1.000 poems by mail

Last October the spanish collective luzinterruptus took part in the poetry festival 2010 Poetas por km2 at La Casa de América in Madrid. With the installation 1.000 poems by mail, they wanted to illuminate the poetry and at the same time and ensure that the visitors actively enjoyed the installation.

To do this, they filled the garden with 1,000 white envelopes containing poems written especially for the occasion by the poets who participated in the festival. The lit envelopes remained hanging in the garden for 3 days, serving as intimate illumination for the poetic festival. The last night, with light still in the interior, they were offered to the public as keepsakes, or better yet, for them to address to a loved one, to whom we would send the envelope.

With this intervention they wanted to look a little towards the past, in a nostalgic way and remember times in which important words travelled in envelopes. They also wanted each person that read the poetic message, to think of an important person to whom they would like it to arrive. They collected about 100 envelopes with addresses to send to their recipients. Knowing that the letters arrived still illuminated filled was a joy.

Thanks to the poets, Ajo, Peru Saizprez, Mayra Oyuela, Javier de la Rosa, Javier Nadie, La Más Bella, Raúl Zurita, Julián Herbert, Reynaldo Jiménez, Emila Persola, Héctor Avellán, Linda Wong, Eduardo Scala, Pep Gómez, Maria Eloy-García, Josep Pedrals, Gabriel Vallecillo, for creating a work of art for us to illuminate.

luzinterruptus is an anonymous artistic group, who carries out urban interventions in public spaces. We use light as a raw material and the dark as our canvas. The three members of the team come from different disciplines: art, lighting and photography and have wanted to apply our creativity in a common action, to leave lights throughout the city so that other people put them out. They began to act on the streets of Madrid at the end of 2008 with had the simple idea of focusing people´s attention by using light on problems that we found in the city and that seem to go unnoticed to the authorities and citizens.

Time of installation: 14 hours
Damages: none
Exhibition time: 3 nights