I remember going with my dad to computer booths in the shopping centre when I was little. He would be sending emails or using the telephone booth while I was playing computer games next to him (the only function I knew a computer had). There was a limited time and place to communicate digitally with others the rest of the time was dedicated to physical contact. Not because we had chosen to but because there was to some degree, an understanding of technology’s process: it took work to connect with people in different places, it took money too and space. The booths were large, the computers were chunky and the telephones heavy, to use them was an activity in itself.

Nowadays, technology has become a member of my body. I don’t see it as heavy, time consuming, or as an expensive activity. It’s already part of me, a cognitive function. It allows me to be constantly in touch with other people: I can be sending messages, sharing personal information or receiving by simply looking at pictures and videos on social media, whenever I want, from wherever I am. It also doesn’t necessarily matter if the other person is available at the present time when I’m sharing something online. Every time I post a picture or write a message I can see who saw it and when, there’s no need for a reply for me to know if someone’s on the other side. The implication of the other is constantly there, even if there’s no actual exchange. Does one actually need others for a conversation today or is it enough to know they’re there?

Recently, my mother brought a few objects she got from my grandparents’ place after they passed away; Objects she chose carefully, which brought her special memories and reflected my grandparents presence in some way. I was surprised by some of her choices at the time, they were objects like old diaries, or wrist watches that had stopped working long ago, chunky graduation rings... One of those items was a yellow and coverless recipe book from my great grandmother. While I was looking through it one day, I found many well kept ‘souvenirs’ in between the pages: a few cutout recipes from newspapers and flour packagings, a religious card and a letter from 1953, from my great great grandmother to her daughter in law wishing her a merry Christmas.

The letter was a set of four pages that were now so fragile, creased and faded, but it still showed a fountain pen text with a glamorous hand writing.
Finding it felt almost like finding an archeological artefact. I carefully handed its corners, tried to translate its faded message, and later scanned it, too afraid it would just crumble into pieces.

It wasn’t necessarily a refined message, but they were words from someone I had only heard about and had never met. By reading her words and observing her handwriting I imagined her sitting down and writing it, started speculating how she acted, thought and spoke. A simple piece of paper was evoking this person’s presence, and as I observed the traces of book worms, its yellowness and oil stains, it became an object located in a time and a place. Showing its 65 years of life inside a recipe book, living through and witnessing all the activity in my grandmother’s kitchen.

What intrigued me the most was the letter’s structure: its beginning showed a symmetrical text and a perfectionist layout, while its ending was a squeezed up text that barely fitted the sheet. I could see how the writer got excited with her story, with the news she was telling. I can understand how her thought progressed throughout the letter, how she made connections, and suddenly, new ideas came to mind, making her run out of space.

Just like the computer and telephone booths took space, writing a letter did too. I don’t think about space or limits when I’m writing on a smartphone or computer today. To me it’s endless space, or at least that’s the impression it gives me. I can write as much as I want, I can change my ideas as much as I feel like, but I end up losing track of my thoughts, easily forgetting where they started and how they developed.

I wouldn’t know what it is to depend on letters to communicate with others, for me it’s a choice to do it today, it’s an entertaining activity. Living in a different city made me want to write to my friends back home, to send them something physical from where I am that they could relate to and could keep with them. By doing that, I realised how writing a letter requires so many decisions and how much of it is about the receiver. Anything that is added to it will have an impact and a meaning on the one reading it. It’ll show how much effort I put into it, or how much I don’t, it’ll cause certain emotions... I’m in control of its entire content and I’m thinking about the other’s physical presence when opening the envelope.

At the same time, I talk to my friends online everyday and they probably already have an idea of what I’m doing from the pictures I post. How can I make the letter’s content relevant when all the information is already out there? It requires time to think and select what I want to share and why I want them to receive that message. While I’m making these choices as I’m writing, my thought is in constant mutation and I’m not sure of where it’s headed, there’s always some unpredictability. It feels like a game.

A few days later after posting the letter, I impatiently ask my friends if they received it.
They have and now I impatiently wait for their response, as the game is not completed without it.


Commissioned by and published on Canal 180 as part of ‘Out of office’, August 2020