Géza Perneczky - Ruud Janssen

«Bennett cranks outhis work and the work of his cronies with relentless regularity.
Lost and Found Times features mostly poetry of the grainy, grit school. Tough but
inward. Part surreal daydream, part concrete. With „Ack's Wacks“ as a ongoing
item (Al → Ackerman's tangents into real life as he imagines it) the tone is set.
The tape sounds like the poems and collage read, only louder.» (About N° 26,
booklet + cassette, in: Lightworks [→ Burch]. Glimmerings [Publication review]
N° 20-21, 1990. 64 p.)
Géza Perneczky: The Magazine Network. The trends of alternative art in the light
of their periodicals 1968-1988. Edition Soft Geometry. Köln, 1993. 76 p.
«Is it possible to describe what is do delighful about Mail Art?
What's delightful about receiving Mail Art is that it's so full of people's uninhibited
expressions, off-the-cuff blurtings, or careful, lunatic constructions. It's
about as close as one can get these days to a „pure“ art, one with no agenda, no
career-building motives, etc. (This doesn't mean it doesn't have political or social
messages – it often, even usually, does – but the functionality of that is inpersonal)
Anyway, receiving Mail Art stimulates my own creative processes... What I like
about making Mail Art is that it's a medium in which I can either disitribute my
main work, poetry, and/or do completely spontaneous things that often surprise me
and serve as a source of ideas for other projects. (...)
Lost and Found Times is an avant-garde literary magazine that includes the
occasional bit of Mail Art. It began in 1975 as a single-sheet publication of fake
lost-and-found notices that was stuck under car windshields in parking lots... When
the other editor died suddenly in 1978 (Doug Landies or Mr. Sensitive) I continued
to publish it, gradually expanding its literary aspect. (...)
Your use of rubber stamps is quite interesting, too. Some mail artists in the
USA and Europe like to use several rubber stamps to make a (realistic) visual story
out of them, but you like to combine rubber stamps which don't fit together to give
some kind of message...
...I want to make something never made before, something I, and others, will
see for the first time. This is my goal in all my art and writing. Rubber stamps are a
quick way to achieve this: with a couple movements of the hand, you can make a
bizarre combination of images and/or words and thus have an instant experience of
seeing the world as if for the first time: the world becomes new and exciting, and on
continues to learn about it. On a less metaphysical plane, I enjoy rubber stamps as
objects and for their potential to create works in multiples, a fascination related to
my work as writer, whose works are reproduced in books, which are the ultimate
„multiple“ art form. Perhaps this is a contradiction (or unity of opposites): I want to
create things no one has seen before, but create them in many identical copies. Vive
la contradiction!...»
(Ruud → Janssen: The Mail-Interview with John M. Bennett. A/5, 16 p.
TAM Publs.: TAM-960123, Tilburg, 1996)
Vittore → Baroni: John M. Bennett. In: Arte Postale. Guida al network della
corrispondenza creativa. (Text: Italian) AAA Ed. Bertiolo, 1997. 110-111 p.
^Dmitry → Bulatov: A Point of View. Visual Poetry: The 90s. An Anthology. With
over 500 illustrations on 592 p. Russian. Ed. Simplicii. Kaliningrad, 1998. 153 p.
^John → Held, Jr.: L'Arte del Timbro / Rubber Stamp Art. A/5, offset, 176 p.
Editor: V. Baroni. AAA Edizioni, Bertiolo I, 1999. 100-101 p.
Bennett, John (Also) 137 Leland Ave. Columbus, OH-43204 USA 1995
^Typewriting in a Swimming Pool (Br. 24 p.) Found Street / Luna Bisonte Prod. 1975