Translated by Sofia Bohórquez

Today, I am going to tell you a story that is not mine. It was not told in the past, but in the future. A story that came to me in a bottle with the sea waves on a July sunset when I was walking along the seashore.  

I thought it was important to share it, and you can share it with your acquaintances. The letter starts like this:

I just made an extraordinary trip through the meandering currents of time. I am in a land far from everything that is familiar to me. A thousand light years away in a city that is waiting for my birth. The air feels fresh, not like the wall cavities, where we have to pay per hour to breathe pure air from the greenhouses in captivity.

I felt an environment full of ancestral palpitation, and the beating of the hands of my wristwatch resound as an echo in the atemporality of the present. I do not recognize where I am exactly, but it looks like I am in a design workshop that has been frozen in time. Almost all the things that are here are hand tools, including some antique electric treadle sewing machines.

As I walk in amazement through the corridors, a group of people enter the room silently, somewhat perplexed to see me there. They look at me as if I were an entity from another planet. I guess my garments give me away. They say nothing. As an ice-breaker, I tell them that I am just a weaver of stories and I come from a place where artificial intelligence has taken over our world. From a time in which machines, with their metallic coldness, threatened to oust the pure essence of the handmade design, and I came to regaining hope for a wonderful future hidden in the recesses of time.

Absorbed and without quite understanding what I try to tell them, they envelop me with their glances, a sign that they want to listen to me. One of them breaks the silence and tells me how the world and the young generations have turned completely to the digital world and how, with the time, their labor has less and less importance.

So, involved in this aura of a past and future era simultaneously, the workshop becomes my scenario. The dim light of the place lights up the wrinkles of time accumulated on the faces of those artisans that save a lot of knowledge, and in the distance, I see one of those old looms that we are looking for rescue in the time and place where I am from. I come closer to it, and I run my hands through its structure, feeling the roughness of the wood on my fingers.

I sit on it, and my hands begin to wander through the warp threads, as if something in me recognized them by heart to start to weave the story I am about to narrate.

“In the future, I begin, although machines are the essence itself of efficiency, they have not been able to copy the subtleness of a stitch made with human devotion. Digital creations can be more precise, but they lack the soul only human hands can infuse. And it is here, in this soulful workshop, where lives the key to preserving the design’s authenticity.”

As I go on with my story, the artisans only can look at me incredulous and start to draw with their hands in the air old patterns and recreate stitches as a resistance act, a vow of silence against the mechanical uniformity.

I take a moment and lay my hands on the loom, feeling the connection with the earth. I continue my story about the digital landscape, where artificial intelligence multiplies like a swarm of code fireflies. But I assure them that in that universe that is yet to come, human hands are the architects of the singularity, the guardians of a legacy that refuses to disappear.

As I continue with my story, the workshop is coming to life. Each thread weave resonates with each loop. The needles, as wands, are tracing a song of resistance in the air, and the artisans, with the promise revealed, start to form a circle and sing the melody of their ancestors to the rhythm of their hearts.

Before going back to the future, I want to leave this note for whoever finds it to share it and keep this promise alive. I leave with the certainty of having set the seed of a heritage in motion. The reality that I glimpse upon my return is that of a panorama where handmade design not only survives, but blossoms. The workshops, as small sanctuaries, will become authentic refuges in a digitally saturated world. The mission has been a success. 

This is a real story, I cannot tell who sent it, but it has come to me, and I am on a mission to share it to keep this promise alive and not let this legacy be lost.

Now, I invite you to enter that future. Imagine a scenario where every workshop, every stitch, is a reminder of creativity and human richness. A future where the artificial intelligence coexists in harmony with the hands that shape the dreams.

Imagine a workshop full of colors, textures, and patterns, where machines are assistants, but the human hands are the directors of the creative symphony. Each piece that is created is unique, impregnated with the history of its manufacturing and carrying with it the weight of time and the promise of the future.

Remember that reality is molded by each choice we make in the present. The time workshop is still a place where past and future coincide, and each stitch we weave is a unique and necessary contribution. Now that this promise has been shared with you for you to keep it circulating. 

Karolina Grabowska’s photo: 

https://www.pexels.com/es-es/foto/manos-creativo-disenador-mesa-4219654/

Agung Pandit Wiguna’s photo:   

https://www.pexels.com/es-es/foto/persona-con-palo-amarillo-y-marron-3585856/

Mehmet Turgut Kirkgoz’s photo: 

https://www.pexels.com/es-es/foto/hombre-trabajando-en-pie-preparando-12764366/