Artistic Co-Director Lee Weng Choy talks about The Substation’s direction for 2008 … sort of …

This year we start the magazine with some materials from two publications from 2007. FOCAS published its final issue last year — its 6th volume, on Regional Animalities — and we publish the speeches from the launch event. Editor Lucy Davis talks about the contents and concerns of FOCAS 6, guest of honour Sharon Siddique reflects on the whole FOCAS project, and Audrey Wong makes a statement about The Substation’s policy on using animals in art. Also online is a PDF version of Article: the SAS Companion. In 2007, along with AICA Singapore, we published a newspaper dedicated to covering the Singapore Art Show. This year, we plan a new edition to cover the second Singapore Biennale, which opens in September. Look out for Article: the SB2008 Companion.

The Asia Art Archive launched its new website in February 2008.
With a new interface and user-friendly functions, the AAA website provides access to their online catalogue of over 20,000 titles, and up-to-date information on AAA programmes and projects.

Guest Editor Sophia Natasha Wei talks about new media and performance art in Singapore.

Spring is a second beginning, a new year in the new year. In the language of symbols, it stands for rebirth, the revival of something dead or sleeping. In the world lived and seen, the sign of new buds emerging from winter tells of something stubborn in natural life: its will to survive. Perhaps that was what I was trying to capture when I took that picture of flowers while on a particularly magical walk through my university in the United States two springs ago. Flowers heralded the end of subzero temperatures, and the promise of the new.

Welcome to the new Substation Magazine. As you can see, we are running a little late — our plan was to launch in April. Do visit us regularly over the next couple of weeks, as we’ll be posting more content, getting our archives in order, and adding more features.

Near where the Library used to be, between the National Museum of Singapore and The Substation is a giant orifice. You can hear a rumbling, sucking sound emanating from it. Or is that just road traffic? Officially, it’s known as the Fort Canning Tunnel.

Like all good things, bad things like the Biennale and its accompanying hype will end. Even the stench of the vomit thrown up by denizens of our local arts scene desperate to support and be a part of that hype will stop smelling too.

We thought it might be interesting to re-post the first editorial that kicked-off this online magazine two years back. The new version may be an improvement over the old, and our plans for the platform are certainly evolving, but we’d like to think its foundational ideas and ideals are still relevant.