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Welcome to Kawan—our vibrant community of data heads and storytellers. We’re all about improving data literacy and sharing nuanced stories about Asia. Come hang!
Pluck, pluck, pluck — issue #74
What would you do if you discovered a new resource growing in abundance on your land? What if it comes with a cost? Human behaviour is age-old, and we seem bound to repeat the choices that have echoed throughout history. We ponder access, utility, and the secret calculations we make every day.
Better, greener, more sustainable: But at whose expense?
We all want a better, greener, and more sustainable future, we also want abundance in agriculture, food production, and natural conservation. But adding the decolonial lens forces us to ask: At whose expense is this better, greener, more sustainable development made possible?
How can a data visualisation be racist?
Halloween fell on a rainy Saturday this year, and I was feeling restless and bored. But instead of doomscrolling through Twitter and…
Humans of Kontinentalist: Mick Yang
I’m almost 3 months into my internship. Currently I’m writing a story about spicy food; specifically about chilies in Asia. The main thing…
Real life is scarier than Halloween — issue #16
I want to talk about the monsters lurking under the bed. The bogeyman scares kids all around the world—it stalks the shadows, silent until it gets you for your misbehaviour. Bogeymen are imagined as grotesque, vengeful, and dangerous, but nobody really knows what one looks like. We imagine them,
Humans of Kontinentalist: Zafirah Zein
Today we chat with Zafirah, who in her short time with Konti has produced a slew of awesome stories on sex trafficking, racism against…
Part III: Everything visual about the eighteen levels of hell
A few weeks ago, the Kontinentalist team published our narrative-based game, Hell’s Apprentice, based on the Buddhist-Taoist folklore of…
Eighteen levels of hell (Part II): Writing and designing
Embracing uncertainty and life’s surprises is a large part of growing up. Even then, making a game about hell two months out of university…
Women hold up half the sky — issue #15
Was there a defining moment in your life when you decided you might be a feminist? Personally, I don't know when mine was. Looking back, there were fleeting moments ever since I was a young girl. I studied in a convent school, and I remember being perplexed at
Eighteen levels of hell (Part I): Conceptualising our game
Kontinentalist created our first-ever narrative game, Hell’s Apprentice, based on the Buddhist-Taoist folklore of the eighteen levels of…
Humans of Kontinentalist: Avel
It’s cliché, but we learn from our interns as much as they (hopefully) learn from us. One such was Avel, a design intern with us during…
Have you eaten rice? — issue #14
The first time I tried Korean tteok-bokki, I hardly knew whom I was eating it with. We'd just moved into our new house, and it was one of our first meals together—the same week Singapore's COVID-19 lockdown closed all our favourite dine-in
Conducting a virtual data storytelling and visualisation workshop
With a bonus peek into our writers’ dietary habits.
Humans of Kontinentalist: Hiang Ling
Hey Hiang Ling! Tell us a little bit about what you do in Konti.