Seven years ago, I began leaving small letters on the streets. On the front of these letters there was an illustration, and on the back a short piece of text. The letters were not addressed to a specific person, but to anyone passing by. The aim was to create a random encounter in public space.
I left these letters in different parts of cities: on benches, at the base of walls, in phone booths, in the corners of parks. Imagining that someone would find them and form a brief connection with the message inside. I never knew who found the letter, and in fact, this uncertainty was an essential part of the project.
The starting point of the project was a simple question: How can we communicate with people we don’t know in a city? Is it possible to share a thought without encountering each other on the street, without speaking, or even without seeing one another?
“Letters” became a project that developed around this question. Each letter consisted of a small visual and a short piece of text. These texts were sometimes a thought, sometimes a question, and sometimes a sentence that came to my mind while walking down the street.
This project is not a work that began and ended on a specific date. From time to time, new letters are produced and left on the streets in different cities. Each new letter carries the possibility of touching a small moment in someone else’s day.
“Once, the thought crossed our minds, and we escaped into nature. We packed our longing for the lands that made us who we are into our bags; with the tents we happily bought on sale, with the stars and the galaxies, we set out on the road. We were alone. We listened to the forest to hear the crickets — they were not there. We touched the soil — nothing was breathing. We looked up at the sky — there were no birds. We walked deeper among the trees — there was nothing to fear. They were gone. We had consumed, and we were consumed.”
