We could not help but to think about the format of an "open letter”

It has always been a common form of collaborative protest to name or address critical or inappropriate content, mis_representation, exclusion, institutional violence or a person (etc.).
Next to its public appearance, there are also a lot of private mechanisms behind an open letter. What does the private look like, like as in behind the demography of an open letter? What happens to one’s voice when it is submitted, lended, translated through? What happens while submitting, lending, translating? Something within this medium is inherently and extremely private – one voice being present and represented through a multiplication of singular voices, in polyphony. We feel the importance of voice and its sound as our bodies are at distance.
An open letter as an ongoing selection of questions and terms to be read out loud, from a song, a voice exercise, a poem, a sound-noise interventions, essays, intimate diaries, social studies, a spontaneous screaming attack, a melancholic aria, operesque expressions, or a suitable sound component to accompany the utterance of silence; anything can happen to formulate the letter.
We are not interested in using the format open letter to address something that is an immediate political issue. We would like to take a step back and deal with the voice itself and when something is voiced, during the voicing and what is being voiced, and how : the formulation of the voice in the moment of casting a vote – how can this be visualized, the moment where the signature is set, the moment of casting and its transmission digressing into other spaces, talking around the edges of the self, throwing something at you and seeing where it goes?
Attached you – yes, you will find a project description written in the form of an invitation in which we have asked friends to collaboratively perform the emergence of an open letter using their own methods, strategies and practices to react; the struggle to explain something, to be responsive. Being in the scope of thinking around open letters in a private, social, domestic unpublic moment. An actual private space turning into a socially silly public space – that is home – maneuvering in between social isolation and technological domination. Think of these sessions as layers of voices recamouflaging their way from the silent echo chambers to an actual presence. „we desire to set fire to ideas, let them burn – we have to deal with the heat, put out a blaze, or let it go.“
On this journey exploring the format of an open letter, we conducted a series of 4 meetings that position themselves against the exploitative demand of producing a per se meaningful piece of art and is strung together by a storyline navigated by the participants. We are not interested in any form of prescription on how to comment, commit or conduct, more in the virality of word and mouth, the psychology around the encounter and ways in which this conditions our own self conception. (…)

for questions/inquiries: session.4our@outlook.de

Open Letter - Session 4

for questions/inquiries: session.4our@outlook.de

open letter - session 4