Reply on 27-10-1995 (internet)

DH: There is no doubt in my mind that Ray Johnson was one of themost valuable artists I've ever known. He was a master of the "trickylittle Paul Klee-ish collage," as he modestly dismissed them; most of hiswork of the late 1950's was collages in 8 1/2 x 11 format-roughlycorresponding to the European A3. That was a time when AbstractExpressionism ("Tachisme") ruled the roost in America, and art wassupposed to swagger, lack humor, be big and important-looking.Johnson had rejected this long before, had, in the 1950's, madehundreds or thousand of postcard-size collages using popular imagery,had also made big collages and then cut them up, sewn them togetherinto chains, had buried the critic Suzi Gablik in a small mountain ofthem (alas, only temporarily), had printed various ingenious littlebooklets and sent them off into the world, and, since there was noappropriate gallery for his work, had now taken to sending his collagesout-along with assemblages in parcel post form. For example, a few daysafter I had startled Ray by throwing my alarm clock out the window, hesent me a box containing a marzipan frog, a broken clock and a pair ofchopsticks, calling shortly thereafter to suggest that we Chinatownfor dinner.

But Ray could write too. He was always interested in theater andperformance, had picked up many ideas from the days when he and hisfriend Richard Lippold lived downtown in New York City on MonroeStreet on the floor below John Cage (all of them friends also fromBlack Mountain College), and he wrote and sent out innumerableplaylets, poems, prose constructions, etc.

I saw Ray around town for several months before I met him, which wasat a 1959 concert where I asked him if he were Jasper Johns. "No," hesaid, "I'm Ray Johnson," we got to talking and soon to walking and notlong afterwards to visiting. Years later, when I met Jasper Johns, inorder to complete the symmetry, I asked him if he were Ray Johnson. Iexpected him to say, "You know I'm not-why do you ask?" Instead hesaid, acidly: "No." And he walked away.

Something Else Press was founded on the spur of the moment. First Idid my book "Jefferson's Birthday/Postface" (1964). But before thething was even printed, I decided the next book should be across-section of the things Ray had sent me over the previous six years.So, having little room at my own place, I packed them all into twosuitcases, visited my mother and spread everything out on her diningtable. I sorted the book into piles-performance pieces, poems, collages,things to be typeset, thing to be reproduced in Ray's writing-taking careto include at least some of each category. I knew the book would behard to sell, so I didn't want to make it a Big Important Book; I chosethe format of a children's book, set the texts in a smallish size ofCloister Bold (an old-fashioned Venetian face), decided on using twocolors to simulate four (which I could not have afforded), and then laidout the pages in a way which I felt would invite the reader to experienceRay's pieces as I did on receiving them. Ray, who had at first beendispleased by the project, perhaps feeling it would lock him into aformat too much, become very enthusiastic as the project developed.Where at first he had refused to title the book, later he called it "ThePaper Snake" after a collage and print he had made. He also wanted theprice to be "$3.47," for reasons I have never known (prices of that sortwere always $3.48 or $3.98). And when, one winter day in 1966, the bookwas being bound by a New York City binder, I took Ray over to thebindery to see it being cased in (when the covers are attached to thebook). By then he was delighted and wrote me one of the few formalletters ever received from him thanking me for doing it.

As for its reception, the book was a puzzler to even the mostsophisticated readers at the time. Even someone who was a regularcorrespondent of Ray's, Stanton Kreider, wrote me an outraged lettersaying what a silly book it was. Such people usually felt that Ray'smailings were and should remain ephemera. There were almost noreviews, but one did appear in Art Voices, one of the most scorchingreviews I have ever seen, complaining the book was precious andcompletely trivial, a pleasure to an in-group. These letters and reviewsare now in the Archiv Sohm in Stuttgart, where you can persue them foryourself if you like.

RJ: It is good that you keep mentioning the places where things can befound, if I do or don't persue, now somebody else might do it too. Thereare a lot of archives in the world. Besides the 'official' archives thereare also the private collections that most (mail-) artists have built up.Are there still things that you collect?

Reply on 29-10-95 (internet)

DH: I feel overwhelmed by THINGS at my home. My letters are one ofthe main things I have done in this life, and I try to keep copies of eachletter I send; but there is no space to save them. For years now my fileshave been going away - to the Archiv Sohm, for about 1972 to 1989 tothe Jean Brown Archive, and from then till now the Getty Center inSanta Monica, California.

I don't think it makes sense for a private individual to have a closedarchive if such a person is going to present a face to the world. I haveread that Yoko Ono founded Fluxus, and I have seen that quoted as afact many times. One critic or student picks up errors from the onebefore. I don't know where that "fact" came from. Yoko is a good.modest person; she was a friend of ours and she had done pieces whichare very much part of the older Fluxusrepertoire. But she was notpresent on that November day of 1961 when Maciunas proposed to agroup of us that we do a magazine to be called "Fluxus" and that we doperformances of the pieces in the magazine; nor was she in Wiesbadenin September 1962 when we did those performances and the press begancalling us "Die Fluxus Leute" - the Fluxus people. So while she, forinstance, was surely one of the original Fluxus people, she did not foundFluxus. Well, if I am going to assert this, it is important that thedocuments of the time be available somewhere besides in my own files.Too, my writings are complex and full of allusions; this is not to createmysteries but to enrich the fabric and draw on reality. It can be usefultherefore that my files be open to anyone who needs them, and thiswould be impossible if the files were here in my church.

Then there are other collections: from 1977 to 1991 I collected thingsrelated to Giordano Bruno (1548-1600), - apart from a passage inPlato's Phaedrus, Bruno's "De imaginum, signorum et idearumCompositione" (1593) has the earliest discussion I know of intermedia -but when Charlie Doria's translation of this work came out (which Iedited and annotated) I sold off all the Bruno materials I had. From1968 to 1990 (about) I collected patterns poetry-old visual poetry frombefore 1900 - but that too has gone away, most of it anyway. I havecollected almost all of the books written, designed by or associated withMerle Armitage (1893-1975), a great modernist book designer, and mybiography of him, "Merle Armitage and the Modern Book", is due outwith David Godine next year. I will then sell that collection too.Perhaps it was a good experience acquiring these things, but that part isover now. Other collections have been given away. I collected atremendous amount of sound poetry and information on it, meaning todo a book on the subject. But there was never money to do the bookright. Perhaps that collection also should depart. There is too much artwork by myself here in the church in which I live and work - it getsdamaged because it cannot be stored properly. I would like to move to asmaller place, since I do not need and cannot afford this big one, and ifthat happens more things also go away.

There are some phonograph records, tapes and CD's too - too many tokeep track of, some going back to my teen years when I used to spendthe money I earned by baby-sitting on records of John Cage, HenryCowell, G”esta Nystroem, Schoenberg and Stravinsky, Anton Webernand such-like. I suppose the only books which are also tools and (forme) reference work-books on design or artistic crafts (orchestration,for instance), Fluxbooks and Fluxcatalogs (I need to check my facts),books and magazines in which I am included (so I can tell where such-and-such a piece first was printed). As for objects, I care about mymother's dishes and one table, but that is about all - the rest can go.

No, I am a temporary collector - as Gertrude Stein said of her visitors,she liked to see them come, but she also liked to see them go. I willacquire things when they are needed, but I need to unload them too. Ihave no right to own art, even by friends, because I cannot take care ofit properly. It too must go. This church is dark with things, things,things - and maybe somebody else, somebody younger that I, might liketo have them.

RJ: Why do you live in a church?

Reply on 4-11-1995 (internet)

DH: I live in this church because, when I moved to this area fromVermont (where I had lived almost fourteen years, off and on, up nearthe Quebec border) I bought a house, garage and church complex. Ithad been "defrocked" by the Roman Catholic Church in 1974, itsconsecration taken away and the cross and bell removed, and it was soldto a couple who wanted it to become an antique shop. However therewas no drive-by traffic so they found that would not work. But nobodywanted to buy it from them. So I got it at a good price, as they say. Myplan was to live in the house- a modest parsonage,- for my wife AlisonKnowles to use the garage (where we set up a photo darkroom to beshared), and for myself to use the church as my own studio. For this itwas fine.

But in 1985 when my finances began to collapse-with the decline in theUS art world, the rise of our Radical Right and neo-Christian coalition,and with the Fluxus syndrome among exhibitors and collectors, I had torent out the house to survive and to move into the church. It is a nicespace, well suited to be a studio, but it is dark in the winter and is quitegloomy and expensive to heat. It has no doors so nobody is separatedfrom anything else that is going on. There are virtually no doors toclose, so there is no privacy. Sometimes I think I will go mad here.Maybe I have. I would love to move, but like the previous owners Iwould find it hard to sell and in any case I have no money to move. Nextwinter I may have to do without heat here most of the time unless thingslook up. It is a curious environment for an artist.

I often refer to this "Fluxus syndrome." It is my term for a problem thatI face. It goes like this. A gallerist, critic or exhibitor tells me "I likeyour work. I know you are a Fluxus artist." Then they see more of mywork and they compare it to the work of George Maciunas, whom theytake to be the leader of Fluxus instead of its namer and, in his ownpreferred term, "Chairman" of Fluxus. They note that there aredifferences and they say to me: "But that work is not Fluxus. Do youhave any Fluxus work?" I say yes,-and I show work from the early sixtiesthrough late seventies. It still does not resemble the work of Maciunas.It isn't usually even fun and games, which is what the public thinks of asFluxus. So I am marginalized in Fluxus shows, or I am left out of othercollections because "This is not a Fluxus gallery/museumshow/collection." The problem is all but unavoidable, and in vain canone point out that if Fluxus is important, it is because of its focus onintermedia, that Maciunas recognized this repeatedly, that he knewperfectly well that there was room in Fluxus for work which did notresemble his at all. If one says anything like this in public, it is taken tobe a disloyalty to George or some kind of in-fighting for prestige. I havesometimes been tempted to show my work under a false name in orderto escape this syndrome altogether. But even that sounds as if I wereashamed of my Fluxus past, which I am not, even though it is not awfullyrelevant to my work since the late seventies. Also I still feel affinitiesto some of my Fluxus colleagues, though the work of others has, in myopinion, become repetitious crap. Many of my Fluxfriends could do witha little more self-criticism, in my opinion. Fluxus also has its share ofhangers-on, people who were utterly marginal to the group and whokept their distance during the years when Fluxus had not acquired itspresent and perhaps false public image, but who are now all too willingto con their way into the list and to enter their colors for the nexttournament.

RJ: This story about "Fluxus syndrome," is quite interesting when Icompare it to mail art. There is the difference that in mail art mostartist try to avoid the traditional art-world, and there is even the phrase"mail art and money don't mix" by Lon Spiegelman, that is used byothers too. There are on the other hand also artists who say to organizea mail art show and then start to use entrance-fees and ask for moneyfor catalogues ; try to 'con' people in the mail art network. What do youthink of "mail art and money don't mix"? I know it's not an easyquestion to answer.

Reply on 11-11-1995 (internet)

DH: Money and mail art? Money and Fluxus? Mixing? You are right, Ican't answer that one easily. Certainly if somebody got into mail art (orFluxus) as a means of advancing his or her career- "Gee," says the dork,"ya gotta get inta as many shows as possible, I was in thirty-two last yearand here's the catalogs to prove it," -he or she would swiftly learn thatis not what the field is for. Rather, its purpose is to combat alienation,and that is only in some respects an economic problem. Mail art hastremendous disruptive potential (and even some constructive socialpotential), as I described in my story about Polish mail artists and theEast German bureaucrat. And it has great community-building power -even my hypothetical dork can say "Wow, I got friends all over, fromArgentina to Tooneesia." But I must make a confession: I have probablyseen forty or fifty actual exhibitions of mail art, and NOT ONE OFTHEM was interesting to see. There were good things in each of themof course, but the effect of looking at them was weak. Why? Becausethey did not reflect the function - they always treated the sendings asfinal artifacts (sometimes ranked according to the prestige of theartist). But mail art pieces are virtually never final artifacts - they areconveyors of a process of rethinking, community-building andpsychological and intellectual extension. Thus it is, I think, a distortionto think, of mail art as a commercial commodity of any kind. Because itis typically modest in scale usually and it is usually technically simple,the finest piece may come from the greenest, newest or the least skilledartist. There is no rank in mail art so long as the artist thinks and seesclearly.

Nevertheless, the issue of money is one which must be faced. Lack of itcan ruin your capability for making mail art, for one thing. When theheat is gone and you can't afford to the doctor, it is very hard tofocus on making this collage to send away, even though one knows thatdo so would bring great satisfaction and comfort. Yet the mail art itselfis not usually salable, and nobody gets a career in mail art. One is freeto be capricious, as I was circa twenty-odd years ago when I spent twomonths corresponding only with people whose last names began with M.It is not, then, so much that mail art and money do not mix but that mailart simply cannot be used to produce money, at least not directly, -which is not to say that one mail artist cannot help another. Obviouslywe can and do. I remember when Geoffrey Cook, a San Francisco mailartist, undertook a campaign through the mail art circuit to freeClemente Padín, the Uruguayan mail artist (among other things) whohad been jailed by the military junta for subversion. It worked. Andmany is the mail artist who, wanting to see his or her correspondent,finds some money somewhere to help defray travel costs and such-like.

With Fluxus, the issue is different. Fluxart has in common with mail artits primary function as a conveyor of meaning and impact. ButFluxworks are not usually mail art and do not usually depend on anetwork of recepients. Some are enormously large. Some take largeamounts of time to construct, some are expensive to build and so on.Given this, issues of professionalism arise which are not appropriate tomail art. If I insist on making my Fluxart amateur and to support myselfby other means, I may not be able to realize my piece. I am thus forcedat a certain point in my evolution to attempt to live form my art, sinceanything else would be a distraction. I must commercialize the un-commercializable in order to extend it to its maximum potential. Whatan irony! It is, I fancy (having been in Korea but not Japan), like theexpensive tranquillity of a Zen temple in contrast to the maniacalfrenzy of Japanese commercial life outside it. Peace becomes soexpensive one might imagine it is a luxury, which I hope it is not. So oneis compelled to support it.

The difference is, I think, that commercial art supports the world ofcommodity; Fluxus and other serious art of their sort draws on theworld of commerce for its sustenance but its aim lies elsewhere - itpoints in other directions, not at the prestige of the artist as such (oncesomeone once tried to swap, for a book by Gertrude Stein which hewanted, two cookies which Stein had baked, then about twenty-two yearsbefore) and certainly not at his or her ego in any personal sense (JohnCage musing at the hill behind his then home, "I don't think I have doneanything remarkable, anything which that rock out there could not do ifit were active"). One must take one's work seriously, must follow itsdemands and be an obedient servant to them: nobody else will, right? Ifthe demands are great and require that one wear a shirt and tie and golight people's cigars, then out of storage come the shirt and tie and outcomes the cigar-lighter. That is what we must do. But we do not belongto the world of cigars; we are only visitors there. It is a liminalexperience, like the shaman visiting the world of evil spirits. We caneven be amused by the process. Anyway, that's my opinion.

***deleted question***

RJ: Why has mail art, which seems so ephemeral in one way, heldpeoples' attention as it has? Is there anything uniquely timely in mailart?

***deleted question***

RJ: Some mail artists say that the mail art network is more active thanbefore. Others say that mail art is history because almost all thepossibilities of the traditional mail have been explored, and that all thethings that are happening now in mail art, are reproductions of thingsthat happened before. Is mail art a finished chapter?

Reply on 16 December, 1995

(Santayana born today (1863) and Jane Austin too (1775)

DH: Well, I think both sides are right. Mail Art is more active thanbefore if more people are doing it. Of course, for those of us whoseinterest in exploration I am glad they are doing it even though I see noneed to do it AS SUCH myself. Mail Art is [only?] history if all thepossibilities have been explored - yes, if one's job is to explore thingsonly formally. Of course I love history - without it I never know whatnot to do. For me this last assumption is therefore right so far as itgoes, but it does not go very far. Why should we assume that doingsomething once means it need not be done again? That is what I call the"virgin attitude," fine for people who are hung up on sleeping withvirgins but a dreadful idea if it is really love that you want. Aren't youglad that Monet painted more than one haystack or waterlily painting?Don't you have a food recipe which you would hate to change? A"finished chapter?" That has even more problematic assumptions.

After all, a chapter in a book (including the Book of Life) involvesreading, and the best books invite reading more than once. Isn't readingas creative as writing?

Mail Art is, in my opinion, not a single form. I am not much of ataxonomist-someone else can decide how many forms it is, can classifyand sort it out. What I know and have said in this interview is thatFunction precipitates Form. So long as new uses for Mail Art canappear, new forms are likely to arise. Just for instance-e-mail lettersand magazines are relatively new. The ways we can use them have notfully revealed themselves. The politics of this world are as fouled up asever; perhaps there are mail art methods (including e-mail methods)which can be used to help straighten things out or at least point to theproblems in a startling or striking way. No, I think mail art may behistory - it has been with us at least since Rimbaud's burnt letters - butonly a Dan Quail (a proverbially obtuse right-wing politician here)would say, as he did in 1989, that "History is Over!" And as long as thereare people-artists-living alone here and there, confronted by problems(professional, formal, human or social), Mail Art is likely to have a roleto play in helping to alleviate those problems. What we must not do isallow ourselves to take ourselves too seriously-tendentiousness is anatural health hazard for the mail artist. The freshness andunpredictability of the medium are part of why, if mail art works at all,it really does. Just as we must always reinvent ourselves, according towhatever situations we find ourselves in, we must always reinvent ourarts. And that includes mail art.

RJ: Well, this is a wonderful moment to end this interview. I want tothank you for your time and sharing your thoughts.

- END -

Mail-artist: Dick Higgins, P.O.Box 27, Barrytown, NY, USA 12507

Interviewer: Ruud Janssen - TAM, P.O.Box 1055, 4801 BB Breda, NETHERLANDS

Interview List . . .
Library Foyer . . .

Café Jas . . .
Museum Entrance . . .