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

Retired Mail-Artists

Retired Mail-Artists
They still get mail-art in
But they don't answer it anymore.

see:  https://www.facebook.com/groups/retiredmailartists/?ref=bookmarks

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.

Historification

Since each mail-artists is the centre of his own network, it is wrong to define the mail-art network from your point of view. There are always individial views of the network. Only an outside who researches the different networks and views will get a clearer picture of what the mail-art network is all about.

Is Mail-Art dead?

A visual statement sent out in the mail-art. Original stamps made for this.

To enter a museum

Repetition

When long enough inside the mail-art network you realize the circle.

1. You enter the network
2. You learn inside the network
3. You build your own network
4. You are the center of your network
5. Your network grows as time and money allow.
6. It grows too large
7. You leave the network

After leaving, you can return any time you want by making anew the contact.

Ruud Janssen, September 23rd 2013

Creating the Flux Us Rubberstamp

A new statement ; FLUX US

Social Networks

The current social network cause the mail-art network to grow once again. A new generation (the 6th) learns online about mail-art and joins in.

QUESTION

6th Generation of Mail-Artists

New Generation of Mail-Artists

After writing the article on 5 generations of mail-artists I wondered what the 6th generation would be like. Now I know.

Online, in social networks, people discover the mail-art movement where ther speak of snail-mail used as a medium for art. They join online and start to send out their first mail-art piece after being online for such a long time.

So the 6th generation are the artists that move from the digital communication-world into the oldfashioned snail-mail world.

The new mail-Art Projects

A lot of new mail-art projects I see lately are simple of construction. The mail-artists thinks of a theme. Want the network to send him/her mailing (postal system only). What is the reward for the senders? Their artwork will be documented on a blog, and that is all the documentation that will ever be made.
For me it seems like a trade that isn't in balance. The artwork and sending costs a lot of money. The digitizing and making of a blog entry only takes a few minutes. I can understand that a lot of old-time mail-artists don't send in things to projects like these. Are these the modern times where the digital information is all we can afford for documentation?

Scattering of Information

The communication tools artists can play with have been widdened a lot. After the websites, the groups, the blogs and social networks, all these Internet Tools are now connected. The ones who can use all tools build their own social networks and arrange the processes to let the information flow easily. Not all have the technical skills to understand these tools completely, and the digital systems start to dictate what people can do or can't do.

So, in a few years people will start to go back to basics. don't want to be in social networks that cause side-effect in cominication.

You don't get many 'normal e-mails' anymore. The networks generate e-mails just to attract your attention to join in again. But the real communication from one person to another is what Mail-Art was all about. We will have to discover that again.

The future of Mail

When I see in several countries that the postal systems are reducing their services because the amount of mail being brought to be processed is decreasing I get worried on the future of Mail. In Mail-Art things will go on as long as mail is sent. The die-hards will test the system to the last possible ways of sending out mail