The Postcode Connection

This is a visual essay which draws material from a 1979 film directed by Ronald Dunkley for the Post Office. Selected stills from the film and transcribed excerpts from the narration are interwoven with excerpts from a forthcoming book on the history of the British and Irish postcode.

This book takes an experimental approach to page numbering which each signature being numbered separately, hence the H to I page range.

Dear reader, dearest reader, our reader, dear friend, dearest dear. This eighth instalment of BFTK is on letters and letters. It takes the double meaning of this word as its point of dispatch, inviting recipients to think through and respond to — directly and indirectly — ideas around correspondence, addressing and alphabets. What it means to be in correspondence with somebody, the initiation and continuation of this communicative exchange and what happens when it is severed or lost. How to write directly towards a you, to you; to a particular reader, object, locale. The volume is littered with letters. There are letters about letters, letters to letters, letters that crease, fold, tear and rip, letters that are sent and lost, found and read. There are letters that pile up, their combinations arranged and rearranged to form comprehensive linguistic logics, and there are letters that are simply letters. Contributions sit in eight-page signatures, of which there are twenty-six in total. Of the eight hundred bound copies, twenty-six are left unbound, returned to discrete correspondence, loose abécédaire units for exchange — letters to be leafed through and addressed once more.