The Arcadian shepherds
The Arcadian shepherds by Nicola Poussin

Don’t we all seek a fairytale? A story that starts in the future, about an ideal, happy world. A natural paradise within innocent white pages of a story. An Arcadia.

The above painting has an inscription on the tomb “Et in Arcadia ego” (I am also in Arcadia). Poussin meant this to create an ironic contrast between the idyllic happiness of Arcadia against the morbid shadow of death. The inscription has brought up a few conspiracies, one that it is an anagram of “I conceal the secrets of god”, alluding to the resting place of jesus. A secret of a secret, hidden in the inscription of an idyllic paradise. How confusing!

Arcadia itself is described as

“a land of outstanding natural beauty unspoiled by human civilisation, free of war and pain and offering boundless pleasures both spiritual and physical… “Arcadia” does not carry the connotation of a human-designed civilization; Arcadia is presented as the spontaneous result of life lived naturally, uncorrupted by civilization.”
(wikipedia)

It is said that to try to protect paradise is to, eventually, destroy it. And so I find myself in an “arcadia”, where Poussin’s painting is reconstructed in 3d, through the irony of human heirarchy, the secrecy of security and the anagrams in each individual’s identity card. Here the inscription is not carved under the shadow of death, but the shadow of corporate consumerism.

But thats just in these sheperd’s eyes.