From an early age, wandering children learn the act of carrying a journal. The diaries themselves tell a story, bruised and creased at the journey’s end; the scent of new visions and reformed ideas soaking their pages.
Travel: A distance crossed, a state altered through time.
At the heart of all ancient, ritualistic artistic, performance and storytelling traditions is this ‘Trans-identity’: all life is transient and constantly transforming until a feeling of transcendence is achieved.
Our traveling art issue tells stories on art that encounters these exterior and interior forms of travel, on art that has traveled across borders or boundaries, that speaks to maps and geography through writing that captures the rhythm, directly or indirectly, of movement.
Simone Dinshaw writes on Nikhil Chopra's wandering personas, Rattanmol Singh Johal on Monica Bhasin's video, 'Temporary Loss of Consciousness' and the strife that partition brings with it. I've written a private story of love across distance, evoked through the music of a young Jazz trio called Drift, and finally, Shaheen Ahmed tells a story of the travel of signs and signages, particularly in cinema, and their connotations over history.
Preceding a summer of travels, we hope this issue is in itself a vehicle to somewhere else.
Wishing you a slow read, on a train, plane or just beside a window where you are with yourself and looking out, can travel anywhere.
Himali.
Editor's Note.
Every sunbeam, every strain of music, every sapling and starfish is ultimately the regeneration of a previous something, a collection of somethings, taking on new shape. At the most indivisible level we can comprehend, all life is nothing more than atoms and molecules dancing their way through various forms. And if everything comes from something, it stands to reason that everything must go to something as well.
Read More
Illusion: Seeing Beyond Seeing
Meaning: In Search of Significance.
Melody: A Different Tune
Rhythm: Ordering Time