#roberto altmann

Letter, or: objects that let

Writing Law and Literature

My personal interest in letters is conditioned by something I owe. I owe Hania Siebenpfeiffer an apology for a failure on a text for a manual. I owe Roberto Ohrt an apology for being tardy concerning the book on Aby Warburg. I failed to write a text, that i promised to Hania Siebenpfeiffer - and as this failure is part of a polarity, that i don't want to be privatized but that i have to respect as concerning me. The writing about such an awfull owe with its awesome attraction is itself falting and halting. It is resting, it is a rest.

I promised her to write about Bildlichkeit in a Handbook on Law and Literature. I failed by drowning in the material - too late, much too late i realized, that i am still unable to measure and administer the time it takes to write a manual about something, that always stays too much, too soon. I failed in contracting and distracting. There is nothing to romanticise, i brought Hania into difficulties. I do not coquet: i don't know, how to appear in her presence. I would love to cite Thomas Melle but that does not excue anything, it just serves some oft the elements of excuses: references. If you ask a polar explorer how he is doing, the answer is only partially reliable.

Apeiros was a short-run periodical that was published in Paris from 1971-1973 by Roberto Altmann, an artist who had ties with the Lettrisme movement.

It featured writings and artwork from Altmann, Michel Jaffrennou, and an early segment of Tom Philipps' A Humument. 

An issue of the Cuban publication Signos from 1970, which features Roberto Altmann's sequence Zr + 4HC1 - ZrC14 + 2H2U + 3F2 - UF6.

In the 1960s Roberto Altmann was affiliated with the Lettrisme group, which was established as an avant-garde movement in Paris after World War 2 by Isidore Isou.