WANTED: Someone to restore Arteri and give it 2nd life. Interested? Email: mail.sharonchin.com
So what did two of our fair city’s most authoritative purveyors of cultural life have to say about art in 2009? On the whole, KL-ites should count their blessings for having such fine commitment from both publications when it comes to art coverage. For that, kudos to the editorial teams of TimeOut KL and KLue.
However let’s see how they fare in comparison when it comes to the annual all important (well, at least all important in our pre-Copernican view of the universe revolving around art) issue, where lifestyle media steps up a notch to highlight ART as their special monthly feature in 2009.
Naturally, we take them into the sumo-wrestling ring and let them slap it all out. Sharon Chin comments on TimeOut KL (September 2009) while Simon Soon reads KLue (November 2009). We measure them against a number of criteria, notably: cover art, number of pages, advertisements, design, feature article as well as bonus points for special touches we think deserve mentioning. And then we see which monthly got it right.
Disclosure! The possibility of editorial bias is not entirely ruled out in this competition given that one of our editors dates a writer in KLue, and also the fact we have been given a generous four page feature spread. But we won’t hold it agains thte other team. Balancing the scale is obviously the support TimeOut KL has shown us throughout the year, which is more than invaluable, better than gold. Moreover, during the production of both issues, ARTERI’s editors have been consulted in varying capacities. So that said, we’ll let the readers decide!
~
TimeOut KL – Somewhere between a technicolor hospital kidney tray and a painting palette photoshopped into the shape of man’s head. A BALD man’s head. Attempt to link image with tagline ‘Revealing the New Face of Malaysian Art’ can be applauded. However, disembodied heads are inherently creepy. Looks like someone collided violently with a wet painting and was subsequently mysteriously decapitated. Subtly gender biased. Timeout, Guerrilla Girls wants to know: does a girl gotta be nude to get her head on the cover of your art issue? Or inside, for that matter. All the featured artists are men – not so subtly gender biased.
TimeOut KL – The main feature, ‘Hot Stuff’ is 5 pages. One artist featured per page. Ok, umm. What can I say? Timeout uses very small font. Maybe this means more value per page.
KLue – 14 neat pages. Perfect for a sauntering casual one-sitting read when you’re taking your long and leisurely dump!
~
TimeOut KL – Woooo! Timeout, you can give bonus to your marketing dept. They really know how to sell pages! Full page adverts by Galeri Petronas AND Petrosains, Balai Seni Lukis Negara, Art Accent, Wei-Ling Gallery, and Galeri Chandan. Art Expo Malaysia took up a two page spread. Art Salon @ SENI and Pelita Hati House of Art took half pages. Annexe Gallery got a quarter page. ARTERI is sending over secret spies to learn all your money-making secrets.
KLue – Surprisingly there are no ads from any art establishments! KLUE’s readership, by and large, is of a younger set. This probably doesn’t translate to buying power for more commercially-minded enterprises, so it is fair enough if commercial galleries are not advertising here. However, shouldn’t Balai or Petronas, as two of the most prominent non-profit cultural institutions in our country, reach out to this creative, inquisitive and hungry demographic? What does this say about our institution’s attitude towards cultural growth amongst our youths?
~
TimeOut KL – Zzzzzzzzz. Like Cadbury chocolate bars and McD’s Golden Arches, Timeout looks the same all over the world. Can’t complain. I mean, it doesn’t hurt the eyes. Doesn’t massage them either.
KLue – Compositionally sleek and a nice spread of colours. Like ARTERI (ahem) hehehe. I like! Additionally, there are plenty of wonderfully shot portraits, generously limited to one photograph per page, that depict the diverse personalities, who make up our artworld, striking a larger-than-life poses as they welcome us for one brief photogenic instance into their professional habitat.
~
TimeOut KL – The feature ‘Hot Stuff’ profiles five Malaysian artists that ‘we should look out for. Why? Because they are hot right now’. That is kind of like saying that dish is salty because there is alot of salt in it, but nevermind. Hot is as hot does. Timeout’s panas picks: Samsudin Wahab, Ivan Lam, Phuan Thai Meng, Anurendra Jegadeva and Gan Tee Sheng.
So according to Timeout, the ‘New Face of Malaysian Art’ is male and it’s a painter. Each profile follows a neat little matrix: Who is he, What he does, Why he’s hot, How hot, What to expect and Where to see his work. The ‘How hot’ is interesting – degree of hotness being directly equated to $$$$ kaching kaching. Prices are mentioned. 3 of the artists are represented by Wei-Ling Gallery.
I am supposed to be fighting the Timeout corner so…. *cough* although this feature is shallow and mediocre, the magazine is nothing if not consistent. Like fast food. And some people like fast food, right?
KLue – ‘The Arts Needs You!’ gives us am insight about what exactly people do in the arts. And we’re not necessary talking about flashy roles such as the pose-in-my-messy-studio artist, the dramatic driveling diva performer, the thousand-dollar-smile gallery owner or the something-up-my-ass curator.
This foray into the periphery shows us the cogs in the machinery, people whose passions hold up our roof and make the artworld go round -from film editor to framer, production manager to publisher. More importantly, it redefines their sexiness.
We then proceed into profiles of artspaces around KL including the National Art Gallery (featuring a very dignified portrait of Dr. Najib Dawa standing in front of Zulkifli Yusoff’s installation) as well as other emerging cultural spaces around town such as the new Malay literary hub Rumah Frinjan as well as the wacky and kitschy bar cum performance space, Palate Palette. Then comes a listing of organisations, groups, collectives that are open to participation and how anyone (because everyone is an artist at heart according to the Fluxus credo :p) who wants a bit of time out from the tedium of middle class working, living and shopping can do something to enrich our cultural experience.
~
TimeOut KL – Attempt at humour on page 10 – ’13 worst things to say in an art exhibition’:
1. Does this come in any other colour?
6. I love the impressionists. That Jim Carey is hilarious.
11. That would go really nicely next to the photo of my dead cat.
Appreciate the attempt. Attempt being the operative word. Worst? Hardly. It’s like being punched with a marshmallow. Please take some pointers from the ARTERI comments boxes.
KLue – A cleverly mapped out ‘flow chart’ that parodies, distills and simplifies OffTheEdge and RogueArt’s informative but frightfully complicated and labyrinthine map of the culture industry in their Where Art Happens feature. Here you start off as an average Ali on a quest towards becoming a participant in our cultural scene. Every attempt at displaying any philistine-ish tendencies consigns our bourgeois protagonist into a large black circle cheekily labeled as a ‘Cultural Black Hole’. Yeap, point of no return. However, persist and along the way,you find questions that help guide and define the scope of your interests and commitment together with a list of recommendation of what to do next, where to go and what websites to visit. Excellent sign posts to a new adventure. Who says life needs to be as boring as Starbucks in Pavilion? We hope no one got lost along the way!
~
Can’t you already tell? Try harder this year, TimeOut KL!
On that note, happy new year! :D
~
(SC + SS)
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
LOL! ‘Please take some pointers from the ARTERI comments boxes.’
My favourite arteri article so far.
You guys should write for TimeOut KL.
Have you taken into consideration the reach of each magazine? What if the circulation of TimeOutKL is wider than KLue, helping its limited coverage of the arts reach more people than KLue’s extensive coverage? No doubt quality of coverage is important, however, effort (and money) put into getting the coverage into more hands make a difference too, no? Do we know the numbers?
@pangs comment
then might as well just pull out numbers and compare see who win.
like saying the frame shop in one utama is more beneficial to art scene than all the contemporary art galleries(except petronas) + art spaces cos the frame shop exposes art to a lot more people.
Obviously there seem to be more than vouched for in the fourth paragraph about editorial bias. TimeOut has been consistently interesting and a good read and the art issue was no different. I don’t read Klue so I can’t comment on how the issue went, but nevertheless Sharon Chin’s comments could hardly be considered unbiased or intellectual at the least, considering most of her angst is directed to the mag allegedly not being feminist enough and pandering too much to money. And I thought the match was about promotion of arts?
I’m a feminist and i was outraged by Sharon’s comments about the new face of Malaysian art being male.
Does she suggest that women should be included merely to fille a quota? Regardless of whether they deserve it as individuals? Surely not. Wouldn’t that be exactly the kind of thing a wannabe intelectual website such as this would frown at? The advancement of a member of a certain group merely because of numbers and quotas.
A true feminist would want women to be judged by the same standards that men are. Equal opportunities and treatment. And if there happens to not be a woman in the end result, don’t piss and moan about it, just work harder. It’s a meritocracy you want, is it not?
I hardly think that the judging of the 5 artists were based on their artistic value and merit, most of them are oh dear lord, so boring.
But to judge artists through the merit of their art is just complete and endless debate, and what Timeout has cleverly done is to link it to their $$$ worth and made it empirical.
And like what Sharon said, they are hot because they are hot.
These are the hottest artists on the market but not necessarily the best.
Feminism aside, I think it would have been very refreshing to actually see a brilliant female artist to be featured as “the face of malaysian art”.
yo feminist bitch:
you are assuming that the criteria for timeout’s selection is completely meritocratic. if you take representation in parliament as an analogy: you are basically arguing that the conditions of m’sian politics are compeletely non-sexist, and thus the lack of women in the dewan merely points to their unworthiness for the job!
and we haven’t even unpacked the fact that all five of timeout’s picks are painters.
susie O:
“These are the hottest artists on the market but not necessarily the best”
does this point to the fact that painters earn the most in the m’sian arts?
I highly suspect that painters generally would be able to earn alot more than their peers around the world, paintings sells the easiest in auctions, but thats another story la.
I find representation to be a very interesting analogy. how about we dissect the current art scene and figure out how much of the population is female and what not. (disregarding the problematic possibility that gender barriers has prevented more female participation)
off the cuff:
Artists: I Lann, Sharon Chin, Anum, Umi…
Lets also not forget those that arent artists but are damn impt also. Beverly and the girls, Wei ling…
@_@
*chew pop corn*
Roach,
“And I thought the match was about promotion of arts?”
It is about the promotion of arts and obviously one mag is doing an inferior job compared to the other. Highly recommend you to get yourself the November issue of KLue and you’ll know what I mean.
I don’t think Sharon is being completely unfair to TimeOut either, knowing how capable they are. TimeOut’s 2008 special Art Issue was a wayyyy more competent issue compared to their paltry offering this year. They had specially commissioned cover art by Ise ParkingProject as well as, gallery write ups, interviews, essays etc. In short, a PROPER art issue. It goes to show they are capable of producing quality content but they just got bloody lazy this year!
Readers are not blur okay and despite being part of the youtube generation, 1998 is not that long ago and I still have memory of it.
Some fair points all round, although I think an important semantic difference to note (and one that your editors should have taken into more consideration) is the fact that KLue’s issue was one focused on artS, while TOKL’s was art. So while KLue’s coverage of the artS scene was laudably comprehensive, the fact that the magazines were looking at different sampling pools renders this match more than a little unfair.
I think it is also important to consider the coverage given to art throughout the year. I know you are comparing the specific art issues here (though I agree with Emily’s comment) but how do the magazines compare over the entire year? Surely that is a better indicator of the impact on, and coverage of, the KL art scene?
I know you posted a disclaimer at the beginning of the article but this just argument feels a little one sided.
Sorry, that was of course meant to read: but this argument just feels a little too one sided.
E
@_@
*on nom nom nom*
Taking the argument from emily’s point, and Glen’s point that their 2008 issue is great, It can seem to suggest that 2009 is just such a lackluster year for Malaysian visual arts that ToKL just do not have anything exciting to report on, hardly the fault of the magazine but the art scene.
Well, I have read both issues and personally, I just LOVE both issues.
at first i thot it was kakiseni.. like maybe the story was about how kakiseni went into paper format…
Magazines are businesses! Now thats a shocking thought isn’t it?
I know the heated debate here is about art issues from both magazines, but what we’re really scoffing about is the dribble that alot of mags call writing.
Malaysia mags has always lacked any sense of depth at all and we’re turning to TimeoutKL and KLUE? Come on Sharon, I mean seriously. Does anyone even remember what the last klue or TimeoutKL issue was about? shopping? travel? more shopping? Whos cool?
We don’t need better written articles or coverage in shitty magazines. We need better magazines period. 09 already showcased the year of the cleansing by putting alot of publications into the grave, mind you borders closed too. I really expected more than just a half ass case study from arteri.
@_@
*roasting marshmallows*
I think that I agree with shrug*
Surely the point is not whether KLUE or TimeOut has the best coverage, but where are all the art magazines? Where apart from here is the great art debate? Where will Ma & Pa Normal learn about the vibrancy of Malaysian art, and little Mohd. Vikram or Rodney Normal get to understand just what it is all about.
Malaysia needs its own Modern Painters magazine, and not rely upon the NAG to publish or not publish its own elitist magazine found only at the NAG.
Arteri is good, but, of course, only accessible by those with an internet connection and the nous to find it. We still need paper, or something akin to it, being sold at newsagents, galleries, bookshops et al to spread the ‘art’ word, and the word is – communication.
Leaves soapbox and dodges into shade.
I think people who don’t have internet do not deserve to appreciate art.
cant believe you guys are arguing about the quality of magazines when all over the world, printed publications are facing declining readership because of content being available online.
no, we do not need our own modern painters magazine, what can we do? have 3 brilliant issues before we exhaust our rooster of great and interesting artists?
yea, magazines are business,therefore its only logical that its the readership that demands shopping, whos cool, etc to be talked about, what do you expect from the masses? a demand for this type of “in depth” argument and discussion ke?
Its online and available here at arteri. wheres the masses?
oh. no access to the internet.
damn.
i dont buy magazines because i cheapskate LOL but i got internet, so how? i deserve to appreciate art or not?
@cat dan tong cat:
no, you don’t. you are too poor to appreciate Art. (you don’t even capitalise the word, you pleb!)