Guroga: How you knew the mail art?

Guroga: How you knew the mail art?

Ruud Janssen: I was doing mail-art before I knew there was a network. In the 70-ies doing correspondence and in 1980 discovered the network. Have been part of that network ever since. Guy Bleus (Belgium) sent me a first addresslist and there I started contacting the network.....

Guroga: What mean the mail art in your life?

Guroga: What mean the mail art in your life?

Ruud Janssen: Mail-Art has changed my life. A lot of essential changes have come from impulses from the network. My life is global and I am in contact with all kind of corners in the world.

Tracy Herrity : Is there something like a "Free Gift?"

Tracy Herrity: Your Mail-Interview Project prompted me to send out a few questions of my own! I would like to ask you if you have read Marcel Mauss "The Gift" which discusses wether you can truly give a gift freely. I would like to find out your opinion on "a free gift".

Ruud Janssen: No, I haven't read that specific book. A gift is never free. It costs other things. It is exchange of energy. receive it & pass on or return. In physics there is the law that explains that energy never gets lost. The energy you invest in a gift (it isn't free, you did something to get that gift....) is passed on to the receiver. He can react on that, pass it on, or even ignore it. But somehow it will cause something for sure.

New Question from Tracy Herrity - UK

Luciana Tamas: Personally report yourself to this movement.

LT : Mr. Janssen, in this period I've been getting information about Mail-Art and I realized that it is a truly fascinating universe. I consider that the principles, which the cultural avant-garde was built on, are admirably continued and that the new means of planetary communication multiply (through virtual networks) principles which (in different forms, of course) were announced, among others, by the "Fluxus" movement, too. How do you personally report yourself to this movement which, though ignored at its beginnings by the great public, starts to be understood, assimilated and even lived?

RJ : In Mail-Art there are only senders and receivers. If you send out a lot you get in a lot. If you do a lot of projects or issue magazines and other publications you automatically become the center of your network. But besides the network you know there are lots of other networks you are not aware of. I was very active in the 80-ies and 90-ies. End of the 90-ies I was more active in electronic communication than in the snail-mail. But sending out mail and receiving mail has always been something special. Communication has speeded up a bit. More intense and more directt with text, images and even videos. But the increased production also means that what is made often vanishes in the big electronic archive. I always tested the new forms in mail-art and wrote about them. The Social Networks are now the latest thing, but that will transform into new communicationways too. We get in more information than we can deal with. We scan through what we see and decide what gets out time. Not sure if I answered your question now.....

Tanja Vos: Why do you like to interview people?

Well, that is something that comes from the past I guess. I always have liked to ask questions. Also back when I still was studying I have learned that good questions are always interesting. With the right question at the right moment a world opens for you. The wrong question again won't bring you any further.

Asking questions is also a way to get information. Every person you encounter can teach you something. Sometimes we don't realize that. If you are interested in a very specific subject, the only way to learn more is by asking questions.

The Mail-Interview project I did was in a way a search for more information. I realized I didn't knew all I would like to about the persons that are inside that large mail-art network. So I started to ask questions in a very structured but yet very open way.....