Handcrafting the future

Stefan Christoff is a good friend, pianist and community activist.

His work invites a reflection on the politics of fear. It also puts in music the spring streets, the spirituality of struggles and collective evenings at La Sala Rossa.

Here is the Duets for Abdelrazik album:

Photo : Võ Thiên Việt (武天越)

This is not the result of mechanized or digital printing, able to reproduce exact copies for cents.

Local artists design a silk screen. Each handstroke inks an album cover.

Silkscreen Printing from La Sala Rossa - Photo Stefan Christoff

It is then cut, folded and assembled.

The result is limited numbers of beautiful handcrafted albums.

In a way, every album is a creation with all its small imperfections.

In the same manner, Les rumeurs de la montagne rouge is a cassette wrapped in a hand stamped card-stock cover.

Photo Stefan Christoff

Why cassettes and handcrafted music albums in 2015?

I have followed the growth of Spotify and now Apple Music. These are digital empires, designed to conquer billions. The same bits optimized for an identic and quantified experience, with no breathing room.

For musicians opting in, what is the real value of each track?

For a few dollars, a customer gets access to millions of tracks. Do the mathematics. The business model of unlimited music suggests each track’s value is zero on those platforms.

A few bands will get millions of plays and painted as heroes by tech media. Many other musicians will get cents and forced on to minimal wage jobs.

The same tension is unfolding in the streets of Montreal.

Once one of the busiest, St-Denis street has now closed shops, lined back-to-back. “Closed”. “À Louer”. “Espace Commercial”. “For Sale”. Those are the signs haunting the street on its Mont-Royal intersection.

It is the same on popular Montréal streets such as St-Laurent or Prince-Arthur. Libraries, retailers, restaurants, dépanneurs, offices now gone.

Those are signs of weaknesses of the Montréal economy.

Those are the late consequences of the 2009 financial crisis, hurting now small businesses.

And those also reflect their poor foundations against the global impact of technology businesses.

Software is eating the world, they say. With its automated robots and big data, Amazon sells more than the cheapest librarian. Yelp guides you to the best restaurants and closes down the other food places. B&HPhotoVideo closes the local camera shop used to high markups, for no other reason than fancy service. ThemeForest and elance close bland web agencies. And with mega container ships and lean shipping, AliExpress is now closing Montréal gift shops.

Now, every day, I walk up to dozens of closed businesses. Many more will close, not able to demonstrate added value. More repetitive jobs will be replaced by machine and software. More bland products will be transferred to online platforms.

What will be left are the ones providing handcrafted products and services, like the creations at L’Avenue or coffee at La Distributrice. Every item unique and a tale in itself. Handcrafted by passionate artisans who really care about what they are doing, day by day.

Simply, Handcrafting is the Future.

And automated platforms operated by drones and robots will provide the rest, in your local street or online.

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