The Postcard Project

Globalizing the Berlin Wall through 'Souvenir'-Postcards

What am I? 

I am bought, written on, sent and received, and kept for later contemplation.

I am a visual image and made on paper. I embody the intention of the sender and the pleasure of the receiver. I tell small stories of travel; the joy, the hardship, the movement, the ticketing, the comfort, the discomfort, the lost luggage, the lost time and the stories of cities with their own peculiar rhythm. I register the spectacle and the viewer, held in place by the click and aim of cameras, destinations with their promise of something other than the known and events that may take you out of your comfort zone, even speaking of love. I carry words: ‘I've been in Greece for only a few days (fell in love with it)’. My action is embodied in acts of communication, I reveal fragments of stories that are personal representations of places and people, and I accumulate in a range of storage containers and in displays. I become a collection, which resembles elements of narrative. I constitute a memory archive and can prevent forgetting. I can be read in different ways by the interested and the disinterested. As a tourist souvenir I am bought and sent or unsent and kept, and for advertising purposes I am free. I am both museum artefact and personal souvenir, and can be kept in the domestic and the institutional space.

What am I?

I am the postcard.

From: Prosser, R. (2011). The Postcard: The Fragment. Life Writing, 8(2), 219–225

Introduction

The main idea behind this project was to connect memorialized images of the Berlin Wall – in the form of postcards, which we either recreated from older originals or bought at various souvenir shops around the city –  with the sounds, voices, images, memories/recollections that our group of international students recorded during their first physical encounter with that physical space. What started as a simple, old-time act of sending a ‘souvenir’ postcard to a friend or family member thus became transformed and updated into a more complex multi-media assemblage. The literal (French) meaning of the word souvenir is memory or remembrance and its Oxford language definition is “a thing that is kept as a reminder of a person, place, or event.”

There is now also a significant tradition of using postcards for artistic work and expression. It is ironic that “with the advent of email and instant messaging, the idea of the postcard as the epitome of short-form communication has gained new life” (Lydecker 2011). Visual artists have increasingly incorporated postcards into their work, or created postcards as (non-commercial) artworks.

By hand-writing old timey physical postcards with the Berlin Wall on them to friends and family all over the world, reflections of our daily encounters with the wall became a shared memory in real time. Additionally, we explored ways to make these postcards multi-medial by recording messages or surround sounds from Berlin with our phones, saving those audio files online and then creating QR-codes that people can scan to hear the recordings. We then created stickers with those QR codes and put them on the postcards alongside our hand-written notes. Thus, the coded sounds travel across the Atlantic alongside the images and the written words, all the way to their final destination.

Numerous postcards were also written to family and friends in our home in our native languages, thus further globalizing our learning.

Postcards: Writing, Reflection, and Movement

Beyond their function as souvenirs, postcards became our  way of reflection throughout the trip. Writing postcards was treated as a daily practice that asked students to slow down, observe carefully, and translate embodied experiences into written words.

Each student selected and sent multiple postcards during the trip, addressing them to friends,  and family members. These postcards were written often immediately after visits to memorial sites, museums, walking tours, or moments of exploration. In this way, reflection occurred in real time rather than retrospectively, allowing impressions, emotions, and questions to stay raw.

The act of writing by hand, choosing words carefully within a very limited space, helped shape how students processed some of their encounters with the Berlin Wall and its many histories. As postcards traveled across borders, each students’ reflection traveled with them, turning individual reflection and growth into a more shared, global exchange.

Writing Prompts as Reflective Starters

To help guide this process, daily writing prompts were created as reflective starters. These prompts encouraged us to connect new historical knowledge with personal response, sensory experience, and ethical reflection. Rather than producing perfect narratives, we were encouraged to reflect on our impressions, emotions, and moments of surprise.

Postcard writing prompts included:

• What is your biggest takeaway from the Berlin Wall today?

• What surprised you most about what you learned or saw?

• If this wall could speak, what would it say?

• What object, sound, or image stood out to you today?

• What story of escape or resistance stayed with you?

• What would you want to remind your future self when things feel hopeless?

These prompts evolved over the course of the trip, moving from observational questions to deeper emotional and ethical reflection.

Multimodal Postcards and Sound Archives

The project expanded beyond written text through the use of audio recordings and using QR codes. We would record short visual notes, ambient sounds, or spoken reflections from throughout the city. These audio files were uploaded digitally into a drive folder and linked to individual postcards via QR codes, which were printed as stickers and physically attached to the cards.

As a result, each postcard became a multimedia assemblage combining image, handwriting, sound, and movement. When a recipient scans the QR codes, they access the environment and sound of Berlin. This allowed memory and place to be experienced beyond the visual, extending the postcard’s communicative reach.

Global Reach

Many postcards were written in students’ native languages and sent to recipients across multiple countries. This further emphasizes the global dimensions of the Berlin Wall and the project itself. The postcards became a way of connecting Berlin to homes, families, and communities around the world.