : Maybe some of the readers don't know your project English Suppressionists , so maybe you can tell a bit more about it. How did you attempt to define your Englishness and what was the result?

reply on 29-11-1996

KB : In 1992 I did a lot of thinking about the facets of my identity. Being English was hard to define, so I asked mail artists to send something about the subject by joining an imaginary art movement, the English Suppressionists. I received stuff about steroetypes, ideas about language, humour, history, politics, surreal connections. The atoms of identity.

I think that Stephen Perkins best summed it up by explaining that identity is strongest when you have to fight for it. Maybe because the English have tended to dominate the British Isles, it is the Scots, Welsh and Irish communities who make more of their national identities.

Perhaps the English have sat back and basked in the glory of Britisch achievement, history, the Empire, and a language that is pervasive. If the fight forges identity, I guess that's why it's lacking.

Perhaps if you are less worried about nationhood and nationalism, you're free to think globally, to consider yourself human rather that belonging to this or that nation. Or maybe that's 2 luxury only the comfortable and privileged can expect.

RJ : You have been doing mail art for a long time now. Did you notice any big changes in the mail art network over the last decade? If so, which changes do you find important?

answer on 5-1-1997

KB : I suppose the network has become well-established in the years I've been mail-arting. And become establishment to a certain extent, taught in colleges and sponsored by industry. Not necessarily bad things, but in the early eighties I had a real sense of joining something radical, and although part of what I perceive results from my familiarity with mail art practices, I think there is generally less frenzied excitement about the mail art network. People now know what a network is.

There are mail artists who see the electronic network as successor to mail art. mail art certainly provided the template for free exchange, maybe the internet has taken some wind from mail art's sails - if you want to start serious networking in 2000 I guess you buy a computer. It just hasn't grabbed me yet, even if I had the spare cash. I saw the David Hockey show at Manchester City Art gallery the other day. He had a fax wall. Fax walls are a good argument for postal art.

Artistamps had a good decade. Major growth. Colour photocopies and colour printouts of computer art too. Black & White photocopies have become annoying to some, but not half as annoying as chain letters. I still enjoy collage stuff - I got a nice little one from Vittore Baroni only this morning.

I'm not sure if Tourism and networking Congresses changed the mail art world while I was in the bath. I think not, though I nearly met Jonathan Stangroom a few months ago - but not quite!

RJ : Have you kept all of the mail art you have received over the years? What is the future of your "archive"?

answer on 8-4-1997

KB : Well, I don't think I'll be selling my archive to sponsor my Touristic activities! I've kept a wardrobe full of treasures, much of it still in the original envelopes and stored in box files without any real filing system. I've certainly not tried to keep every piece of mail art I've received and I'm sure I've recycled some really valuable items in my time, but I can't keep everything I receive so I tend to hang onto the things that most appeal to me at the time.

RJ : Should I ask a future question about mail art romances?

answer on 8-4-1997
KB : I'm not sure if you could call Leanda and I a mail art romance. I taught her art at high school many moons ago and when she left to go to college we kept in contact with mail art and she occasionally popped into school for a chat. When she went to university two years later, romantic sparks began to fly and I'm still besotted after almost 3 years!

RJ : The funny thing about this is that I read about you and Leanda in a mail art documentation (by Lancilotto Bellini, Italy) where mail artists were invited to give a short 'CV' about themselves. Yes, I would call it a mail art romance since you kept contact in a mail art way as well. Most long-participants in the network know about Bill Gaglione and Anna Banana. John M. Bennett told in his interview that he also met his wife through mail art. Vittore Baroni suggested in his interview that he knew a lot about mail art romances (see the last question he answered) and yet a lot about romances in the mail art network hasn't been written. Is it easy the expose one's privat life to the mail art network?

(together with the question I sent Keith bates the interview with Vittore Baroni, so he could read what he said as well)

next answer on 16-6-1997

KB : I think so. You expect mail artists to be broad-minded and tolerant of other's opinions. Even so, I was at first a bit nervous about how mail artists would react to the fact that I had been Leanda's teacher and the 24 years difference in our ages. I half-expected some disapproval but it didn't seem to bother anyone and we received some very nice comments like John Held Jr.'s "Age is just age".

Revealing details about your private life to family or neighbours is very "in your face", proximity can make disapproval dangerous ; in many jobs details about an unconventional private life can have economic repercussions. I think that distance and interval enable the networker to be less concerned about the consequences of revelations and more concerned about genuine expression.

RJ : Some mail artists never seem to write or even think about the negative sides there are to mail art. They like to praise mail art, the free exchange, no-money involved, 'documentation to all'-principle, etc. An example was how people reacted to the project by K. Frank Jensen (Denmark) when he started his 'missing documentation' project, where he wanted to list all the promissed documentations that never were sent out. You stated in your answer "You expect mail artists to be broad-minded and tolerant of other's opinions". Do you think that the average 'mail-artist' is different then the 'average person'? (Yes, I know, maybe a difficult question.....)

next answer on 25-4-1997

KB : Lots of mail artists don't really write about mail art at all, but I suspect we do think about negative aspects - time and money problems, will it all be superseded by the internet, the invasion of the Killer Tourists. Missing documentation is probably the least of my worries and in general I think mail art deserves whatever praise we lavish on it.

I have probably got a rather romantic view of mail artists but I think it's good to be a touch idealistic about things that mean a lot to you. I suppose you have to be prepared to moderate your idealism with realism, but part of being passionate about something involves setting aside logic and common sense, and just doing it because you've got to do it.

I think I rather innocently assume artists generally to be more balanced , tolerant and liberal than ordinary folks, other people tell me that artists are more likely to be self-centered, egotistical and abusive to their nearest and dearest. But mail artists I do expect to be different to the average person because he or she has chosen to be involved in a mutual activity with a very real sense of giving as well as receiving. Choosing to give makes people nicer. Mail art feeds your ego and also puts it in a wider perspective through collective goals. Each mail artist largely controls his or her own level of participation and financial outlay. More control, less stress, nicer person?

RJ : With your last answer you (as usual) enclosed some more tickets and other printed matters. The one I liked the most this time: "What is beauty? - It is the sudden flash of truth". by Joseph Beuys, a Quoticket. I remember that you also did a project called "Jackson Pollock's Shoes" where you asked mail artists to send their accidental masterpieces by their favourite artists. You seem to be influenced a lot by these modern artists. What do they teach you?

next answer on 28-8-1997

KB : I've just watched a television interview with Paul McCartney who was asked if he ever heard someone else's song and wished he'd written it. Sometimes you see an artwork that makes you wish it was your creation. Sometimes you find people who have similar ideas to your own or who have explored the same corners and it gives you a feeling that you're not alone, you're part of a larger process. Other artists' work can help put your own into context and it can also present new possibilities and fire your imagination.

Some of the mail art projects I've most enjoyed contributing to have been tributes - Creative Things's Homage to Kurt Schwitters was superb. There was a project about Joseph Beuys a while ago, more recently Warhol and renoir, and the current tribute to Cavellini. It gives you an excuse to reasearch or copy and try to do it their way. Or take the piss and do a Cadbury's Renoir chocolate box design.

RJ : Some mail artists copy a lot from others (mail artists with typical styles or the Dada of Fluxus-movements). Most artists try to develop their own style. Is a mail artist an artist? Is it o.k. when a mail artist only copies what other do?
next answer on 5-11-1997

KB : I've stopped worrying about copying. Copy widely enough and you'll end up with something new in collage or post-modernist fashion. They say "imitation is the sincerest form of flattery", and if you have something to say, you will find your own voice.

I'll never be the most origina; artist in the world, but I add my voice and it's fun to do things differently.

The old question "is it Art?" is a bit meaningless. Art is an open concept and anyone can be an artist (just by doing art) , mail art included. I suppose you might not consider a straight copy to be a very good artwork, so perhaps a better question might be "is it good art?"

RJ : Together with your answer for the interview I received Vittore Baroni's book "Arte Postale". A beautifully done book in italian language about the mail art network where you are included as well. But again a book done by a mail artists and not an outsider to the mail art network. Do you think one of these days an outsider of the network might write a book on this mail art?

next answer on 6-12-1997 (by e-mail)

KB: I can't help but feel that mail art is best experienced from the inside, by participating, so I think it is good that mail artists are the ones to put our practices into a wider context. Without any doubt outsiders will write books about mail art; they write about it now in art magazines and commentaries in catalogues and documentation. It's only a matter of time before the definitive history of mail art is written by an android.

RJ : How does it feel to send out e-mail?

next answer on 5-9-1998

KB : That's better! I'm back to long delays and snail mail. Sorry about that, I've been working, doing some music, and Leanda and I have been to New York. Add a holiday in Kefalonia and it all makes meagre mail art moments. I'm trying to catch up with a horrendous backlog.

I did feel a bit dizzy after sending you the e-mail but I don't feel any lasting ill-effects. I've even been trying with the idea of buying a Mac and a modem if the finances pick up sufficiently. Leanda's enthusiasm for HTML and webby things has rubbed off on me a bit. For the moment I'm a paper fetishist, a dead tree addict with an enduring passion for sweet smelling envelopes - don't you just love the golden colour and crispy texture of the American envelope I'm sending this answer in!

(The next question was only sent out on November 11th 1998 because I took a break in the interview-project)


RJ : Yes, I am still fond of that paper mail as well, although I do use a lot of electronic bits and bytes in my communication nowadays. You mentioned 'music' in your answer. Didn't you once make a beatiful tape with music related with tyhe theme mail-art?


Address mail-artist:

KEITH BATES
2 Ferngate Drive
MANCHESTER
M20 4AH - ENGLAND
ENGLAND