Notions #1: food for thought
Is here! And you can make your own copy by following these simple steps:
1. Download/access the file.
The pdf is meant for printing out so the pages won't flow like an ebook.
Trees have been fallen for lesser reasons.
Asking you to print it is my way of sharing the joy of actually making a book with you. ;)
2. Print it out in black and white, A4. Print Settings: "Print on both sides of paper" and "flip on the short edge".
(Click on image to see print setting details.)
3. Fold the stack of print out in half (A5)
4. Put a rubber band around the spine.
5. Tadada! Read and enjoy!
(Click on image to see my dirty fingernails)
Notions is also being printed for free distribution at interesting places* - see if you can spot them and pick them up!
(*e.g. the very interesting magazine rack at the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts, next to toast box, lift lobby.)
Thank you, contributors:
Kozue Yamamoto, Shirleen 卓詩翎, Jacqueline Sim, Jessie Lim, Tan Wen, Gary Low, Lynx D, ArtyFaz, Pang, Gayatri Pasricha, and Zhang Fuming.
"Opened" letter to contributors:
30 May 2016
Dear contributors to Notions,
Thank you for lending your work to the first issue of Notions. Sorry for the silence since your submission. Due to some delays here and there, I missed the window to work on the zine in March. I hadn't update you earlier as I had remained hopeful that it would be completed soon, and a month grew into two.
I'm pleased to inform you that the zine is ready for production! Slightly ahead of the promised deadline of June 2016!
THE BIG IDEAS BEHIND NOTIONS
I thought to share more about its intention so that you can tell/explain to your friends when you show them. If they ask.
The aim of Notions is to share ideas and get people thinking. This is especially so for its first issue, in sharing "food for thought", it features different artworks and writings about food, since food and eating is part of everybody's everyday lives and/or minds, it's a common point of entry to introduce different perspectives.
In Notions, submissions of emerging artists (based in Singapore) are juxtaposed with interpreted and extracted works of established foreign artists. Other than to highlight the relevance of our concerns, the intention here is to provoke snobbish people to reconsider the relevance of "international recognition", brand names, institutions, etc. In a way, it's like saying hey our ideas are as valid as ideas in the national galleries. In another way, it's quite fantastic to be featured in the same "show" as ai weiwei, isn't it? It's a statement about how local creators have something to offer to the world: our point-of-views, our "value-add" or inputs too. If I ever receive any complaints about misappropriating their works, I'll share the happy news with you, that our zine has caught their eye.
Now, this issue of branding and recognition puts our deliberately casual and indie form and content in perspective. For I see this zine as an extension of our childish and stubborn desire as creators and artists and writers to share interesting ideas that we're fortunate enough to conceive, and it is a celebration of precisely that. None of the contributors were promised remuneration, so everything is really done for fun and nothing much else. The super lo-fi (in truthful terms, cheapskate) form liberates us from complications of funding, worries about archival, and other trivialities. It's like a presentation of raw ideas in their sketchbook/journal form. Novel ideas on cheap paper and printing: a challenge to ostentatious presentations of mundane and overdone ideas.
PRODUCTION AND DISTRIBUTION
Thus, I have made some copies of the work with my home printer, and I have passed out 2 of my homemade copies this afternoon. I meant to send out this email first but ah. Well.
You can access the work here: http://bit.ly/1WtpkNR and if not, then through the link here: http://www.meekfreak.com/notions/1/
To make your own copies, print it black and white on A4. Under printer properties, select print on both sides, flip on short edge. once it's out, fold the stack in half, strap a rubber band to the spine. Then woo, you have a copy of notions in your hands. If only we can hey presto a packet of potato chips this way too.
After deriving more copies, I'll likely leave them here and there. The usual arty places. If you have connections and can help talk to people to place Notions in their shops, I can pass you copies for that too. If you're going overseas, or at overseas, it'll be nice if you can put a few copies somewhere there too, if not at an arty place, then a coffee shop or something. I'll be grateful for photos of the zines with other readers or held next to the Louvre, and send it to me. I'll be grateful to hear what people think. Cheap thrill. Cheap but valid. Haha.
I've found a photocopier at peace centre that produces it at 85 cents per copy. That's $8.50 at 10 copies, or $42.50 for 50 copies. If you want me to help make copies for you let me know.
Otherwise the first place you can pick up free copies of the zine (starting tomorrow) is at the magazine rack next to toast box at Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts (50 Bencoolen Street). I'll be stationed there for the rest of this week. So email me if wanna have lunch.
THANKS
Finally, a big thank you for participating in this publication. I had fun putting this issue together and hope you have fun looking through it too. Thanks for your feedback in one way or another. I will be cleaning up the submissions guideline etc, and though I don't know when I can do the next issue, feel free to respond and check out the open call to the next issue.
Notions - for interesting people, by interesting people. Thanks for being one.
call for submissions
Notions is an art compilation zine put together for creative people, who like to think, to share and learn new ideas. Each issue of Notions is a collection of novel/fresh/uncommon/original ideas based on a theme, to make a submission all you need is to turn in an A4 (or 2 A5 pages) artwork inspired by the content below, to be photocopied and put into our zine directly. Deadline: 14 Feb 2016. Sunday. Check back once a while in case there are updates.
Update: The submission is closed. thanks for your interest!
“In a culinary context, zucchini is treated as a vegetable; it is usually cooked and presented as a savory dish or accompaniment. Botanically, zucchini are fruit, a type of botanical berry, being the swollen ovary of the zucchini flower. ”
“If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.”
NOTIONS #1:
FOOD FOR THOUGHT
A good submission is one that tells the audience something. A very good submission is one that tells the audience something, making him/her think or realise something he/she hadn't known before.