Since I was very young, until my early thirties, I had serious problems in opening and reading any letters I received. Letters would stay on my table for weeks before I found the courage to open them, and during this time my sense of guilt would grow and grow. Most of the time, when I finally opened the letters, it was too late to answer them and my sense of guilt was worse than ever. I kept every single letter, from the first notes received from my mother, in I965, up to the time I left Belgrade for ever in I979. I decided to chronologically write down the first sentence from all of these letters, without noting the name of the senders. When finished, I was astonished to see how it was possible to trace all my life just by reading the text created by all these first lines. Later I heard that Marcel Duchamp, on receiving a letter, opened, answered, and immediately burnt the letter he’d received. Jean Tinguely never opened or answered any letter, and every christmas he made a ritual of burning unopened envelopes, which sometimes included important information and even checks. Marina Abramovic, 100 Pisania/100 Letters
As I set off to spend five months traveling in South Asia, faced with a million unknowns, I resolved to attempt to write a letter for every day of my journey. By the end of my trip, I wrote nearly 100 letters to nearly 30 people. I recently revisited these letters, which, with only a few exceptions (and a couple dozen postcards), I photocopied before mailing. Inspired by my recollection of Abramovic's book, I transcribed the first sentence of every letter into one document, tracing the arc of my journey. KS, 2010
Since I was very young, until my early thirties, I had serious problems in opening and reading any letters I received. Letters would stay on my table for weeks before I found the courage to open them, and during this time my sense of guilt would grow and grow. Most of the time, when I finally opened the letters, it was too late to answer them and my sense of guilt was worse than ever. I kept every single letter, from the first notes received from my mother, in I965, up to the time I left Belgrade for ever in I979. I decided to chronologically write down the first sentence from all of these letters, without noting the name of the senders. When finished, I was astonished to see how it was possible to trace all my life just by reading the text created by all these first lines. Later I heard that Marcel Duchamp, on receiving a letter, opened, answered, and immediately burnt the letter he’d received. Jean Tinguely never opened or answered any letter, and every christmas he made a ritual of burning unopened envelopes, which sometimes included important information and even checks. Marina Abramovic, 100 Pisania/100 Letters
As I set off to spend five months traveling in South Asia, faced with a million unknowns, I resolved to attempt to write a letter for every day of my journey. By the end of my trip, I wrote nearly 100 letters to nearly 30 people. I recently revisited these letters, which, with only a few exceptions (and a couple dozen postcards), I photocopied before mailing. Inspired by my recollection of Abramovic's book, I transcribed the first sentence of every letter into one document, tracing the arc of my journey. KS, 2010
