Peggy PehlBriefkasten Outlet

How long has it been since I’ve sent a handwritten letter to a person?

A long time actually. I often notice how writing is difficult for me without an input device and I usually fail (small notes for someone are a challenge, yet). My formulations with a pen on a sheet of paper are simply not good and they require a lot of work and patience. It’s different with a friend of mine, she writes letters regularly and has been practicing. She is not an old lady, however, she mostly doesn’t get a reply back because people are lazy and/or have simply forgotten how to do it, like me. Instead, she will receive an email or a short message with a thank you. About 100 years back, it was different, letters that were sent were strong and dynamic.

They were written every day, just look back at the correspondences between Schiller and Goethe, it was like playing tennis. Until a given moment, telephone appeared and decades later the advertising slogan of the Deutschen Post - Schreib mal wieder!* popped up. Sometimes, between Facebook and Instagram, I read the novel by Stefan Zweig «Letter of an unknown woman». OMG, this letter, in this story, is particularly long and extraordinary! And then there’s my personal story with Deutsche Post. I used to deal a lot with letters and stuff when I trained as a postal worker for two years. Yes, that was a long time before my fancy art studies. Logically some questions come. These questions would need to be clarified. Is the good old letter the most credible form of all communication opportunities? And how much can I put in a letter without the recipient falling off the chair?

This is how I deal with this exhibition at She BAM!, in my usual procedures of mixing objects through the installation in a very pictorial and narrative representation.