Today, before noon, above the Main Market in Krakow, an aeroplane appeared – an old-school biplane. It flew exceptionally low, at a height of about 100-200 metres. The heads of pedestrians, inhabitants and tourists turned in its direction. After one circle around the Market, a cloud of white pieces of paper fell out of the plane, which looked like a flock of white birds. Slowly falling to the ground, in full sunlight, the pieces of paper shimmered like pure silver. For about a quarter of an hour the plane circled over the market, throwing out more and more of the white load. They were Letters to My Brother – Grzegorz Drozd’s project. For many months, the artist contacted prisoners of penitentiaries in Poland. He invited them to participate in the activity – to write letters. And it was this unusual correspondence that was sent out so uniquely.

The artist’s concept was based on an attempt to create a special communication channel between people in prisons and people living outside their walls in a community, who are commonly defined as “free”. The impulse given by Drozd became an opportunity to pass on private, painful, sometimes even very intimate contents. The dramatically inhibited, or even unwanted due to serving a sentence, contact with family and loved ones, becomes a great tragedy for the isolated people. People completely devoted themselves to this unique show for a quarter of an hour. When the letters fell to the ground, they began to pick them up, read them, comment on them. Some thought that perhaps this was the campaign of some foundation supporting prisoners; others were touched by the intimate content of these confessions. Someone shouted, “Look, this is addressed to us!”

Among the letters, there were poems, drawings, reflections, confessions, apologies. “We are the same. We love, cry, yearn, live. We are you. Without shame, but with sorrow” – says the content of one of them. “Life is based on patience, and discouragement is cowardice. People, who say they are losing faith, never really had it” – another letter’s message. One of the many moving confessions was the statement that “life is not a gift, but a punishment with which we fight every day for survival", but also a request in the form of a poem Forgive

“I have a reason for sadness,
Great sadness
True sorrow
Real sorrow,
Anger at myself, the guilty,
I regret everything
Everything evil,
For forgiveness I ask,
I ask for a lot
Forgive me
Forgive me

– Friends – citizens”

After the plane threw out its valuable load, the show went on. Some of the letters fell onto the roof of tenement houses and only after a moment they were blown away by the wind. We can count on this happening for a few upcoming days, when we will discover new messages. Grzegorz Drozd’s project is based on dialogue between the public and private and intimate; it also situates itself on the border between what is closed (prison) and what is open (Krakow’s air space).