Gentle stranger, I hope this email finds you well is a collection of letters, written by artists around the world. Each artist explores care in some aspect of their work, and each letter is written in response to the previous one. These letters, which may take the form of (creative) writing, sound or visual essays, will be published weekly, from June 1st onwards. With these letters, we invite you to think with us about new ways of thinking about and through care, in these changing times.

Hi - how are you?

I have been thinking about the word care. I want to carefully unfurl this word, and its manifold potentials, as a means of envisioning ways of being together in the world we are watching change.

Care is often a word that is followed by prepositions: for, of, to, by. Usually, care implies more than one being. Even with the notion of self-care (a politicised notion we might like to discuss?) there is a direction; you can give back or pay forward to yourself. A past and a present you, or a present and a future you. This conversation will be about care, and what it means to care, act with care, take care or care for.

Here are some angles from which I've been thinking about care that you might like to take further: care as a practice, as an action (for others or oneself), as an economy (often undervalued and currently very strained) and as an ecology (an interconnected mess).

This is to be the first in a slowly unfurling series of artist letters, each written to a different gentle stranger, with all the care we can muster. Each letter, a gesture that contains and extends some form of care, will be published weekly on this website (of the gentle Künstler, Künstlerin, who organise physical and virtual spaces in which there is no fear of failure and all art is treated softly.)

Gentle stranger, I hope this email finds you well is the subject line of my email to you. I don't know about you, but I'm tired of being told that these times are strange and uncertain. I'd like to touch the contours of these feelings a little more closely, hold onto a thread and try and untangle some of the ways we think about care and care for each other. This email, a brief reflection on care within my practice, can become a relation between us. I toss you a string, as it were; a string of thoughts. What are you thinking in response or reaction or deflection of my thoughts on care? How does your practice explore care or what do you think about care right now? What is caring? What do you care about?

You string some thoughts together, meander in words to circumscribe, pin or nurture your feelings about care. And then, you pass it on. A long, careful string of emails, passed on from artist to artist, exploring what care is, how we care, and what ways care can change our now.

I'm looking forward to this unfolding exchange,

Sophie Mak-Schram

Many thanks to Manon Beury, Tudor Etchells, Emily Medd, James Medd and Melanie Healy, Rapolas Rucinskas and all those who preferred to remain anonymous, whose contributions helped make this project possible.

Click here for Kelly Lloyd’s letter, the first of the chain.