Public Logbook of Ideas (2003-2013) by Vertical Submarine aims to document vertical submarine’s unrealised ideas and failed projects mounted up collectively in a publication format. Apart from ideas listed on the ‘Inventory of Ideas’ (containing both ideas archived, since the group was formed in 2003) the publication will also contain unrealisable ideas and unsuccessful projects to be consolidated from 2011 to 2013.

Comprising three volumes, this book project will feature writings and visual documentations, of which the first volume will be launched and displayed in The Substation Theatre. The texts will be presented in various forms – ranging from visual art proposals, notes, poems, short stories, ‘biographies’ and transcripts to immaterial forms such as conversations, rants and dreams. The visual documentations shall include traditional forms like sketches, photographs and readymade images.

10 February till 12 February, 12pm-9pm at The Substation Theatre. Admission is free.

The work of designer/artist Dorcas Ng centers around narratives– real and fictional, and are communicated mainly with the characters she has created in ‘Tales of Pao’–Pao, X, R, Whao and PE.

Dorcas welcomes spontaneous real time intervention in the creative process, which is an important element in her work as she strives to create fresh and experimental work every time. These narratives take on different form/media each time but are all one continuous thread of work. “There are currently two extremes in my creative work: Conceptual and serious, Whimsical and illogical. I am constantly exploring how it is possible to integrate them both. So far I have explored short stories, photography, sequential drawings, theme specific work and exhibitions. Aside from this, I also like to meddle with customizing vinyl toys, design, Art and all that stuff.”

About the Tales of Pao: Born 01.01.2010, Pao is a wedge-head carrot with an unpleasant attitude. His favourite word is WHAT and he loves to point with his index finger. Pao came to this world when a wedge shape object fell from the sky onto a carrot in the crop fields of an unknown village. Since birth, he has often wondered why he was the chosen one to be born this way– to have an appearance so different from the other carrots, thus he is always angry as he cannot find a satisfactory answer. He continues the search and along the way, grows up to be rather anti-social. Or so it seems. This is the story of Pao – about truth and life.

Pao is accompanied by X, R, Whao and PE, and you can read more about each character here.

“With great super villains comes a great superhero career.” Or so believes Salvation Sam. Led by his somewhat misguided belief to reach the much desired pinnacle of the superhero pyramid, Sam otherwise struggles in a world where being special doesn’t make you super and being a hero is a lot harder than it looks.So imagine trying to be a Super-Hero!

Alexander “yet-to-be-given-a-nickname” Zhao is a Singaporean comic creator and writer. Salvation Sam, was co-created and written with Aravind Menon and subsequently published under Jove Pater Media, an entertainment company which he started together with his secondary school friends. “I consider myself very passion driven, and feel extremely blessed to be making a living through expression of my ideas via the comic medium, which I personally consider a perfect amalgamation of art and story.”

If he isn’t spending his time idea generating for the next comic concept or Salvation Sam, Alexander spends his free time in fantasy worlds. An avid gamer, he has played MMOs such as World of Warcraft for nearly half a decade and does not intend to stop gaming any time soon – “who says adults can’t play games!”

Aravind Menon is a comic creator and writer who has long given up hope on becoming a superhero himself and now makes do with forcing future generations of superhero wannabes with stories of his own. “While generally satisfied with writing superheroes, I continue holding out hope that I would one day find a radioactive beast to bite me. Preferably a tiger. Or a dragon. Maybe even a unicorn.” Aravind is currently working on a new title —Jupiter the Last God—with friend and artist, Alan Leong.

Artist Renzo Rodriguez has spent his entire childhood —all 31 years of them—admiring and studying comic masters like Stan Lee, Jack Kirby and Steve Dito. “When offered the opportunity to be involved in an independent comic,I grabbed it despite having to jump hurdles like the 13-hour time difference between me and the writers.”

Through Salvation Sam and its free preview issue, the creators hope to reinvigorate the western comic culture in Singapore, one issue at a time.

Whispering surfaces …
[On Raine Koh. Pop Rock Love. Singapore: Horasis, 2011]
by Jeremy Fernando.

One can read Raine Koh’s Pop Rock Love as a tale of teenage infatuation. Its protagonist Mimi, a Singaporean teenager, falls head over heels for Yuki, a Japanese tourist whom she meets whilst singing in the pub she owns. When he suddenly rushes back to Japan, the love-struck girl races after him. There is even complication—Sato—thrown in; and one reads on rather anxiously to discover if it works out for the couple.

Some will attempt to read the tale as an allegory of the music industry. Mimi is a rock singer who writes and sings her own tunes whilst Yuki is part of a successful boy-band. One can thus read the book as Koh’s lamentation of manufactured pop through Mimi’s perseverance, and eventual success, as an original artist amidst muzak. Foam-at-the-mouth Marxists might even read into Koh’s novel a critique of the capitalist system where music and people are commodified.

There will be others that read the novel as an autobiography, read the author into Mimi. After all, Raine Koh is a self-confessed K-pop junkie (an almost rabid fan of Super Junior); a prolific writer (she is a freelance writer for various magazines; Pop Rock Love is her third book); is known to chase her dreams even when that entails crossing borders.

But all of those readings would be all too easy, too convenient. More importantly, they would be missing the point.

They would be making meaning where there is none.

The radicality of Pop Rock Love is that there is no deeper meaning to it: it is pure surface. It is certainly about teenage infatuation, the music industry, creativity, commodification, and quite possibility Koh herself—but the novel cannot be reduced to any of these things. Neither it is merely a sum of all its themes, its tale(s): it is a tale that unfolds through its telling. It is not just about Mimi chasing Yuki, or her dreams, or even music: Pop Rock Love is reading chasing the possibility of reading. Koh sets the scene for us, provides the score—the text—our challenge is to listen, to attempt to read.

Which means that the reader also needs to imagine as (s)he reads. Not just in the sense of immersing oneself in the characters, in the plot, in the tale, but in the fact that one is reading a story. For, even as the tale is set before us, even as we can merely skim, race through the novel, and find out what happens to the characters, to do so would be to sacrifice the intricacies of the tones at play. At the heart of Pop Rock Love lies music—not just in the play between rock and pop, Mimi and Yuki, but more importantly in the relationship between the reader and the text. And it is in the impossibility of reducing the novel to a single reading—in the echoes of all the other possibilities whispering to us as we read—that we hear the novel’s song.

Hence, its title—indeed its character and plot—is a minor chord to itself; and that is the measure of its success.

Raine Koh’s Pop Rock Love can be purchased at either Selectbooks, or all major bookstores.

Jeremy is the Jean Baudrillard Fellow at The European Graduate School. He is the author of 5 books—most recently Writing Death.

Image courtesy of Joyce Tan.

The Urban Sketchers Singapore: Volume 01 book presents over 360 beautiful sketches that capture moments, places and life in Singapore by the Urban Sketchers group. From spice streets of Little India, to the landmark Sultan Mosque and the last kampung of Lorong Buangkok, explore and fall in love with these places all over again.

Published with a partial grant from the URA of Singapore through its Architecture and Urban Design Excellence (A•UDE) Promotion Programme, this 250-page hardcover documents the sketching escapades of a motley crew of artists and hobbyists, and reflects on urban context and city planning through their eyes.

This inaugural compendium of work hopes to encourage emerging artists to get involved in the local art community and grow with their peers.

Until 24 December, a showcase of sketches will be installed within the lobby atrium of The URA Centre, taking the drawings and paintings beyond the pages of the book and allowing everyone to get up close and personal with the work.

Inessa Loh and Dash Kadam are currently sitting in a Nanyang Polytechnic classroom, finishing their Diploma in Space and Interior Design. Dash moved here from Mumbai, when he was 15. A budding photographer, his photos can be swift and spontaneous, or calculated and meticulous. As for Inessa, she enjoys marveling at layouts and thought Dash’s idea to produce a zine was neat. So she joined him, and they are quite chuffed for you all to take a peek at what they have been working on.

Last month, the duo released their first issue, which boasts work from local photographers Prashant Ashoka and BaiShe (AKA Jovan Peh), as well as shots by Las Vegas based photographer, Wolf189 .

“We started talking about this zine in April,” Inessa quips. “We felt that with so much digital work around us now, we hardly print anything out anymore, to send to loved ones, or just for keepsake. So we wanted to relinquish that, by printing on something tangible, a zine in this case. Each zine features a variation of works, dominantly photography, but we have participating illustrators and writers too.”

Dash- “One day, we were trying to think up a name for the zine, when my watch started beeping. Then I realized that my watch goes off every day at the same time,  3:10am/pm. And that is how the name came about. The logo is an amputated hand with the time inscribed on the wrist. The ‘zombie’ hand would have a different sleeve every issue.”

“This project is currently set on a course of one year, published every two months, so only a total of six issues would be produced,” Inessa continues. “We just published the first one a month ago, and the second one is due soon. It is a self-initiated project, so all the funds for the production of the zine are from our own pockets. The zine is totally handmade, we print them ourselves, we trim the edges, we sew them up. We print a limited amount per batch, to keep it a little exclusive, we want to have it made into something almost like a collector’s item. If all goes well, we’ll keep up the zine for another year.”

3:10 Zines are stocked at BooksActually, S U P E R M A M A, The Little Dröm Store and Cat Socrates and sell for $5 ($10 for international buyers).

“When Alice runs away from home to look for her lost dog, little she knows that she may never return. She stumbles upon the kingdom of Dog-Land, an alternate world where dogs are the masters, and humans, their pets. Under the crimson sky of this misshapen realm, the sprightly ten-year-old begins her true journey – of discovering what it truly means to be human – as she seeks a way back to our world.”

Seven Years in Dog-Land is Johnny Tay’s  second published title and is set in a gritty and cruel kingdom of dogs. “The near 300-page graphic novel is a ‘literary fiction’ that follows the adventures of a little girl in an alternate world where dogs are the masters, and humans, their pets. Through her trials and adventures, Dog-Land explores humans’ relationship with nature and the human condition itself.”

Johnny has been writing professionally since he was 18-years-old, after becoming triple-winner of the National Writing Competition (Singapore, 1997). A former editor at Reader’s Digest, his true passion is inspiring readers with original fiction – in the form of graphic novels. He previously produced and published a children’s action comic, Anima: Age of the Robots.

The e-book is partly readable for free online. The complete edition can only be obtained via Graphicly, and read anywhere on all major devices, including the iPad, iPhone, Andriod OS, Nook Colour, desktop or even web browser.

Rounding off the month nicely is the first issue of a new bi-annual publication worthy of the ‘woah’ tag.  Terroir Issue No 1 is a collab between Benjamin Koh, Rachel Han, Michelle Lim and Stephanie Ng, and showcases a Singaporean perspective on travel.

Benjamin: “Roughly translated terroir means “a sense of place” in French. So basically we like to share with the readers the significance of  places to our contributors. Growing up in safe and sheltered Singapore where everything runs like clockwork, even the slightest bit of haphazardness and spontaneity when exploring foreign lands might seem strangely attractive and romantic.”

Terroir Issue No1 sells online, and the first thirty copies are delivered with an A3 Poster, a pack of eight postcards, a Muji colour pencil with hot stamped number and a Kraft envelope with blind embossed sticker seal.

Nice!