We’re reviving 9 Beats where contributors from the art scene share with us nine things that make them tick!

by Simon Soon

ARTERI is nine months old. Some thoughts on how we work and where we are heading.

by Dill Malik

I am proud of my grandfather. So proud of him that I wanted to be just as great. News then broke out – he no longer remembers me.

Koge does not remember me.

By ARTERI

There are a number of art dictionaries / glossaries / thesis cheat-sheets– but they are painfully boring. So, ARTERI presents the Malaysian Art Dictionary, a communal effort to list everything arty! Come on, you know you’ll love it!

By Nazim Esa

Bernard Chauly’s cross-cultural approach to his artistic discourse spans across theater, film, television and now, the visual arts; in this podcast interview, he talks about love, his work in the recent Light Show 2009 exhibition, and cooking!

Now with nifty photographic visuals!

by Yin Shao Loong

In conjunction with last weekend’s Art for Grabs fair at the Central Market Annexe political scientist and historian Farish Noor delivered another of his occasional lectures on Southeast Asian history. This time on ‘Batik as a Trans-Cultural Signifier.’

by Haseena Abdul Majid

Haseena joins Mit Jai-Inn last Saturday as one of his guest audience for his 12 hour long social performance. These are notes and impressions from her participation

by Tan Zi Hao

I’ve been in Serdang since I was a toddler.

Serdang didn’t spare much democracy in aesthetic sensation. The basic spatial structure was either moulded by the past colonist or the insensitive modern developers. It is called forced architectural identity, also a malady of creativity. But it hasn’t been an issue; artists Perng Fey and Wing are both creative persons from Serdang. This was pretty new to me two years ago, I was delighted.

by Simon Soon

Mit Jai-Inn’s work is conscious about the history of painting in many ways. In a sense, there’s the utopian gesture that is paradoxically embedded in the destructive system of Mondrian’s oeuvre that Mit is unafraid to reference, using this goal as a way to explore a reductive style that transpires the nihilism of minimalist art and its subsequent absorption into high style furnishing.

by Sharon Chin

When I was young, I was babysat by my grandma, together with my cousin sister. She would spend the day with us, teaching us how to be proper ladies. I wasn’t any good at being a lady, but the nice thing about days with Po-po was that we always got a present that was some kind of stationary. She would buy two different things, and then we had to choose. One time, the choice was between this awesome pencil case (like seriously, it was blingin’) and a small box of Luna Staedtler colour pencils. It was the one with a boat on the cover and 12 barely 10cm-long pencils inside. My cousin got the pencil case (much to her delight), which left the colour pencils to me. It was my first box, and I loved them. These pencils have a very rough texture, but their pigment is intense. They are great for frottage, which is a technique where you put a piece of paper over something and rub a a pencil/crayon over it. I used to do with coins so that I had my own multi-coloured paper money.

by Sharon Chin

I’m too misanthropic to believe that Earth Hour was much more than a massive, feel-good PR stunt. But as our house dutifully doused the lights during that stipulated hour on 28 March, I found that being plunged into a physical darkness was more welcome than I’d ever anticipated.

It inspired a series of posts on, above and/or around the idea of ‘darkness’. Thoughts on Darkness by various contributors will be released daily. As an introduction, I reproduce here an excerpt of a gmail chat I had with an artist friend in Yangon, Myanmar.

by Sharon Chin

We have a new Prime Minister! If I had said that yesterday, I would have been able to wipe that glum, ponderous look off your face with ‘Haha! Just kidding! April Fool!’. Unfortunately, that wonderful day in the year when nothing can be taken seriously is no longer with us – slipped away completely unappreciated, as so many things do. Today, 2 April, Kampung Malaysia really does have a new Person-In-Charge. HRH the King announced his pwnage consent just hours ago.

by Yee I-Lann

Nine things that inspire Sabah-born Malaysian artist, Yee I-Lann.

by Daniel Chong

[WARNING! (IM)MATURE CONTENT AND POTENTIALLY OFFENSIVE PICTURES AND LINKS AHEAD. SCROLL DOWN AT YOUR OWN DISCRETION. REMEMBER, ONCE YOU SEE, YOU CAN’T UNSEE]