Géza Perneczky - Ruud Janssen

TAM-970180 - with Tim Mancusi, USA
Published in 1998:
TAM-980184 - with Edgardo-Antonio Vigo, Argentina
TAM-980185 - with Jonathan Stangroom, USA
TAM-980186 - with John Held Jr. (Part 2), USA
TAM-980188 - with Guy Bleus, Belgium
TAM-980213 - with Litsa Spathi (Part 1), Germany
TAM-981214 - with Litsa Spathi (Part 2), Germany
^Secret Thoughts about Mail Art. («...Now you have the luck top read some of these
thoughts...» A/4, phc., ~3 sheets, started in 1997) Also online version:
~
Seurce:
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Literature:
Ruud Janssen: Newsletter for Participants and other People Interested in the Mail-
Interview Project. (4 A/4 pages + 1 order form) TAM 960106, from January
1996, it was avaible also on e-mail: tam@dds.nl
Ruud Janssen: Newsletter for Participants and Other Interested people about the
Mail-Interview Project. A/5, phc., 8 p., from October 1, 1997, also as online
service: and
,
TAM-Publications. (items from the 1990s only!). A/5, phc., 4 p. July 1997
«(...) TAM started in 1980, and it stood then for TRAVELLING ART MAIL.
Over the years the word TAM also has functioned on it's own and got other meanings
too (like Tilburg's Academy of Mail-Art and Tilburgse Automatiserings Maatshappij).
I use the „firm“ or „College“ TAM als to play with the official institutes.
It is funny that in the first meaning the words ART MAIL are there, knowing that I
only got hooked up to the network in 1983. (...)
Both in your interviews and in a lot of your text, you appear to spend a lot
of time analysing the network rather than the individual artist or your own art,
what is the reason for this?
...The interviews and texts are accesible for the network, so it is only natural
that „the network“ is central in the interview. By answering the specific questions
the interviewed person can decide how many details one wants to give about his/her
personal life and personal art. The really personal details and exchange of art with
other mail artists is mostly on a one-to-one basis. In the many interviews that have
come out you can see how different the interviews go. Analysing the network is
interesting for me. It seems everybody has his/her own views about the network
and some mail artists even think that they have grasped the whole concept of the
network. With each interview I discover that the network means something else to
every specific cell in the network. (...)
...There are also some American artists who are writing a lot of texts to
establish Mail Art as an „ism“. Altough this does not appear to by your aim, all
texts about Mail Art help to „establish“ it as an „ism“...
...Wether Mail Art becomes an „ism“ of not, isn't at all interesting for me.
Normally things are an „ism“ if the impact on our society was large enough. For
me Mail Art at the moment has more become a way of life. That I use the postal
system to communicate, a pen and paper, make visuals, use the computer, send out
an e-mail, publish a text on the internet; it is just the need to communicate and to
search for what this life is all about and what possibilities that there are. (...) In
Mail Art it is for newcomers very difficult to find out what has happened since the
sixties. The many books that are made are difficult to get, and also only show a
very limited view. I only know very few books on Mail Art NOT written by mail
artists. As long as that is so, Mail Art won't be an „ism“ as I see it. (...)
...Surely much Mail Art is not conventional art, certainly not many square
canvas for framing. The Mail Art „by-products“ such as xeroxs, rubberstamped