300 Love Letters sent to strangers

Three Hundred Love Letters is a project by Asia Wong.

But these aren’t ordinary love letters. These letters are written to people she knows, glued to the outside of the envelope and then sent to a stranger.
CLICK HERE to see one of her love letters.

She welcomes you to her site with a handwritten note that takes you to a huge grid of different coloured squares. Wong says, “Everybody I wrote a letter to has his or her own color. Squares with the same color link to letters written to the same person.

For example, all the squares that are this color link to letters to my roommate, Happy. In addition, there is also a color code corresponding to the type of relationship I have with each of these people. For example, all the yellow squares link to strangers.”

Here’s here explanation of the project.
So I’m telling this boy, one of the boys that lots of these love letters are to, about this project.

“I’m writing three hundred love letters and sending them to strangers. “

The letters are going to be glued to the outside of the envelopes, so that the mailman, and presumably whoever the recipient lives with, will be able to see and read them. The letters aren’t to the strangers, they’re to people I know.”

The boy looks at me. We’re walking around, after work, deserted streets.

He says, “I don’t understand. Why are you doing this?”, and I answer vaguely, talking about crossing space and the kind of intimacy that I believe is lacking from our society.

And I’m left thinking: Is this project complicated or simple, idiotic or interesting?

Letters and letters and letters.

Letters about a moment in time, our paths crossing, to a cute boy that passes on the street, or an old woman feeding the pigeons.

Letters to old friends, “Remember that time…!”

Letters to lovers, letters about fucking or falling in love for real, or love that can never work.

Letters to people hurting, letters that are offers of help, fan letters.

Letters to family (the hardest), letters to the people who make my day better in a hundred small ways every time I see them.

Crush letters, of course, big crush letters.

The code:

red and pink=lovers
orange=fan letters
yellow=strangers
green=acquaintances
blue=friends
purple=crushes
indigo=family
brown=people I don’t really like
gray=anyone
black=everyone
white=me
flesh=my dream lover

HMmmm, what would I do if I received a love letter
pasted on the outside of an envelope from a stranger?
What would you HMmmm if you received something like that?

Link from: The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century .

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 26th, 2004 at 9:54:04 PM and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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One Response to “300 Love Letters sent to strangers”

Patrick Says:

June 22nd, 2005 at 8:44:02 PM
I like your idea, I wish I could be so bold. I found this site after googling “Letters to Strangers”