“To all who ever lived here”, city sculpture, 2009

Concrete column 0.6×0.6 m, 5m tall, metal mailbox, inscription on Greek, Hebrew, Armenian, Bolgarian and Turkish “to all who ever lived here”, Thessaloniki, City port

“In a recent performance, the third part of a project Sokol made in Thessaloniki To All Who Ever Lived Here, 2009, he wrote a letter, made 100 copies of it and put each into an envelope. On each envelope he wrote ‘To all who ever lived here’ and then walked through the city posting them in the city mailboxes. These ‘dead’ letters can neither be sent nor received. They cannot be returned to sender; they are waiting in time and space. Sokol’s focus has shifted from one side of the meaningful pause that the post and letters create for him, to the other; here, as he tries to send his own message his purpose is clear but his method deliberately flawed. His letters, as distinct from those he has salvaged, are posted but they are sent out to the past, to history, to memory, to an idea not a reality. No-one can reply because no-one can receive these letters except in a spirit that is part of the different perception of time and space that Sokol’s idea embraces. The project is declaimed and surmounted by a five metre high concrete column at the top of which is fixed an old rusty mailbox. On the front of the column is fixed a plaque on which is written ‘To all whoever lived here’ in the languages of the five communities who have lived in Thessaloniki from ancient times until today, Greek, Jewish, Turkish, Bulgarian and Armenian. Elsewhere in the city are three exact copies of the standard city mailboxes made by Sokol from cast iron. However they are hermetically sealed, so nothing can be posted into them. The mailboxes are inert, they lack the vitality, energy and intent that letters normally give them. Rather than the bearers of information they are tombstones, standing as lifeless reminders of failure. A mailbox affixed to a tower five meters above the ground can never act as a receptacle for the post, except, as Sokol has remarked, that of the angels. It resembles a memorial but what loss is it acknowledging and who is it remembering?” ©David Thorp