Mail-Interview with Ruud Janssen by Dobrica Kamperelic

 

INTERVIEW WITH RUUD JANSSEN.

 

BY DOBRICA KAMPERELI_

 

For his book, Dobrica sent me four questions. Here is the complete text as I sent in to publish. He calls it an interview, I prefer the term questionair. November 1995, published in "OPEN WORLD / OPEN MIND - OTVORENI SVET / OTVORENA SVEST" in English and translated by Docbrica Kampereli_, Yugoslavia, Dedalus Publishing, pages 141-149. Beograd 1996.

 

Dear Dobrica,

 

In your last Open Wor(l)d 86 (thanks for sending this!), I found the four questions you asked me. First I would like to point out that this is not an interview. I have seen many of these questionnaires, and mostly they are just a set of questions about what the person who asks them wants to know about the person he/she asks the questions to. In my mail interview-project I work completely different. I start with one question and then await the reaction of the person I invite for the interview. How and when and in which form and by what communication form, I leave to the person I want to interview. After getting an answer I think of my next question, and also decide about the tools I would like to use to ask the question. In this way, a real interview by mail develops, and it is much more than a set of questions someone forms, and sends out.

 

Therefore I would like to call your 'interview' not an interview but a questionnaire. Because even before getting a single answer from me you already thought of the next questions, and by that you have influenced my first answer already. An interview is much more interesting, and to be honest, I only have given two interviews and one video-interview so far. This set of questions are no interview in my eyes, but I will try to give you my thoughts on the questions for you anyway.

 

DK :     Why are you a mail artist?

 

RJ :      That is a very difficult question to start with. It is the same kind of question as why do I live? I guess it is a result of many things I have encountered in my life. To start with, my father also was doing a lot of mail in his free time, but with a different approach. He collected postage stamps, and decided not just to collect them, but to get in contact with people in the countries he was interested in. I remember the many envelopes he got every week, and this was in the beginning years of the 60-ies. Contacts with East-Germany, Russia, China,etc... he was very interested in the outer corners to get those strange postage stamps. I guess I inherited a part of it, and when my father died (I was only 16 years old then) I was already involved in correspondence with people in other countries too. But it was not connected to mail art, it was a completely different network.

 

After my father died (in 1976), I started to answer some of the mail people still wrote to him, and it were also the years I started to study. Although I liked drawing and painting a lot, I started a technical study and kept the artwork as a kind of hobby. Some of my friends of highschool went to art academies and I kept interested in art and kept in contact with them. I remember that somehow I must have seen some 'creative mail' too, and started to mail 'strange' envelopes to myself in 1980. I cut up postage stamps and already used rubber stamps on my mail then. This was also the year I started with TAM, because I wanted to have a name for this. TAM stands for Travelling Art Mail, and I invented that name without knowing the name mail art. I've heard of many other mail artists that they were involved in sending out mail without having found out about the network.

 

In 1983 I put an add in the local paper, and it must have been a quite interesting add, since one of the reactions was from a journalist of that newspaper, and he phoned me that he wanted to interview me about my 'strange hobby' of sending out this creative mail. The interview took place a week later, and the story was published on the first page. At that time I was already graduated and had started teaching. So a lot of people in my surrounding than found out what I was doing. The address was also included in the interview, and I got some mail from people in the mail art network. One of the first contacts lead to Guy Bleus, and he sent me an address list he had used for a project of his. This was the start of my wide range of activities. I started sending letters into the net, and soon I found myself in the middle of friends.

 

DK :     You're permanent in networking action since beginning eighties, isn't it, but your TAM and IUOMA projects made you famous in NET-WORLD? Let us know more about it.

 

RJ :      Famous? There are no famous people in the network. There are only those who are active, and those who are not that active. I must admit that since the beginning I have stayed active until now, and I have always started with new aspects of networking. In 1985 I started with the TAM-Bulletin, which was a mail art information-letter like your Open World is. But the one page newsletter grew into a more-pages bulletin, and soon everybody started to send me news and graphics, just to be included in the TAM-Bulletin. It ran for a long period in this form, but at the end of the 80-ies I started to teach informatics too at the College where I work, and I decided to use the computer for this. Rather than printing the bulletins, I made them accessible through the computer and the modem, and that was a complete new development. It seems I was to early with that because only a few networkers I knew had the access to computers and modems that time. Also the access was a problem for some. My technical background was a reason for this approach to spread information. In 1992, during the DNC I even held some computer-congresses, where mail artists could communicate on-line via computers. But somehow I still prefer the oldfashioned communication. The computers transfer all things into a digital form, and smell, taste, warmth, 3D objects, they can't be digitized!

 

But my life is not at all completely technical orientated. When I was young I started with drawing too, and at the age of 15 I already was painting with oil-paint on canvas. I am lucky that I still have my first painting, and somehow it shows the beginning of what life means to me. I teach exact sciences and informatics, but in the time I have left I paint, draw, and than there is the mail art. The TAM-Bulletin and the doing of many mail art projects in the late 80-ies was a very pleasant period.

 

I documented the first ten years in mail art with a booklet of 35 pages in which I tell about how all these things were interconnected. I printed it in an edition of 30 and sent it to my closest contacts in the network. At that time I must have been in contact with hundreds and hundreds of people on a regular basis. I preferred the contacts with people which I probably weren't able to meet in person, but I remember that in 1985 later I have met many mail artists (in Amsterdam, in Italy, in Germany) and things developed quite quickly.

 

In 1990 I started with the IUOMA (the International Union of Mail Artist). Because many outsiders of mail art don't get the idea, I started with this organization, so people could see it as a complete organized whole. But in contrast to other Unions, the IUOMA had no fixed structure. Anybody could become a member, and also everybody who claimed a function in the Union could act like it. Piermario Ciani designed a logo for it which later also was used for the DCN (Decentralized Networker Congress) in 1992, And lots of people (also yourself) had a part in the forming of the Union. In 1991 the first Union magazine came out, a 30 page booklet with an edition of 400. Because I had made myself the General-President, I travelled in this function to the (then still) USSR. Even when I explained the concept of my 'joke' they still treated me as an important guest, and the four weeks in the USSR were quite impressive. The last week also was quite historic, since the coup inside the USSR lead to the breaking of the Republics into new countries. I was there to hear the proclamation of the independent Estonia, and it is an impressive memory. Also the friends I have made there are persons I won't ever forget. In 1992 I travelled a lot because of the DNC. And I have organized some own congresses too and participated in many others.

 

DK :     Your drawings and graphics are excellent, but you prefer computers in the last years, right? Why you did that?

 

RJ :      Thanks for the compliment. I must say that I don't use computers for my drawings at all. I started with making large sets of drawings as a result of the many travels I did in the beginning of the 90-ies. The drawings take a lot of time because I take care of small details all by hand. I don't like computer-drawings that much, although I enjoy using the computer as a tool, as a machine to produce things in a clear way. These answers I for instance type straight on my computer, because I am used to working with computers. But the creativity comes from the artist, not from the machine.

 

I feel limited by the use of a computer for my art, and maybe it is also some kind of balance I am looking for. The technical sides in my paid job, and the handwork I can do with my art. Some drawings are good enough to develop further, and they might end up as a colored version of a drawing, a silkscreen print, or even an oil painting. Because these normally get quite large they are not really connected to mail art just because I don't mail large pieces that easily. That you think that I prefer computers is probably because as a tool for communication the computer is excellent. Any text or visual information can easily be transformed into a digital code and can be sent instantly through the computer-networks. But because working with computers is also a part of my paid job, I also know a lot about the disadvantages these machines bring. Also the access to these machines isn't the same for everybody. It was also a reason to do my mail interview project.

 

In this project I could choose any communication-form that was available. Some interviews go by internet, others by snail mail, and sometimes even the normal phone or a surprise visit. When John Held Jr. and Bill Gaglione visited me in May this year, they had with them a computerdisk with on it the latest answer to a question I had asked to Rod Summers. They just visited him the day before they came to me. Also I gave them a package with things for Guy Bleus because that was their next place to go. All in the spirit of Peter Küstermann and Angela as they did on their mailmen travels.

 

So I haven't changed to using computers completely. It is just another tool I use. I know that some networkers in the USA have switched to computer-communication completely, but somehow I find that communication too sterile. The envelopes and handwritten letters tell you more than the clear letters on a computer-screen. The colors on a envelope of a real artwork look better, feel better, even smell better, than my computer screen. I love to produce art, and to see art, but the computerscreen is not a tool for art for me. There are others who do that, but for me the computer is a tool only.

 

DK :     What's your and rest networkers position on Holland alter-art scene?

 

RJ :      In the late eighties I had lots of contacts with mail artists in other pasts of Holland. But some very active workers have left the mail art network. Sonja van der Burg and Margot van Oosten left quite suddenly. Ulisses Carion died. And I must admit that the mail art network is a real international network, and the contacts with people abroad are the most interesting. In my daily life I am dealing with Dutch people and students all the time, while the mail art keeps me in contact with the whole world. The life of a mail artist is an international one, and the coming of internet means that any information can travel from one place to another instantly.

 

The alter-art scene..... I have worked for two years at an art-center here in Tilburg to make larger silkscreens than I can make at home, but somehow the artists that don't work in networks don't seem to grasp what it is all about. They work to get their works in local Galleries, and see being in such an exhibition as an success. For me the communication with people who I see as an artist is more important. The traditional art-world is something I mostly avoid. The only exceptions are when I am asked to do an exhibition or to give something for a group-exhibition. But I rather share my art with a mail art friend who will be interested in the artist too then to hang it is a gallery where everybody is only interested in "does it sell....?".

 

I have divided my life in two parts that fit perfectly together. My work with students and computers, the College, it gives me the possibilities and free time to be able to do my mail art. I have noticed that most mail artists are having a paid job to support their costly mail. I find it important that I am not depending on selling my art, and that I can sometimes just give it away. It is a luxury, I know. But it is always rewarding to see the results when someone I share my work with uses it to hang on his wall, to include it in his catalog, or just to send me something nice in return too.

 

But as a mail artist I don't live on an island here in Holland. I have many mail art friends here, and some I have met several times in person or just by the mail. But Holland is just a small country. I am only five minutes away from Belgium, and if I take the train I am in 30 minutes in Germany. It is wonderful to live near the border and to be able to see another culture just around the corner.....

 

Well, these were my answers/reactions to your questions. I hope you enjoyed reading them. A pity it wasn't an interview where you could ask something when I jump from one subject to another, but that is the case when you send me a questionnaire. I will enclose some other informations for you because as you might know I have many things I am working on at the same time. It seems that in the beginning of the 90-ies there was the travelling and the meeting of mail art friends, and the last years I have started in writing my thoughts and the thoughts of others down on paper.