To rewrite your mistakes, at least on paper, has become the easiest thing to do today. At the press of a button, the patiently blinking line gobbles up your words, thoughts, ideas, waiting for the next set of letters to take its place. We live in a world where ‘error’ is not a pause, but something that ceases to exist, something erased.
This issue, we look at the changing meaning of ‘Error’ and what it entails to straddle that line between unrecognisable existence and recognisable disappearance. We look at artists who are pushing boundaries deliberately with a stoic, non-conformist vision to bring an unexpected experience to the fore: from Pushpamala N’s transformative performance to photographer Alexandre Dupeyron’s abstracted realities to Greta Gerwig’s take on one of literature’s most wonderfully flawed female protagonists to Assamese film-maker Bhaskar Hazarika’s dark rendition of a love story to Krantikaris from the Red Light district effectively correcting our preconceived notions – every aspect of this issue redefined the norm with creative dynamism.
For the cover, we worked with acclaimed artist Baiju Parthan, who has added another layer to the theme with his concept of ‘Engineered Fruit’ – a signature motif or metaphor that speaks of our compulsion to engineer consumables that reflect our idea of perfection. ‘The cover image harks back to the 8-bit aesthetic of computer graphics of an 80s console and arcade video games… As we have become accustomed to seeing the world rendered in HDR on high definition screens, the engineered fruit fabricated following the 8-bit aesthetic could come across as a glaring manifestation of error. The tiled background of steps ascending and descending is a reference to the moral dilemma presented by the innumerable choices we face while navigating a world that is technologically mediated.’
With the current global crisis gripping the world, Arts Illustrated will be unable to print a physical copy of the April-May 2020 edition. We, are, however, digitally ‘out on stands’. Buy your e-copy here.
