“Say hi to Tom!”
- Projects
- Performatic
- Collage
- 2015
A participatory collage project on tourism, exchange, and the circulation of personal narratives through the postal system.
“Say Hi to Tom!” is a participatory art project developed through an international open call on early internet sharing platforms for analog postcards.
Participants were invited to send postcards from their cities together with personal responses to three intimate questions related to memory, movement, and attachment. In exchange, each postcard was transformed by the artist into a personalised collage work.
The project reflects on tourism, displacement, and systems of circulation, approaching the postcard simultaneously as souvenir, communication device, and carrier of subjective experience. Through this process, monumental and touristic imagery is displaced and reconfigured through personal memory and collective participation.
Rather than opposing tourism directly, the project constructs an alternative economy of exchange based on attention, storytelling, and reciprocity.
Process
The project unfolded through an open international call distributed online and through social networks.
Participants were asked to send a postcard from their city together with written responses to three questions:
Which non-practical object survived more than one move? What was your hiding place as a child? In which colour would you paint the best-known building of your city?
These fragments of autobiographical material became the basis for a series of personalised digital collages produced by the artist. The exchange operated through the postal system, creating a distributed network of participants connected through acts of sending, receiving, and transformation.
Through this process, the artist adopts the role of host and translator, transforming personal memories and urban symbols into shared visual narratives.
Forms
Collage series (77 works): personalised digital collages developed from the received postcards and responses, reconfiguring touristic imagery through memory and subjective association
Limited edition print: one selected collage reproduced and redistributed to all participants as part of the exchange process
Auction: online and physical auctions in Barcelona and London, extending the circulation of the works into alternative systems of distribution and value
Graffiti intervention: a public wall intervention in Barcelona extending the project into urban space and translating its visual language into a temporary collective mark within the city
Catalog: a printed publication documenting the project and its circulation You can consult the catalog here
Online platforms and archives: a distributed digital system documenting the postcards, exchanges, autobiographical fragments, and transformations generated through the project across different platforms and temporalities
Visit the projects website of the project. Consult the postcard archive Read the process diary Social media extensions: Facebook and former Twitter (SayHiToTom)
Context
The project was conceived as a response to mass tourism and the increasing transformation of cities into spaces of symbolic consumption.
It was presented through online circulation, physical auctions, and collaborative exchanges between participants from multiple cities worldwide.
Credits
Concept and direction: Christina Schultz
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