Cycling Visionaries Awards - Project Details

Gilles, the Postman

Slow courier service transporting small packages throughout Europe. Connecting people across great distances, inviting them to participate in what happens over the time and space covered on the route. Showing a different way to relate to the fast-paced and profit-oriented world, encouraging environmental consciousness and social awareness. The documented trip will be presented as an art exhibition

The world is moving at an extremely a fast pace. Speed and money seem to have the biggest influence on the way we live these days. I believe that we can experience and interact with this fast-paced and profit-oriented world differently. This project proposes an alternative way of communicating with the people in our lives. I would like to facilitate intercultural exchanges while encouraging environmental consciousness and social awareness.

This project is an international bike-based delivery service. My idea is to transport small packages from one country to another throughout Europe by bike. I would like to fill the time and distance covered on my route with encounters, stories, and a lot of sweat. As a slow courier service, there is opportunity for this to happen and I would like to make the participants a part of this journey by connecting the sender to the receiver, sharing the stories that take place on my ride, and inspiring a different way to relate to the world. Another aspect of the project that is still in development would be finding different ways to interact not only with the direct participants, but also with those who are marginalized by society, focusing specifically on homeless people to share a meal with and get a picture of their situation in the respective city in order to spread awareness to the readers of the project’s blog.

The package route will be traceable by the sender through updates posted on the blog and through personal messages I will send to participants regarding the estimated time of delivery. I will be writing about my encounters, taking photos, and collecting other mementos that are important to the atmosphere of the journey. The recipient will receive these tokens in addition to the package in an attempt to make the interaction fuller and not something that is over in an instant. The trip will also be documented on film by my brother, Abel, who is a student at the University of Theatre and Film Arts Budapest.

In order to comment on the profit-oriented nature of our world, it is important to emphasize that this is not a luxury service. Each package, regardless of distance, will cost only one euro. Transporting packages throughout Europe is doable at a low cost.
I hope to present the video footage, photographs, stories, and other collected relics as an art exhibition at the end. In addition to sharing my personal journey and the stories of those who participated, I want to inspire and challenge others. We can choose to slow down and resist letting this fast-paced world define the way we live, interact, and communicate with one another.

I will let the amount of participants and package destinations determine the length of this trip. My planned departure is in the second half of July 2013. This project is open to new ideas and collaborations.