Contributors

Michael Kearney

Long ago in New York, Mike was a sort of musician-poet of absolutely no acclaim, but he had a very good time.  After getting married, he lived in Japan, for a while; then went to Ireland to do a PhD because he wanted to make comprehensible the things that were going on in his head.  Now back in Japan, and having generated a happy family (shameless Ramones reference), he wants to enjoy thinking again.  He is very interested in non-mainstream cultural activities and prefers being on ice because it is pure and easier than walking.

Sean Smith

Sean is an artist and critical sport theorist living in Toronto. He is currently a doctoral candidate in the media and communications program at the European Graduate School and a lecturer at various universities in Canada. His doctoral research includes the Global Village Basketball project, which networks pickup basketball games simultaneously being played around the world into one aggregated meta-game (http://www.vsport.tv/gvb). sportsBabel is his weblog of research notes and other works (http://www.sportsbabel.net).

Pearlyn Quan

After 5 years in the fashion industry, it’s easy to amass a great number of people you’d like to murder.  That’s where Pearlyn found herself after moving from Singapore to London—with the personal obligation to set the score straight in black and white.  And while meting out this exquisite vengeance, she realised there were a lot more stories she wanted to tell.  She holds Betty & Veronica, Robert Crumb, David Lapham, Chester Brown, Charles Burns, Jim Woodring and Renee French personally responsible for showing her the joys of sex, violence, blood and gore; evidence of which can be found at  http://poisonpencomics.wordpress.com/

Jeane Reveendran

Jeane, also known as Jeano Jalapeno, a self-appointed nick-cum-rapper name has been writing since she procured the skills to use a pen. Ever since then she has enjoyed expressing herself in methods other than hand signals, grunting and occasional speech. Jalapeno is now pursuing a Musical Theatre degree at Lasalle, and hopes to conquer all domains of the art world, except art, unless the world suddenly decides that stick figure drawings are genius. The end- If you’d like to know more about her, don’t hesitate to stop her on the street with questions.

Kairong Ku

Kairong is a multidisciplinary creative who works primary in the areas of art direction, graphic design and photography. She has worked with a diverse range of clients, from press, media and web to electronics, medical and institutions. She is always looking for new and interesting projects to work on as well as collaborations with like-minded creatives or companies. Kairong also co-founded MutantStyle, a creative collective focusing on interesting art and design projects and a small t-shirt collection.

Check out her works at kairongku.com/mutantstyle.com

Alice Renez Tay

always on the road, in search of something that never seems to last. someone who is often too curious for everything and hardly patient for anything. her day job remains as a susser and some might call it an environmental scanner.

Jeremy Fernando

Jeremy is a scribbler who believes that thinking occurs in the gap between the reader and the text. As such, he attempts to explore various media of thinking including writing, film, music, and art. He is the author of Reflections on (T)error, Reading Blindly, and The Suicide Bomber; and her gift of death; and his work has been featured at Sidewalk Cinema (Vienna), SFX Radio (Seoul), and Operation Automaton (Singapore). He is based in both Singapore and at www.jeremyfernando.com

Jocelyn Chua

Jocelyn is a published writer and solo performer currently based in Singapore. Her work engages with aspects of devised theatre practice, including the choreography of movement with text, physical theatre and performing autobiography. She is currently a proud member of Magdalena (Singapore) Play Pen – a local women’s theatre community. For more information about her works, visit www.jocelynchua.com

Lim Lee Ching

Ching is a Lecturer at the SIM University, Singapore, where he teaches poetry. His research interests include: literary Englishes, Modernism and violence, literary aesthetics, the Canon, non-ideological cultural theories, and language and the oral tradition. He is the editor of Peter van de Kamp’s poetry collection “Scratch & Sniff” (2010).

Brendon Fernandez

Brendon is an actor by profession. He is sometimes in films but most often in theatre, where no matter how hard he works the product is always called “play”. Twice a week, too early in the morning, he goes to Republic Poly to not-teach his students. Most nights (except Tuesdays) he is a Draenei Shaman. He writes here in solidarity with his friend, Jeremy Fernando, championing alternative means of expression for Eurasians who are not radio DJs.

Suzy Wui

Suzy is an avid designer with a weakness for all things pretty. She is currently pursuing a BFA in Visual Communication at NTU School of Art, Design & Media and has recently returned from an exchange programme at Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) in US. She is into hand drawn illustrations, British humour and green tea ice cream.

Paoi Wilmer

Paoi completed her PhD at Royal Holloway, University of London in 2003 and has since worked as a full-time lecturer in the Department of Foreign Languages & Literature at National Taiwan University. Her publications include academic as well as creative writing, and in her free time she enjoys drawing and experimenting with digital art.

Julia Hölzl

Julia is a theorist based in Berlin and Vienna. After studying Political Science and Peace Studies in Austria and Spain, she turned towards philosophy and obtained her PhD from the European Graduate School (Saas-Fee/Switzerland). She is the author of “Beyond Eden [distorting symmetree]” and “Frieden in der (Post-) Moderne. Versuch einer Verwindung” (both 2007), and “Transience: A poesis, of dis/appearance” (2010).

Anu Selva

Anu is a graduate student in philosophy with a penchant for french philosophers, spanish poets, british bands, nubian princesses and thai food.

Breakbeat Theory

A pioneer in live electronica, Breakbeat Theory attempts to meld the human soul with a digital heartbeat. We create various hybridizations of live music and sampled aural textures, as representations of man and machine to channel messages of humanity, hope and despair.

Live performaces are built upon spontaneous interaction between members, creating feel changes and mood shifts through sonic chicanery. With inspiration from peers such as Lamb, Amon Tobin and Photek, Breakbeat Theory seeks to destroy preconceived musical dogmas and inspire fresh alternatives to live representations of electronic music.

Breakbeat Theory are:

BD Boey Doug KH

And we can be found at http://www.myspace.com/breakbeattheory

Su Cui

Cui obtained her PhD from the Media and Communications Department, Goldsmiths, University of London, and she now teaches at the University of Southampton. She also guest lectures at Central Saint Martins, College of Art & Design, on the semiosis of advertising and graphic design. After completing her Masters on chronic poverty and humanitarianism, she turned to 19th century famines in Bengal, India focusing specifically on the politics of trauma, the ontological problems of memory and the question of ethical response.

Mark Brantner

Mark’s life is in transition right now. He is a Visiting Assistant Professor at State University of New York at Binghamton, in the Writing Initiative and has finished his dissertation on ‘Voice, Psychoanalysis, and Rhetoric’, earning his PhD from The University of South Carolina. He’d love your help in moving all his stuff.

Alexis Cheong

Alexis is a fresh communications graduate with a passion for visual design and web technology. Started coding her own website at 12 and has never stopped tinkering since. Loves food photography and eating subject afterwards. Can be lured into projects at alexischeong@gmail.com.

Yanyun Chen

Yanyun swims with animations, illustrations, and set designs. She enjoys lying on grass and scribbling connections between sporadic burst of thoughts- like constellations. A sheesha in one hand and a sketch book in the other, and she’s out to roam the world. One may find her scribbles at www.yanyun-chen.blogspot.com

A. Staley Groves

A. Staley Groves is a writer, musician, and artist studying media philosophy with the European Graduate School and teaches in the arts and humanities. He has authored one book “Imaginality: Conversant and Eschaton” published by Atropos Press. He lives in Iowa, USA.

Ashlynn Sum

Subconsciously influenced by Darrin Stevens in ‘Bewitched’ when she was 9, Ashlynn is now an advertising copywriter. But really, writing is a way to support her addiction… to music. When she isn’t grasping for the right words, fighting a neverending battle with spelling and grammar, bopping to heriPod, playing records or daydreaming about being a rockstar, she can be found writing accidentally morbid short stories.

Groove with Ash on fridayradio.blogspot.com Or send a shout to ashlynn555@yahoo.com to collaborate with her.

Geoshino Ollscia

Geoshino Ollscia was born in the United States and received training throughout the States and Europe at various institutions including Stanford University and The European Graduate School. He currently lives in New York City and teaches in Harlem. For contact, please e-mail geoshino.ollscia@gmail.com

Sara Chong

With a pack of sketchbooks and a bottomless horn of eternally-cold beer, Sara travels the worlds of the subconscious searching for stories and meeting creatures yet unknown. All she really wanted to do was just draw, draw and draw, but along the way she did 3 years worth of animation studies, stopmotion in particular, and so now all she really wants to do now is draw, draw, draw and play with puppets. Sara lives by a religion of phone doodles and believes that everything is inevitably connected.

Rebecca G. Yeo

Rebecca currently lives in Singapore, although her spirit sometimes wanders across Africa where she lived for twelve years. She is constantly indulging her love for the arts, and has performed in various theatrical productions, both locally and in S.Africa. Besides being a voice-over talent for radio commercials and independent projects, she has dabbled in film and doodled for good causes. With a background in teaching in Montessori and Waldorf schools, as well as a passion for the theatre, she has managed to combine the two as a Speech and Drama teacher at the Julia Gabriel Centre for Learning. When she is not flicking magic dust off her travelling shoes, she enjoys weaving stories, singing a tune or two and painting her skies.

Michelle Andrea Wan

What started as a keen interest in arts & crafts that began as a kid, Michelle has since developed an obsession with producing immaculate works. Hailing from the BAs of Visual Communications from RMIT and English Literature from NUS, she is now based at Epigram. Her design aesthetic is one that favours simplicity over clutter. Her works include Fridays with Philip, a collection of rhetoric by Philip Lim, the book cover for Boom, by local playwright Jean Tay; and she is currently working on Cooking for The President, featuring Peranakan recipes & memoirs by Wee Eng Hwa, daughter of former president Wee Kim Wee. Besides being aesthetically-sound and typographically-compulsive, Michelle loves her coffee, books and weekly sessions on the rockclimbing walls.

She is contactable at wan.michelleandrea@gmail.com.

Jiaying Sim

Currently confined by the ruthless chains of tertiary education; she understands that she will probably look back and realise that it was not all that torturous once she steps into the working society. Happiest when allowed to scribble notes of poetry, in the comfort of her own space and time, she hopes to be as quirky as Neil Gaiman and as sensitive in her writing as Jeanette Winterson; most comfortable and carefree when playing the beautiful game of soccer.

Kenny Png

Born in 1979 to a family that wanted another daughter, Kenny got to a good start favoring dresses and Barbie dolls.  With his obvious inadequacies compared to his sports loving, Amazonian sisters, Kenny took to books, music and theatre.

A responsible adult now, Kenny scrapes a living directing television while blowing everything else on his films, music and ridiculous guitar collection.  Kenny’s works can be seen and heard on AXN, ANIMAX, MTV, CNA, MEDIACORP, DISCOVERY ASIA, DISNEY CHANNEL ASIA as well as festivals such as Sidewalk Cinema (Vienna), Sexpression (Hong Kong), Operation Automaton (Singapore) and Seoul FX Radio Festival.

Creatively, Kenny strives to be as multi-faceted a wanker as possible. In his spare time, he heads The Enigmatic Army, a creative collective comprising of writers, musicians, film makers and artists from Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia and India. He is also the co-author of On Happiness with Michelle Andrea Wan & Jeremy Fernando. 

Ling Kai

Moving, intriguing, “freaking amazing,” awesome, and soulful are just some of the adjectives critics and fans have used to describe the refreshingly original songwriting, and vocal talents, of Ling Kai. As a regular performer in the independent Singapore music scene, she is recognized as an intuitive musician, with a playful and unassuming, stage presence. Ling signed with Australian label Lempicka Records in May 2008, and released her six-track album Honesty in November. She can be found at both http://lingkaimusic.com/ andhttp://www.myspace.com/theacousticsmellycat

Tammy Ho Lai-Ming

Tammy Ho Lai-Ming is a Hong Kong-born poet and (neo-)Victorianist currently based in London, UK. She co-edits Cha: An Asian Literary Journal. More at www.sighming.com.

Belynda Sim

Account Planner by day, pseudo artist by night. Queen of forbidden mixes. Closet sci-fi freak who’s obsessed with feet, typefaces, tragic heroines, instrumental hip-hop, and opera. Highly allergic to high-pitched voices and sports.

Victor Tang

Victor started his musical journey when he started learning the piano at 3 and by 7 was chosen to be the main pianist for the annual Yamaha concert. He decided to start his professional music career 4 years ago and has since performed at venues like Paulaner Brahaus, Balaclava, Traders Hotel, Park Royal Hotel, Bar Stop, Mandarin Hotel, Acid Bar, Angelshare and Harry’s; not to mention the countless private events throughout the years. In 2006 Victor went on tour in Australia playing his own compositions in Perth, Sydney and Melbourne and was the music arranger for the esplanade prodiuction “Do Not Disturb”. He currently has residencies at Wala Wala, Club Maska, Molly Malones, Mulligan’s and Jewel Box. Having being in the live music scene for a little while now, Victor has an idea of what audiences are looking out for: a meaningful and sincere performance and that’s what he strives for every time he goes on stage. With his unique voice you are assured of an inspiring time whenever you catch him singing, be it at the void deck or the patio and if he’s up for it he might even sing you of his his beautiful originals so watch out for him!