Started on: 4-6-1995RJ: Welcome to this mail-interview. First let me ask you the traditionalquestion. When did you get involved in the mail-art network?
Reply on: 3-7-1995DH: Dear Señor Janssen - I got involved in the mail-art network in July1959 shortly after I met Ray Johnson in June. He sent me a marzipanfrog, a wooden fork and three small letters in wood, which I correctlymisunderstood. I sent him some wild mushrooms which I had gathered,and they arrived at his place on Dover Street just before they decomposed.
RJ: Was this mail-art in the beginning just fun & games or was theremore to it?
Reply on 27-7-1995(Together with his answer Dick Higgins sent me his large, 46 pageslong, Bio/Bibliography and a contribution to my Rubberstamp Archive,a stamp sheet with some of his old and new stamps printed on)
DH: Indeed it was fun to communicate with Ray. But it was a new kindof fun. I had never encountered anyone who could somehow jell my fluidexperiences of the time when I was doing visual poetry (thus theletters), food and conceptual utility (perhaps I had shown him my"Useful Stanzas" which I wrote about then. But what had he left out?Nature - thus my sending of the wild mushrooms, collecting andstudying which was an ongoing interest (I was working on them withJohn Cage, an important friend of Ray's as of mine).
As for rubber stamps, in 1960 when Fluxus was a-forming my home wasin New York at 423 Broadway on the corner with Canal Street and mystudio was at 359 Canal Street a few blocks away. Canal Street wasknown for its surplus dealers (some are still there) including stationers,and one could buy rubber stamps there for almost nothing - and we did!I had already made some rubber stamps through Henri Berez, alegendary rubber maker on Sixth Avenue, long gone but he was the firstI knew who could make photographic rubber stamps - Berez made amagnesium, then a Bakelite and finally the rubber stamp, And I blockedthe magnesiums and used them for printing as well. I had stamps ofmusical notation symbols made and also of my calligraphies, etc. At anauction in 1966 when he moved to Europe I also bought FluxartistGeorge Brecht's rubber stamps (mostly of animals) which he usedstarting ca. 1960; I used those to make a bookwork of my own, Fromthe Earliest Days of Fluxus (I Guess), which I think is in theSilverman Collection. Others of my rubber stamps are in the ArchivSohm and perhaps Hermann Braun or Erik Andersch have some, I amnot sure. I think there was an article on Fluxus rubber stamps inLightworks - that must be listed in John Held Jr's Mail Art: anAnnotated Bibliography (Mettuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1991)and/or in Jon Hendricks's Fluxus Codex (New York: Abrams, ca.1992). I also composed some music using rubber stamps, notablyEmmett Williams's Ear/L'orecchio di Emmett Williams(Cavriago: Pari & Dispari, 1978).
That's about all I can add to the rubber stamp thing at this time. Itwould be much more efficient for us if I send you myBio/Bibliography which has facts that need not be endlessly repeated,so I am doing that under separate cover. The curious type face I used onthat is one which I designed and named for Fluxmail Artist Ken"Kenster" Friedman, "Kenster."
RJ: Your Bio/Bibliography is quite impressive. The sentence on thefirst page: "I find I never feel quite complete unless I'm doing all thearts -- visual, musical and literary. I guess that's why I developed theterm 'intermedia' , to cover my works that fall conceptually betweenthese" , indicates you are always focussing on all kinds of media toexpress yourself. Which place has mail-art in this?
Reply on: 4-8-1995 , 29°C and about 85% relative humidity(Together with his answer Dick Higgins sent me a poster with title "SOME POETRY INTERMEDIA" explaning metapoetries or how poetry is connected to many other art-forms. Published by Richard C. Higgins, 1976 , New York, USA)DH: Yes, I am a "polyartist" - Kostelanetz's term for an artist whoworks in more than one medium, and some of these media themselveshave meaningful gradiations between them. Visual poetry lies betweenvisual art and poetry, sound poetry lies between music and poetry, etc.But between almost any art and non-art media other intermedia arepossible. What lies between theater and life, for instance? Betweenmusic and philosophy? In poetry I got into this in my "Some PoetryIntermedia" poster essay. If we take any art as a medium and the postalsystem as a medium, then mail art is the intermedium between these -postal poetry, postal music, mail-art [visual variety], etc.
Some of these are more capable than others of the subversive functionwhich I value in mail art - it bypasses the gallery world and themarketplace, so it becomes somehow immune to censorship. If usedaggressively it can make a reactionary politician's life Hell. And it isnot yet played out yet. For instance, while Fax art has no specialcharacteristics (it is like monochromatic regular mail, "snail mail")what is e-mail art? Can't it subvert the rich folks' machines? Ruin theirmodems? Yet even that is a commonplace, once one has considered it.Little artists can do it. Its power is inherent in its medium. I can tellyou stories of how the Poles of Kŝodsko tortured an East Germanbureaucrat who has banned a Mail art show in (then) East Berlin. Ihappened to be visiting there at the time and was involved in this.
But let's think about more positive areas. Please tell me about thespiritual aspects of mail art. How do you see that?
RJ: Yes, a nice try to end an answer with a question to me. I will sendyou some 'thoughts about mail-art' for you to read, but in this interviewI would like to focus on YOUR thoughts and knowledge. I am in nohurry, so I would like to hear that story of how the Poles of Kŝodskotortured this East German bureaucrat who banned this mail art show inEast Berlin.....
Reply on 17-8-1995DH: (today in 1843 Herman Melville signed abroad the frigate 'UnitedStates,' this began the journey that led to 'White-Jacket')
It must have been about 1988 and I was traveling through Poland,reading and performing with a friend, the critic and scholar PiotrRypson. Our travels brought us to Kŝodsko down in the beak of Galiciato where a group of unofficial Polish artist had gathered to discuss whatto do since the Mail Art Conference which Robert Rehfeldt hadorganized in East Berlin had, at the last moment, been canceled bysome bureaucrat. It was a final and irrevocable decision the bureacrathad made, finalized by his official rubber stamp besides his signature.This was a great disappointment to these artists who had very littleopportunity to meet personally with each other, especially acrossinternational borders, and to exchange ideas. However these artistswere Poles, from the land of the liberum votum , and they had sixhundred years experience at protesting. They made a list of things todo. Having access to some things in America which were problematic inPoland, I was asked to have four exact facsimiles of the bureaucrat'srubber stamp made up and to send one to each of four addresses I wasgiven, one was an official one in the Department of Agriculture in theDDR and the other three were in Poland. I was also asked to buy somehomosexual and some Trotskyite magazines in the USA, to send themone at a time to the bureaucrat and, if possible, to subscribe in hisname to these things. I did these things and also I appointed thebureaucrat an honorary member of my Institiute for CreativeMisunderstanding and sent an announcement of his appointment toNeues Deutschland, the main communist newspaper of the DDR.
For a few weeks it seemed as if nothing had happened. But then Ireceived a long letter from Robert Rehfeldt in English (usually hewrote me in German) lecturing me on what a terrible thing it was to tryto force a person to accept art work which he did not like. And a fewweeks after that I received a post card from Rehfeldt auf deutsch saying"Fine - keep it up [mach weiter]."
In this story we can see the usefulness for using the mails on thepositive side for keeping spirits up and for keeping contact with thoseone does not see, on the sometimes-necessary negative side for creatingpowerful statements which must have caused great problems for thisbureaucrat. I have no idea who these people were to whom I sent therubber stamps, but I can imagine that they were forging thebureaucrat's signature onto all sorts of capricious papers and causinggreat consternation within official circles of the DDR. For me this storytells well one of the main uses of Mail Art.
Perhaps it also suggests why Mail Art taken out of context cansometimes be such a bore. It has no particular formal value or novelty,especially when one has (as I have) been doing it for nearly forty years,so that mere documentation seems tendentious and egotistic. Would youwant to only read about a great painting of the past? Wouldn't yourather see it and then, perhaps, read about it? Making good Mail Art islike making a souffl - the timing is very very critical. Who wants to betold about a decade old souffl? And documenting the matter is notnearly so interesting as receiving and consuming it at precisely the rightmoment - with the right people too, I might add. It is an art of theutmost immediacy.
RJ: What was the reason for creating your "Institute for CreativeMisunderstanding"?
Reply on 26-8-95 (Apollinaire born today)(Besides his answer Dick Higgins also sent his poem "Inventions tomake")DH: Kra Ruud, For years I was struck by how little one understands ofhow one's work will be perceived by others. We can prescribe howothers will see it at risk of discouraging them. Duchamp, when anyonewould ask "does your piece mean this or that...?" would smile andusually say "yes," no matter how absurd the question. The impressioniststhought they were dealing with light; we see their contribution is one ofdesign along the way towards abstraction. The Jena Romantic poets ofGermany saw themselves as applying the philosophies of Kant and Platoto their writings, but we see it as reviving the baroque and providing ahealthy restorative emotional depth to their poetry which had oftenbeen lacking in the work of the previous generation. The same is true ofPercy B. Shelley who knew his Plato well (and translated passages ofPlato from Greek into English), but who in poems like "Lift not thepainted veil" or "The sensitive plant" moves Plato's ideas into areaswhich Plato never intended to create a new entity of art-as-concealment. Harold Bloom, a famous academic critic in the USA, was,in the 1970's in books like The anxiety of influence, stressing therole of recent art as cannibalizing and deriving from earlier art. I wasnot satisfied with Bloom's models and preferred to extend them andmisinterpret them myself along hermeneutic lines using a Gadamerianmodel; this you will find in a linear fashion in my book Horizons(1983) and in the forthcoming "Intermedia: Modernism sincepostmodernism" (1996). But a linear presentation does not satisfy meeither; it does not usually offer grounds for projection into new areasand it focuses too much on the specifics of my own ratiocinations. Tobroaden my perspective I conceived of a community of artists andthinkers who could take conceptual models and, with good will (myassumption, like Kant's in his ethics), transform these models - evokingnot simply intellectual discourse but humor or lyrical effects whichwould otherwise not be possible. This is, of course, my Institute ofCreative Misunderstanding. Into it I put a number of people with whomI was in touch who seemed to be transforming earlier models into newand necessary paradigms. I tried to organize a meeting of the institute,but could not get funding for it and realized that it might well beunnecessary anyway. I still use that Institute as a conceptual paradigmwhen necessary.
So I would not discribe the Institute for Creative Misunderstanding asa "fake institute," as you did, so much as an abstract entity and processof existence which creates a paradigm of community of like-mindedpeople by its very name and mentioning. Are you a member of theInstitute, Ruud? Perhaps you are - it is not really up to me to say if youhave correctly misunderstood it in your heart of hearts.
RJ: Who is to say if I am a member? But I sure like all those institutesand organisations that there are in the network. You spoke of theintention to organize a meeting. In the years 1986 and 1992 there werelots of organized meetings in the form of congresses. Is it important for(mail-) artists to meet in person?
Reply on 5-9-1995 (Cage born -1912)DH: (laughing) Who's to say if you are a member? Why the groupsecretary, of course - whoever that is. Perhaps I am acting secretary andI say you are a member. Anyway, to be serious, the question of meetingsis not answerable, I think, except in specific contexts. The eventsplanned at Kŝodsko could not have been planned without the peoplebeing together; but at other times it would seem unnecessarilypretentious to bring them together - frustrating even, since most mailartists are poor and they would have to spend money to be present. Attimes this would be justified, but if it were simply a matter of pride orof establishing a place in some pecking order, well that would not begood.
Think of a camp fire. Shadowy figures are in conversation, laughingand talking; what they say makes sense mostly among themselves. Astranger wanders in and listens. The stranger understands almostnothing - to him what is said is all but meaningless - and the part whichhe understands seems trivial to him. The stranger has two options: hecan stay and learn why what is being said is necessary, or he can go awayand suggest that all such campfires are silly and should be ignored orbanned. Mail art is like that. I shows, and the work is arrangednot by conversation but according to a curators's skills of the past, as ifthese were drawings by Goya. But they aren't. Their meaning is moreprivate, often contained in the facts and conditions of their existencemore than in the art traditions to which they seem to belong. The showtherefore doesn't work. Few do. But a show arranged chronologically ofthe exchanges among some specific circle mail artists - that would havea greater chance for an outsider to learn the language and love themedium. Wouldn't you like to see a show of the complete exchangesbetween, say, San Francisco's Anna Banana*1 and Irene Dogmatic (ifthere ever was such an exchange) than the 65th International Scrambleof Mail Artists presented by the Commune di Bric- -Bracchio (Bigcatalog with lots and lots of names, but all works become the propertyof the Archivo di Bric- -Bracchio).
*1 of course Anna has since moved to her native Vancouver, and Ihaven't heard of Irene Dogmatic in many a year)
Chance encounters among mail artists, meetings among small groups -oh yes, those are quite wonderful. But I don't usually see the point inlarge gatherings of mail artists. Actually, there haven't been many ofthem - thank goodness. Berlin would have been an exception, methinks.
As e'er- Dick (laughing) (Dicks signiture was placed here as a smilingface)RJ: What is the first 'chance encounter' (as you call them) that comesup in your mind when I ask for a memory about such an event?
Reply on 18-9-1995DH: By "chance encounters" I mean those meetings which could nothave been anticipated or which take place on the spur of the moment.In on Wednesday I arrange to meet you the following Tuesday at 7:30and if I am unable to sleep Monday night because of faxes from Europearriving all night long Monday night and the cat is ill on Tuesday so thatI must waste half the day at the veterinarian's office, you and I will havea very different kind of meeting from the situation of my meeting you inthe post office and the two of us going to spend a few hours togethertalking things over, or if I say: "Look: I cooked too much food, pleasecome over and help me eat it."
We have all had such meeting, no? Those meetings are the mostproductive, I think. Few mail artists (or any artists) can really controltheir own time, their own scedule. Only the rich can do that, if anyonecan. We are mostly poor and must depend on the schedules of others.But there are days when this is not true - days when it works perfectly tosee someone. Ray Johnson was a master of this - he would call, "I amwith (whoever), we're down the street from you. Can we come see you?"If yes - great. If not, one never felt locked into the situation.
That is how I never met Yves Klein. One night, perhaps in 1961, at11:15 Ray phoned me from down the street and said that Yves Klein waswith him and would like to meet me. I said I'd like to meet him too butI was in bed and it was a week-day. I had to work the next day. Weagreed that I should meet Yves Klein the next time he came to newYork. It didn't happen; Klein died instead.
It is also how I met Alison Knowles, - Ray Johnson and Dorothy Podberand myself had dinner in Chinatown in New York and then they took meto Alison's loft nearby. I had met her briefly before that, but this timewe got to talk a little. That was thirty-six years ago, and Alison and Iare still together.
And so it goes -
RJ: Yes, and also the forms of communication are proceeding. To mysurprise I noticed on your 'letterhead' that you have an e-mail addresstoo. Are you now exploring the possibilities of the internet as well?
Reply on 20-10-1995 (sent on 11-10 from Milano Italy)(Dick Higgins handwritten answer came from Milano, Italy, where he ispreparing a retrospective show of his work.)DH: Yes, "exploring" is the only possible word, since the internet isconstantly changing. You can "know" yesterday's internet, but today'salways contains new variables.
In the world of computers, most of the "information" is irrelevant, evento those who put it there. Few of us bother to download clever graphicssince advertising has made us numb to those. I only download graphicsif the text which I see really seems to need them. I need them no morethan I need to watch show-offy gymnastic displays, divers or pianistswho play Franz Liszt while blindfolded and balancing champagneglasses on their head. What I like on the "net" are three things:
1) Making contact with people whose contributions to the internetshows interest similar to my own. Far from being alienating, as othershave said of the web and internet, I find this element a very positive andcommunity-building factor. For instance, I enjoyed meeting on theinternet a guy whom I'd met three years ago, a visual poet named KennyGoldsmith, and had not seen since. Now he does "Kenny's page " - - where he creates links toanything in the new arts which excites him. It was like looking intosomeone else's library - a revelation, and one which I could use. It ledme to meet him again in person, a real delight. 2) I cannot afford to buy the books I once could. But often I candownload and print out things to read before going to bed. For anauthor, what a way to get one's work and ideas around! Why wait twoyears for your book to appear, for your article to come out in somemagazine which nobody can afford? Put it on the net and it ispotentially part of the dialogue in your area of interest. Further, it tellsme not only what people are interested in, but what is going on - a JohnCage conference , which interested me, was fully described on the netfor instance - and it gives me access to everything from dictionaries,indexes and lists of words, people and events. I suppose a saboteur could list false information, and of coursecommercial interests can tell me about their stuff, but this onlysharpers my skeptical abilities - I can avoid their garbage with no moreeffect than on a commercial television set. I suspect the internet is ablow to the effectiveness of normal advertising.
3) As someone whose favorite art, books and literature are seldomcommercially viable, I am happy to see how the internet actually favorsthe smaller organizations and media. If I access a big publisher's pageswith ten thousend titles, I stop and quit almost at once - it takes toolong. But a small publisher's page is often worth a glance. Further, the phenomenon of links gives an element of three -dimenisionality to the internet. A book sounds interesting. I click on itand I see a few pages of it. This is like browsing in a wonderful bookstore. A good example is the pages for Avec, a small avant-gardemagazine and book publisher in California. I found it through a link onthe Grist pages - . It's designed bythe editor of Witz , a new arts newsletter (address: creiner@crl.com).Perfect. Another good one is Joe de Marco's pages - full of fluxus things and theater.All this suggests new forms of distribution, which has always been aproblem for small publishers. If you can safely transmit creditinformation to an address on the internet, then, if you live in a smallvillage as I do, it is as if you lived in a large city with an incredible bookstore near you. Because of links, I do not see how big corporations can commercializeall this. My computer is black and white, I have no money to invest intheir corporations, and their rubbish is easily avoided. Thanks to theinternet, the damber kind of popular culture will probably begin to loseits strangle-hold on people's attention. Of course it will take time andother developments too, but the internet rips off the conservatives'three-piece suits, remakes them and gives them to us in a better form.
RJ: It seems like publishing is very important for you. In mail art a lothas been written about the boek "The Paper Snake" by Ray Johnson,which you published with Something Else Press. What was the storybehind this specific book?
Continue with Interview . . .
Ruud Janssen with Dick Higgins 
