Connections: Ray Johnson On-Line

A portrait of the American artist Ray Johnson (1927-95), driving force behind the New York Correspondence School of the early 1960s. Ray Johnson was mainly known for his numerous mail art projects, involving artistic strategies like networks and collaboration. Key terms in his mail art activities were ADD TO AND RETURN, or SEND TO, inviting recipients to contribute to his work. Besides mail art, Ray Johnson worked on collages, assemblages, and performance throughout his life. In the 1940s he attended Black Mountain College in North Carolina, and in 1948 he moved to New York where he joined the American Abstract Artists group in the early 50s. Later in the same decade he was associated with the first generation of Pop Artists. When he jumped from a bridge in Sag Harbor, Long Island, in 1995, his death was considered to be something of a mystery.

The film is based on personal interpretations of Ray Johnson's artistic strategies, using the telephone and the Internet as primary sources for sound and image. The film includes statements from William Anastasi, Mark S. Bloch, Dot Capuano, Christo and Jeanne-Claude, John Giorno, Coco Gordon, Helen Harrison, Jon Hendricks, Les Levine, Kalie Seiden, Lawrence Weiner, and John Willenbecher.