Prentbriefkaart aan Philip Zilcken Possibly 1913 - 1925

This is a postcard by Alphonse Stengelin, we don’t know exactly when it was made, but it was mailed in 1913. It’s the kind of thing you might find tucked in the back of a drawer, full of everyday communication, full of life. Look at the cursive writing filling the left side, it’s got this beautiful flow to it like a drawing, like someone thinking on the page. It’s easy to forget, in our digital world, that handwriting is a kind of performance. It is a way of thinking in real-time, made visible on a surface. A line can be thick or thin, fast or slow, dark or light. It can stutter, meander, even get lost, just like your thoughts. The stamp in the top right corner, only partially affixed, tells us that it was mailed in the Netherlands. I love the idea that this object travelled from one person to another, and here it is now, speaking to us across time. Like art, the postcard is an ongoing conversation. It embodies ambiguity and multiple interpretations, a space for us to bring our own thoughts and feelings.