Aram Bartholl – Blog

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POST HACK or How To Send A Letter For Free

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POST HACK or How To Send A Letter For Free:

A letter is a message written with a pen on a piece of paper (dead tree) which gets delivered in its physical original form[!!] to the recipients physical home address (house in a city i.e.). Wow, pretty cool concept, no?

  1. Materials: Paper (blank paper is ususally almost impossible to find but if you’re lucky there might be some sheets left in a printer near by), Pen (just ask your friend or cubical neighbor for a pen to borrow. I recommend to keep it after writing the letter, you might need it again later…)
  2. Write a letter (ask your friend for a FB like or something…) and fold the paper to an envelope (see video)
  3. Adress!: Now the important part! On the envelope swapp the names of sender and recipient!  put the real recipient in the field of the sender and make up a non existing address for the official recipient field.
  4. NO STAMP!!  Send it off and wait for the letter  to ‘return’ to the ‘sender’.

How does it work? The postal service will try to deliver the letter to the recipients home. Due to wrong address it will  fail and the letter will ‘go back’ to ‘the sender’ which is the real recipient. In my first try below I just swapped sender and receiver which led to a visit at the post office in Berlin where I had to reject my own letter to make it ‘go back’ to ‘the sender’ in Berlin.

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On Tuesday October 20th after class I posted the letter at a letter box (funny metal container in public, different colors depending on the country you re in) in Kassel

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Since I put my real address as recipient the Deutsche Post did send me a note (another piece of paper!)  to my Berlin address to let me know they have a letter for me. They also announced it’s gonna cost extra money because the sender was so stupid to put no stamp.

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So I went to the Post office on Torstrasse in Berlin and told the clerk that I don t know the sender and that I m not gonna pay 62 cents + 51 cents fine for this strange piece of paper. No problem she said and filed it away…

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Finally!! Yesterday on Sunday (prolly on Saturday, five days later) the letter arrived at Constants place in Berlin. Thanks for the tweet! :) https://twitter.com/constantdull/status/657978567381397504  Love it! What a beautiful envelope with all these extra notes and stamps on it.

 

Written by Aram

October 27th, 2015 at 12:04 am

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