From the Singapore Biennale Exhibition Short Guide:

Art magazines serve many functions within the art world, publicising and exposing artists and exhibitions, lubricating market conditions and providing critical perspectives on issues. The Mogas Station project is a group of artists and cultural workers all based in Vietnam who have come together to create that country's first ever artist-published bilingual Vietnamese-English contemporary art magazine. It would be informative to quote at some length the context within which Mogas emerged:

"The momentum to develop a magazine accelerated after a visit to Ho Chi Minh City by the Asia Pacific researcher for Documenta, who concluded that the existing cultural publications were neither critically rigorous nor socially effective enough to meet the criteria for inclusion in the next exhibition in Kassel. While this was true, we knew that many artists and people working in the creative sectors of our city were having critical and insightful discussions. Artists were reading about the world and talking about the world despite the absence of a printed record. We decided to begin to create a magazine, which has since taken many directions from a small self-published endeavor, to the formation of a business model for publishing as a company. As we enlisted assistance and advice from a number of local experts, we discovered that both conventional approaches were unrealistic. Small distribution would not do well to contribute to our hopes for a fresh and new national dialogue on arts while the formation of a company presented formidable administration, financial and bureaucratic challenges." - Mogas Station

The group's proposal for the Biennale is the initiation of a long-term project. Because of limited financial support and cultural controls for publications in Vietnam, and the lack of international exposure, the group intends to publish a series of art magazines as art projects within the framework of international exhibitions - a growing feature of the art world today. The Biennale will provide the platform for their inaugural issue. The magazine will be written and designed by Mogas and published and sold by the Biennale. In addition to the magazine, Mogas have planned a number of 'parachute drop' installations. These comprise of empty wooden pallets and crates attached to parachutes, appearing as if they have been air-dropped onto Singapore - reminiscent of supply drops in military campaigns as well as humanitarian relief drops, these 'parachutes' serve as reminders of the mobile yet often invasive nature of the global media today.

- Roger McDonald, Curator, SB2006

For more information
+ Singapore Biennale 2006