Grzegorz Drozd’s Letters to Brother is one of the key projects at Krakow’s 2nd ArtBoom Tauron Visual Arts Festival. The artist sent a letter to penal institutes all over Poland inviting inmates to write letters – letters addressed to us, an anonymous crowd. This stimulus given by Drozd turned out to be an opportunity to communicate private, painful and sometimes very intimate contents. Contact with family is made difficult, and is sometimes unwanted due to the sentence being served, which becomes a huge tragedy for these isolated people. This unusual correspondence, which has been taking place for months as part of the Letters to Brother project, will also be sent out in an unusual way: an airplane will appear over the city centre of Krakow on Thursday afternoon (24 June, between 3 p.m. and 4 p.m.). In one moment a million spinning letters will shoot out of it. A white cloud will rise above the city and slowly fall to the ground.

This situation will disrupt the everyday spectacle of life for the city and its residents. We are accustomed to being flooded by information. Every day we come across advertisements, flyers promoting various products and services – insignificant messages, whose one aim is to evoke consumer needs in us. Grzegorz Drozd’s initiative does not promote anything, it is not a part of any advertising campaign. Letters to a brother is an opportunity to communicate an individual voice beyond prison walls. A voice which will have the chance to be heard thanks to the situation created by the artist.

On the pieces of paper thrown over Krakow you will find the letters, made in a million copies, which have been prepared by the people living in isolation. Their contents will remain unknown until the project is realised. Through one simple operation, Drozd is giving a signal and is leaving an open situation for both the senders and recipients of the messages.

The artist’s concept was based on a trial of creating a special channel of communication between the people closed in penal institutions and the people living in society outside those walls, who are often defined as “free”. The project, which has been prepared for a few months, is based on the dialogue between what is public and what is private and intimate, and is situated on the border between what is closed (a penal institute) and what is open (the airspace of Krakow). The nature of Drozd’s initiative is not accidental, the author has some personal reasons behind it. “I called the project Letters to My Brother because I, myself, have a brother whom I see once a year and with whom I am unable to establish a connection, even though I want to very much,” says Grzegorz Drozd, explaining the project’s title.

Vincent van Gogh’s letters to his brother – his friend and confidant – were really letters to himself, which he mentioned many times. The letters helped him organise his thoughts, calm down, find the motivation to carry on working, convince himself that what he was doing made sense. Some of the letters written by the inmates may be of a similar nature. Who is the addressee of this correspondence? It may be collective and anonymous, but it is often family or even Drozd himself. “I feel responsible for these people. Many of them write to me and for me. Many of these letters sound like confessions or some sort of examination of conscience. And certainly most are very sincere, even painfully sincere. One of the inmates wrote to his wife and son in the hope that they would read it; because they do not want to see him,” says the artist.

Grzegorz Drozd’s Letters to Brother project will only be shown once – this Thursday (24 June) between 3 p.m. and 4 p.m. You are invited to come!