Look inside the magazine

This issue of Now & Again delves into the concept of The Uncanny the elusive liminal state between the familiar and the foreign. Contributors across various artistic disciplines assess the nooks and crannies they have found within this phenomenon, exploring the varied experiences of this visceral paradox.

Now & Again is a celebration of new ideas – the sudden outburst of inspiration that comes from the least likely of places. It’s a platform for collaboration, creative discussion and pushing the boundaries of what we know. Using Now & Again as a sort of sketchbook, each edition reflects on the many ways of interpreting a simple theme through a mix of individual projects and collaborations, reflecting our diverse personal perspectives.

Alyshea Mo (she/her)
Alyshea is a multidisciplinary visual artist based in Singapore after receiving her BFA from the University of the Arts London, Chelsea College of Art. She explores the notion of belonging through painting, sound, video installations and performance. With an underlying personal take on queerness and religion, her search for a sense of home exists in in-between spaces: inside and outside, the familiar and the uncanny, the observer and the observed. She also art directs for films and performances, and runs her online store, BYALYMO.

Anastasia Lara (she/her)
Indonesian-born designer currently based in Singapore. Anastasias discourse maintains a close interest in informality and practicality. Her practice is concerned with the role of design in finding ways to speak through treatment; from the written to the visual to the operational. She is currently active in self-publishing, art direction and writing while pursuing her education. At the moment, Anastasia is working on a final-year project on the informal qualities of street food vernaculars in Indonesia, circulating within concepts of unprofessionalism and tools of unlearning. Her favourite Indonesian dish? Rawon.

Chiara Scoglio (she/they)
Chiara Scoglio is a UK-based Italian writer and puppetry theatre maker who studied at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama. Her art always attempts to merge words and visuals, while exploring her sense of self and her experience of the outside world. She loves literature, cinema and the visual arts, and would define her practice as a patchwork of inspiration and impressions. She dreams of working as a filmmaker and developing her puppetry experiments into final products that both children and grown-ups can enjoy.

Craig Taylor-Broad (he/him)
Growing up, Craig was always the one who would run away or hide his face whenever a camera appeared. In his early twenties, a mix of becoming seriously unwell as well as a couple of supportive creative friends motivated him to pick up a camera, and he hasn’t looked back since. His journey as a photographer has always remained simple to create a style that is uniquely his.

Chen Yi An (he/him)
Yi An is the founder and editor of Now & Again. As of December 2022, he is finishing his studies in Interaction Design Arts at the London College of Communication. His design practice is mainly motivated by material experimentation, everyday happenstance and the resolution of problems through unconventional ways of thinking. He also works as a part-time Creative Production Assistant at Duna Films, where he assists with film productions and designs and illustrates graphic work for films centred on climate, conservation, innovation and purposeful change.

Dawn Lim Gin (she/her)
As an anthropologist and multispecies ethnographer-in-training, Dawn is interested in the social lives of materials, and the interspecies relationships that become meaningful in producing notions of value in communities. She believes in the value of multi-sensory creative exploration and experiences, anthropological imagination, and discursive resistance in rethinking the realities of today.

Dilog Studios
Dilog Studios is an experimental studio that advocates purposeful design through communication, education and community engagement. As a studio, they believe that investing in everyday spaces creates value for economic and environmental sustainability.

Didi Doo (she/her)
Didi is a freelance illustrator who loves drawing people, places and pets in bright and cosy environments. She currently takes commissions and runs DidiShop. She also likes taking bus rides everywhere because the new snazzy buses in Singapore don’t give her motion sickness.

Elizabeth Alster (she/her)
Elizabeth Alster’s practice focuses on moving images and multimedia installations. She often merges these two media together to explore the boundary between theatre and sculpture, which she has been doing in her recent works through the use of underwater animatronics, puppetry and illusion.

ila (she/her)
ila is a visual and performance artist whose intimate works incorporate objects, moving images and live performance to generate discussion about gender, history and identity. Negotiating alternative nodes of experience, her works reconfigure and merge speculative fiction with factual histories, informal archives and collective experiences, conceiving them as sites for empathy and connectivity.

Jia Le Ling (he/him)
Jia Le is a Singaporean artist working and living in Brooklyn, New York. He takes himself too seriously sometimes, but his performances, sculptures, and installations are glimpses of him loosening up and expressing sincerity towards the people, materials, and events around him. He received a BFA in Interdisciplinary Sculpture from the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA). He recently designed a set for the play Sentenced to a Life Without Music, produced by Nylon Fusion, and co-produced an immersive performance, HellBond: Dancing with the Spirits.

Jo Collective
Jo Collective is an art collective that aims to create alternative spaces for artists, non-artists and audiences. They are interested in having participatory projects and discussions coexist with object-based artworks in exhibition spaces, encouraging blurred boundaries between artist and viewer to make their relationship interchangeable and interdependent.

Maximus (Joy Alexis) (he/they)
Honest and raw, Joys music surges forth with a powerful depth of emotion, birthed out of an acute emotional sensitivity and their seemingly effortless craft to translate vulnerabilities into resonant music. They believe in a seamlessness between the mood of a song and its architecture, all while tirelessly working towards shaping a sound true to themselves.

Lee Wan Xiang (they/them)
Artist and art therapist from Singapore. Wan Xiangs practice is a process of self-inquiry, discovery, spontaneity and play. They are interested in using drawing, found objects and symbols interchangeably to frame and reflect themes of self and belonging.

Megan Jones (she/her)
Megan Jones is an independent researcher specialising in the Middle Ages. Her research interests involve the post-medieval legacy and reception of the Middle Ages and the ideological potency of the period in modern discourses. Megan is keenly interested in how the medieval inhabits the modern and vice versa, and uses medieval concepts of race, sex, gender, and the senses to shed light on contemporary preoccupations, blurring the boundaries of then and now. In her free time, Megan dabbles in perfumery, using the transportive nature of scent to capture something of the past. She is also a keen gardener and enjoys cultivating her garden in South Wales.

Natalie Sutanto (she/they)
Natalie is an amateur anthropologist with an appetite for reading, especially on the topics of climate and society. They hope to encourage their small online following to think more critically about social issues, one book recommendation at a time.

Rafi Spangenthal (she/her)
Rafi is a multidisciplinary artist and designer. Her practice spans photography, graphic design, art direction, and consultation for grassroots organisations, fashion magazines and global brands. Her work explores the intersections between youth culture, community, the environment and the arts. As a street photographer she is drawn to the ironic juxtapositions of urban life.

Rochelle Edelweiss Boon (she/her)
Rochelle Edelweiss Boon is a professional chameleon: a trained actor and certified financial advisor, who straddles the worlds of art and finance with ease. She is a performance maker who excels in directing, writing, stage managing, designing, and a long laundry list of other pertinent skills. Rochelle is also fluent in Japanese (freelance translator baby~) and has great interest in Japanese theatre, her thesis being centred on one of Japans newest forms of theatre, 2.5-Dimensional Musicals. Do ask her about it shed be more than happy to share. Currently, shes working on publishing her poetry and developing a play to workshop in 2023. Look out for her!

Sin Melia (she/her)
A curious generalist by nature, Melia has dabbled in many fields, all of which are motivated by her interest in understanding the human condition and working for better ways of connection. She has conducted ethnographic research on Cambodias youth, amplified social causes through digital marketing, and stage-managed numerous theatre performances. She is currently pursuing a diploma in early childhood education. Although this meandering career path causes her anxiety at times, she is happy to stand at the intersection of these different experiences and revel in the conversations and epiphanies that come with encountering all walks of life. As an enthusiast of good storytelling, Melia hopes that her contribution to this issue of Now & Again will mark the beginning of her own creative storytelling journey.

Sean Wang (he/him)
When Seans not reading, writing or editing, he spends his time searching for the best matcha lattes or stumbling through galleries with a film camera. Originally a notes app poet, he is now exploring notes app flash fiction and essays. His writing has appeared in Rattle, Capsule Stories, Dismantle and other publications. He is interested in the articulation of suffering and the mythologisation of the personal. He believes that history must be recorded on the most microscopic level the personal and the familial. These are the words and photos he wants to show his own children if the world hasnt ended by then.