Ruud Janssen
Encyclopedia
Ruud Janssen is a Dutch
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...

 Fluxus
Fluxus
Fluxus—a name taken from a Latin word meaning "to flow"—is an international network of artists, composers and designers noted for blending different artistic media and disciplines in the 1960s. They have been active in Neo-Dada noise music and visual art as well as literature, urban planning,...

 and mail art
Mail art
Mail art is a worldwide cultural movement that began in the early 1960s and involves sending visual art through the international postal system. Mail Art is also known as Postal Art or Correspondence Art...

ist currently living in Breda
Breda
Breda is a municipality and a city in the southern part of the Netherlands. The name Breda derived from brede Aa and refers to the confluence of the rivers Mark and Aa. As a fortified city, the city was of strategic military and political significance...

 in the Netherlands
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...

.

Ruud Janssen studied Physics and Mathematics. He became active with mail art in 1980 and did several international mail art projects. From 1994 till 2001 he has conducted interviews with Fluxus
Fluxus
Fluxus—a name taken from a Latin word meaning "to flow"—is an international network of artists, composers and designers noted for blending different artistic media and disciplines in the 1960s. They have been active in Neo-Dada noise music and visual art as well as literature, urban planning,...

 and mail art
Mail art
Mail art is a worldwide cultural movement that began in the early 1960s and involves sending visual art through the international postal system. Mail Art is also known as Postal Art or Correspondence Art...

ists in different communication forms; the results have been published in booklets and on the internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...

 since 1996. In later years he focused more on acrylic paint
Acrylic paint
Acrylic paint is fast drying paint containing pigment suspension in acrylic polymer emulsion. Acrylic paints can be diluted with water, but become water-resistant when dry...

ing and individual correspondences.

Janssen publishes articles, magazines and booklets with his TAM-Publications and participates in international mail art
Mail art
Mail art is a worldwide cultural movement that began in the early 1960s and involves sending visual art through the international postal system. Mail Art is also known as Postal Art or Correspondence Art...

 projects, collaborations and exhibitions. He founded IUOMA (International Union of Mail-Artists) in 1988 and is also the curator of the TAM-Rubberstamp Archive, the result of a Mail Art
Mail art
Mail art is a worldwide cultural movement that began in the early 1960s and involves sending visual art through the international postal system. Mail Art is also known as Postal Art or Correspondence Art...

 collection that has been accumulated by him from 1983 till now. The archive contains prints, original rubberstamps, magazines and literature. It is the longest time a mail art project has run ever (details see link to latest online catalogue). In 1994 he started with his Mail-interviews
Mail-interviews
In 1994 Dutch mail artist Ruud Janssen began a series of mail-interviews, the body of which are now recognized as an influential contribution in the field of mail art. He interviewed Fluxus and Mail-Art personalities by using all the communication-forms that were available...

 which have been published as booklets and online. The interviews have a new concept where the question is sent in a specific communicationform and the interviewed person chooses his own way to get the answer back. This way the factor time is involved in each specific interview. Samples of interviewed persons are: Ray Johnson
Ray Johnson
Raymond Edward Johnson , known primarily as a collagist and correspondence artist, was a seminal figure in the history of Neo-Dada and early Pop art...

, Dick Higgins
Dick Higgins
Dick Higgins was a composer, poet, printer, and early Fluxus artist. Higgins was born in Cambridge, England, but raised in the United States in various parts of New England, including Worcester, Massachusetts, Putney, Vermont, and Concord, New Hampshire.Like other Fluxus artists, Higgins studied...

, Ken Friedman
Ken Friedman
Ken Friedman, is a seminal figure in Fluxus, an international laboratory for experimental art, architecture, design, literature, and music. He had his first solo exhibition in New York in 1966. He has also been involved with mail art, and he has written extensively about Fluxus and Intermedia...

, Anna Banana, Mark Bloch
Mark Bloch
Mark Bloch , also known as Pan, P.A.N., Panman, Panpost and the Post Art Network, is an American multi-media artist from Cleveland, Ohio, United States. Since 1982 he has lived in New York City...

, Patricia Tavenner, Michael Leigh, Alison Knowles
Alison Knowles
Alison Knowles in New York City is an American visual artist known for her soundworks, installations, performances, and publications. Knowles was very active in the Fluxus movement, and continues to create work inspired by her Fluxus experience....

 and Guy Bleus
Guy Bleus
Guy Bleus is an artist associated with the mail art movement and performance art.His work covers different areas, including administration , postal and olfactory communication....

.

In 2003 Litsa Spathi
Litsa Spathi
Litsa Spathi is a Greek painter, performer and Fluxus artist, currently living in Heidelberg, Germany and Breda, Netherlands. She makes collages, objectbooks, fluxus poetry and large acrylic paintings. She used to be active in mail art as well. Her paintings belong to the category fantastic realism...

 founded together with Ruud Janssen the Fluxus Heidelberg Center
Fluxus Heidelberg Center
Fluxus Heidelberg Center was founded by Litsa Spathi and Ruud Janssen. Under the name Fluxus Heidelberg, the artist duo are creating performance art and documenting everything on their site and with publications...

 for which they are building up a collection of Fluxus material and where they also publish their own works.

Janssen was selected to publish an essay as one of eleven contemporary "New Fluxus" artists who are seen to 'inhabit the site of Fluxus, developing and interpreting the Fluxus tradition in a new way.' in a special double issue of the journal Visible Language
Visible Language
Visible Language is an American journal presenting research and experimentation on the properties of writing systems, particularly typography...

on Fluxus. The double issue was developed by Owen Smith
Owen Smith
Owen Smith is a British Labour Party politician, who has been the Member of Parliament for Pontypridd since 2010, replacing the previous Labour MP Kim Howells, who decided to step down...

 and Ken Friedman
Ken Friedman
Ken Friedman, is a seminal figure in Fluxus, an international laboratory for experimental art, architecture, design, literature, and music. He had his first solo exhibition in New York in 1966. He has also been involved with mail art, and he has written extensively about Fluxus and Intermedia...

and published through the Rhode Island School of Design The other artists included as representing New Fluxus artists: Alan Bowman, Bibiana Padilla Maltos, David-Baptiste Chirot, David Cologiovani, Eryk Salvaggio, Cecil Touchon, mIEKAL aND, MTAA, Litsa Spathi, Sol Nte, and Walter Cianciusi.

External links

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