Tomi Hilsee

artistic research - community - design - education - collaboration

Tomi is an artist, architect and builder whose approach to making and design, at both times experimental and pragmatic, is to cram as much love into a situation as possible. Interested in the fluctuating relationships that make up our possibility to build things together, they stress a shift onto how we build rather than what we build. A view of architecture as a choreography of bodies, materials, responsibilities, politics and affections. Currently they are exploring choreography as an architectural methodology, and the overlap between scoring notations in dance composition and that of architectural drawings; a shift away from outcome and towards movement, process and duration. If the architectural plan says where to end up, the score says how to get there.

  • Portfolio
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    • Tower of Love - a collectively improvised structure under the Rotterdam Airport. Slowly built through ongoing discussions with friends as a form of becoming closer to each other and the things we cared about, and building them. A graduation project at TU Delft.
    Doe-Het-Zelf Werkplaats - recently leading a volunteer run, free-to-use workshop for learning how to repair one's own bicycle. A space for anti-judgemental knowledge exchange, friendship building, and creativity through failure and accessibility.
    Feminist Meetings Hack Library - facilitated making of a roving and collapsable zine library screen with the Feminist Hackers cell within Varia.
    Fictional Dispatch Desk - a temporary office for collection and distribution of artist and activist publications, notes, gifts, complaints and more. Intermittently circulated via a bike messenger network to addresses visitors signed up. -with Community Portal at b.a.k. Utrecht
    Taal Bus - in collaboration with ook_huis (reinaart vanhoe) at Documenta15, an ambulance converted into a space for hanging out, distributing self-made publications and discussions.
    Building and Learning Together - as part of the construction of the community repair space, Doe-Het-Zelf Werkplaats, I organized weekends of mutual learning workshops to collectively build the space together.