About us

Letterra.org is an intellectual project: its basic instrument is the text, its basic issue is the understanding of the “contemporary”.  The task of the project is to turn the regime of the text’s reading from a mere “looking through” into a more working mode. Texts have to matter. Each text being emerged into the environment of the Letterra.org project is a separate event in itself. An occasion to build connections, partnerships, interactions. Text is but a criteria of approach, a plank for thought, a reference point  that opens up a whole field for work and understanding. Letterra.org initiates possible events within that field – text translates into the visual artistic signs, it translates into other texts in response, it translates into actions, performances, it translates into a dialogue between those who could be its own characters, or experts in the same field, it translates into the interview with the author… Text is but an idea, a diapason that opposes the landscapes of depression and apathy and a consequent political manipulation.

One of the basic resources that project seeks to display and promote is the “living archive” of the international edition “Lettre International” (Paris, Berlin-Budapest-Bukarest-Kobenhavn-Madrid-Roma), its German edition. First and foremost. Twenty years of work, best authors from all over the world. The other resource is those Russian authors of diverse competence and profession, and those analytical, historical, journalistic, reporting, artistic texts of their’s that tend to combine precision and originality of vision. The project is the common platform. It aims at strengthening its readers, of broadening the scope of their own examination of the world and the powers of their observation. It seeks not only to find the texts but also to create the texts together with the authors within the framework of the project.

The “observation” of the world suggested by the project is sorted into five Dossiers. “Post/Soviet” speaks for itself – it is the very epoch of our habitation. The “Art of reportage” is dedicated to the experience of witnessing and experiencing the events of the globalized world, as well as its outskirts, environs and ghettoes. “Off-university” is the Dossier where the contemporary issues are viewed in the light of the most important classical texts of philosophy and theoretical thought. The “Gout de vie” selects the texts that are linked to most powerful individual experiences whether of wander or of horror. “The Slowar: Dictionary of War” looks into the universally valid personal testimony of experiencing and overcoming of that which is in itself the very eraser of all personal and universally valid, i.e. of War.

A dossier creates the context for the reading of the text. And the text gives and determines the frame of its Dossier. Text matters.

NB. Along the presentation of the texts on-line the project Letters.org develops and supports a whole range of special projects (see: Off-University. Slowar: Dictionary of War (Moscow), Letters from Moscow, Cultural chronicles).

 1.    For more than twenty years of its functioning  Lettre International (Berlin) manages to sustain itself as a platform that supports and develops the culture of “contemporary sane intelligentsia”, and to enrich the German cultural area with the quality statements of international authors, their positions and views on actual events of the modern day in their historical and personal importance.

2.    Because the quality texts as a rule give clues to a while range of different problems, their sorting into a dossier is never final and determinate. It is just a recommendation as to the productive frame of reading. It is our zone of “commentary” our appeal to the reader.