NOTCH MAGAZINE

In 1960, Yves Klein patented a new blue pigment. He mixed a matte synthetic resin into finely ground lapis lazuli—an ancient color called ultramarinus, meaning “beyond the sea.” Klein's new blue was unbounded in its depth; he declared it “dimensionless.” Sixty-four years later, Notch magazine emerged, infused with a philosophy that echoes Klein blue. 

Each entity we meet, whether human or object, holds a horizon of possibilities; it can be anyone, anything. Paul Celan, the 20th century poet, embodied this notion in praxis. To Celan, each poem holds boundless potential until we, the readers, reach out to shake its hand. In these encounters, we navigate the poem's horizon of meaning, like charting courses beyond the sea. Unique understanding is then born from the space between reader and text—a space where we learn how to welcome that which is essentially different from ourselves, to bow to it, celebrate it, love it, to form an Eros with otherness.

The Klein Blue pigment likewise welcomes us into its own expanse. Unable to be digitally replicated, it exists largely in metamorphoses. The blue’s many variations remind us to resist the human impulse to subsume the other into the same. 

Notch is thus an opening between the self and the other, between the finite and the infinite. Our pages, composed of interwoven artistic forms, serve as a gateway to these disparate yet connected worlds. We offer a handshake, an unfamiliar encounter with limitless possibilities. 

Blue washes over us. 

Now you're on the cusp.