Finding The Common Thread

This is not the time to imagine that we have seen the range of Mr. Aun Koh, who is currently hosting a new TV show and choosing who’s right for the private club he co-founded

- Marc Almagro

If you were a young, urban professional in the early noughties, you would have a rough time finding a better role model than Mr. Aun Koh, whose career trajectory was nothing short of spectacular – curated, as you might put it. He was back then the man behind East magazine, regarded as the relevant viewpoint on every important matter that was transforming Asia. Others would call it ‘ahead of its time’, by which they meant a vanguard, if not necessarily a commercial success. And the readers, if not necessarily the advertisers, got it.

When the magazine folded, Mr. Koh launched with his wife, Ms. Su-Lyn Tan, a PR agency called The Ate Group, which sought to draw public attention to emerging talking points about the brands they chose to represent: Alila Hotels’ commitment to sustainability, at a time when gaudy chandeliers and chintzy furniture defined hotel lobbies, being one of them. Again, the public had something to say: Mr. Koh has crossed over to the dark side.

He would reprise the publisher’s role at (now defunct) Pan Pac Media where he launched a handful of titles, including the ultra-luxe, super glossy, large-format Lookbook. It was a period of what he would later call ‘mini creative explosion’ when local talents, among them Jason Coates, Geoff Ang, and Keith Low, were collectively pushing the envelope. The venture folded after setting a creative benchmark in magazine publishing.

Mr. Koh would surprise the public again when he joined the National Arts Council – a civil servant! – where he helped launch fresh ideas at the Singapore Writers Festival. At NAC, he would be told that literature was understood as serious fiction and poetry as far as the powers that be were concerned, and there he was making a case for the inclusion of creative non-fiction, sci-fi, documentary, digressive journalism, and blogs to the festival. Blogs. Can you imagine?