Loosing our Back-up

In these  modern digital times
We have all out memories in digital forms
We don't loose our memories,
But we sometimes loose out Back-up

Mail-Art and history

Seems like the old generation
Of Mail-Artists is slowly vanishing
Or they move online.
Will Mail-Art survide another decade?

Historic statements papers from the 80-ies and 90-ies

ex posto facto (USA) sent me some of my ols papers back just this month. The statements are still correct, so have a read yourself too.....

Statement from 1988

Found on an enveloppe to Privat World, USA, now in the archives of John Held Jr. SF, USA.

After WWW came

After WWW came:

The first websites
The first blogs
The first forums
The first Social Networks

And now everybody is lost it those social networks

Ruud Janssen, 29-1-2016

Mail Art oldtimers

For the Mail-Art oldtimers with over 30 years experience, the current mail-art network is a strange one. The component INTERNET was added and brought blogs, websites, social networks, and a very speedy communication that made Post-Office vanish worldwide. What is left of the Mail-Art spirit they wonder.....

from Digital to Analog

The last years all new members that enter the Mail-Art mostly discover about it online on one of the many websites, blogs or even social networks. They like what they see and start to send out mail-art the traditional way for the first time.

The last years old mail-artists who said the Internet would kill mail-art and they didn't do Internet, they actually enter Internet and show us their history.

The Mail-Art network has changed a lot.

To enter a museum

Overview of all Statements in BOOK-form

Paperback book €19.99 Printed: 280 pages, 20.99 cm x 29.7 cm, perfect binding, white interior paper (55# weight), black and white interior ink, white exterior paper (90# weight), full-colour exterior ink


Description:

B&W Version of Statements Collection on Mail-Art by Ruud Janssen. Reprint of statements written in period 1993-2008 on the subject of mail-art. These statements were first published as pamphlets. Later on the Internet, and now as a collection in one book. Some statements and texts were also published on the Internet first and later as print-out sent into the network. The last part of this book contains visual statements made when the Millennium came about and most recent is an overview of the slides used at a lecture at the Willem de Kooning Academy in Rotterdam explaining the concept of mail-art. In the past 28 years Ruud Janssen has intensively written about how E-mail and Internet would change mail-art, and it has.

A colour-version of the book is also available. See an overview of all publications at:

http://stores.lulu.com/iuoma

Enjoy reading this book!

Center of the Network

Every mail-artist is the center of his/her own network. The people he/she meets and doesn't like, he/she ignores them. Only the persons who play the way he/she likes stay part of the network. That is why eveybody has his/her own personalized network.

29

The large ART-institutes are discovering the Mail-Art movement. It starts with the Postal Musea which want to show that mail and 'real' art go together. But they don't follow the unwritten mail-art rules, they select works and look for works in mail-art of people who now are (a bit more) famous. But the most famous mail-artist for me is the one that makes my morning so many times beautiful with his/her wonderful mail- art in my post-box.

28

The new GLOBAL MAIL from Ashley Parker Owens in USA contains approximately 500 entries (addresses, contacts, projects). The impact of the magazine is large. Once you get such a magazine as a newcomer you can go any direction you choose. The network is no longer a closed circuit or an underground art-movement. Global Mail is a correct title, but it is strange too. The intimate contacts I built up in mail-art are very important for me, and this can only be with a small group of people. Now that this GLOBAL MAIL is on Internet too, all kind of networks are mixed together. They will influence eachother and build a new network of networks somewhere in the future. But I've learned that I don't need more and more contacts, I only need a limited amount of good contacts with old or new friends because my time and life are limited.

27

More and more I realize that my private life and my mail-art work are mixed together. My work is my life and my life is filled with things I want to do. I guess I am lucky to be able to communicate with so many friends I would never had met if I hadn't stumbled on the network. The mail I get from all directions inspires me so much to continue with this life and to fill it with creations that come and go.