SMU students with the support of MTV Asia, will be organizing Singapore’s first Pecha Kucha Night for creative talents on Friday, 11th April.

Pecha Kucha, which is Japanese for chatter, was first started by Tokyo-based architects Astrid Klein and Mark Dytham in 2003, and is an informal way for young designers to meet and share new ideas in the official Pecha Kucha presentation format of 20 slides displayed for 20 seconds per slide. The organic concept of stimulating creativity in a relaxed, no holds barred platform has since spread to major cities around the world.

An exciting line-up of creative talents will present and share their ideas at the inaugural Pecha Kucha night and include: Mark Wee, Annex A Architect and designer for Majestic Hotel, Andrew Lo, Creative Director for On-air Promotions for MTV Asia, Steve Lawler, Creative Director for Kult, Holman Chin, General Manager for Viscion Media, Keshav Sishta, Photograher, Mun Hon, Engineer by day, soap maker by night and Justin & Jerry, designers at HJGHER.

A must-attend for anyone wanting to be part of the local creative scene!

Friday, 11 April from 8:20pm to 10:20pm at Frujch, School of Information Systems, SMU.

It may sound crazy, but it’s a rally of good intentions, it’s local, and it will be one of the more intimate events of the year!

I am talking about Singapore’s pioneering four-day concept festival which is part of a movement that promoters hope, will raise awareness about environmental, human and animal rights issues amongst Singapore’s youth.

Organized by Rockstar Collective, Halide Pictures and supported by HOME Club, the festival will kick off on Thursday, May 1 with a free-entrance Block Party on Haji Lane. Running from 10 am till 10 pm, it will be a day of interlinked music performances, a fashion showcase by up and coming local designers, stand-up poetry recitals and more. Fans can pick from well-known bands to fresh up-starts, playing on two stages, or take on all ten bands and go right through until 10pm. A selection of well-known HOME Club mix-masters on a third stage in Bali Lane, will get you rocking.

I talk with co-organizer Chrissie Choo about the motivation, the issues and the rockstar party.

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Yolk recently launched Hardboiled,  a free bi-monthly online magazine concerning social problems and the depletion of our physical and cultural environment through commercialization.  The magazine will provide a medium for interacting with the broader social activist communities.

Chief Editor ‘Ain Aid, “Hardboiled is centred as an ecological and social medium with the aim to create social awareness between humans and their environment. It offers incisive articles revolving around philosophy and global activist commentary concerning issues ranging from genetically modified food to child labour. We aim to provide means of shaping the image and activities of the global network of artists, activists, writers, pranksters, students, educators and entrepreneurs who want to advance the new social activist movement of the information age. We want a world in which the economy and ecology resonate in balance. We try to coax people from spectator to participant in this quest. We want folks to get angry about corporate disinformation, injustices in the global economy, and any industry that pollutes our physical or mental commons.”

The Brooklyn Art Project, a social network for established and emerging artists worldwide, is organizing the Battle for Brooklyn, a competition that gives artists from around the world a chance to compete for three slots in a Brooklyn based group show on September 28, 29 and 30. The show is part of the 2007 Art Under the Bridge Festival and is the single largest urban forum for experimental art in the United States attended by roughly 150,000 art enthusiasts each year.

Says Brooklyn Art Project Co-Founder Anthony Cospito, “We want to give artists from around the world a chance to be a part of something special and show their work here. This is one example of how social networks can drive real value for people. We’re seeing quite a bit of exciting work from all around the world, with an impressive amount from Asia, Singapore in particular.”

The Brooklyn Art Project recently featured Foon Foono, SpeakCryptic and OneTwoDelta on their site, three artists we wrote about not too long ago.

By accident, I chanced upon this completely random Flickr group called I Eat Toys, which as the name conveys is dedicated to photographic evidence of one consuming your favourite toys and plushies. Yummy. It reminds of how toddlers love to put everything in their mouths, and how my Lego bricks would be covered in bite marks from sad attempts to take them apart.

I Eat Toys is set up by toysrevil, a Singaporean who runs a delightful blog dedicated to toys of all shapes and sizes. Yes, the same fella tearing into Seamour Sheep up there. Check it out!

Singapore could well have become one of the world’s most prolific centers for contemporary graffiti. Its current public space is largely defined by the white walls surrounding the many construction sites, providing blank canvases ready for beautification by the local street artists. Alas, these canvases are already claimed by a more widely accepted form of graffiti; commercial advertising. Culturepush has a chat with ‘Fine’ (Street) Artist, SpeakCryptic, about street art in Singapore and …. MORE »

A familiar lament among my musician and artist friends is the lack of public support for Singaporean creatives, a state of affairs which, I believe, isn’t so much a “problem” to be labelled and addressed as such, but a situation which requires some savvy handling from the ground up sans government reliance, i.e. creatives themselves.

Encapsulating that spirit, ilove.sg is the non-profit movement by the folks behind Sinema, Farm, Caffeine and Timbre which encourages Singaporeans to take a pledge to support our creatives and their work. You can read what the pledge entails over at the ilove.sg website.

If you’re reading this here, I am probably preaching to the converted, but here’s a suggestion anyway: watch Invisible City (the run has been extended to 19 Aug), check out the Singapore Art Show and catch the next gig at Home club.

It’s about taking a chance. Who knows, you just might like what you see — and how bad could that be?