Paris Lit Up Magazine No. 9

Who hasn’t had a “Blursday” since the outbreak of COVID-19?

This neologism, chosen by the Oxford English Dictionary as one of their defining words of 2020, describes a week when the days roll into one. Life, work and play are all confined, merging.

The result? Our lives lose their rhythm in a temporal blur wherein brilliance, anomie and melancholy seethe and jostle within the psyche like gems rattling in a treasure chest.

Just as translation inspires semantic losses and gains, the mirror of 2019 is warped. There is a fundamental change affecting not only what we see, but how we perceive our reflection and even the mirror itself. For artists, the true work begins as we translate what we knew into a pertinent present and future.

In this, the 9th edition of Paris Lit Up magazine, we had to realign ruler and compass. Had to twist our heads free of pandemic life, grey and linear, deciding instead on multicoloured tessellation: up, down and out. But, most impor- tantly, we spun a wonky web from disparate points; multi-dimensional and asymmetric.

If there is one thing that this terrible, terrifying virus has shown us, it is that life has no time for perfection. Flaws are mutations, growth. Precious.

This is what you will discover in PLU9. Imperfection, asymmetry, and humanity.