wares infoshop library is a project for collective autonomy and shared life in common. Both material and virtual, it carves out space to support potentials in gathering, study, rest, and agitation beyond capital.
Located in so-called Singapore on the Malay Peninsula, wares consists of a library collecting a variegated tapestry of books, zines, and other printed matter shared for communal use. As an infoshop, this becomes more than a static depository of novel objects and data, creating opportunities for affinity while firmly situating ideas, analysis, friendship, and action in our lived contexts.
Beginning in 2017 from a small room in Geylang, wares has evolved through multiple forms over the years in the care of a loose assembly of volunteers and friends. Co-occupying space with larger creative groups let us explore varying modes of sharing resources and experiment with hosting events, workshops, and meetings as extensions to the library.
These were all put on hold however as the Covid-19 pandemic hit, and our focus turned to an online mutual aid initiative that eventually outgrew our expectations and capacities. These two years taught us a great deal about shortcomings and unrealised potentials in community and direct action, sharpening how we might approach both. In 2022, we relocated to a different part of the island with a new space of our own, and are once again preparing to restart activities.
Living through the isolation, drudgery, and bleak future offered by the violent systems imposed upon us, we understand an infoshop as a place that can subvert prevailing logics of competition and profit; where knowledge – more than the academic kind – can circulate; where counter-normative desires and practices for living can bloom. As such, wares should be thought of as a node, one in an emergent constellation of interlinked liberatory dreams, rather than some organisation to join. Here, anyone acting in good faith is welcome, from students and researchers, to tired workers and quiet misfits, or those just curious. Take time to read, rest, play, think, and make, bringing friends and meeting new ones, knowing that despite what this world tells us, there is room for possibility in an otherwise.
Let's build and learn together.
We think our new space is partially wheelchair accessible, but it's in an older building not built to code, so this is something we need to further assess and grow capacities to overcome. If you can help with knowledge or skills, such as in sourcing for or making ramps or sharing insight on disability access and infrastructure (including that beyond mobility), and would like to collaborate, please get in touch with us.
In an effort to end reliance on social media products and their algorithm-determined attention economies, we started developing and using this website in 2021, and invite you to explore its different parts to learn more about various aspects of wares.
Through the navigation at the top or bottom of pages, you will find an introduction to the library, elaborating on what it contains, why it exists, and how to visit. With gathering, we outline activities past and present, provide information on booking the space for group use, and plan to develop an online forum for meeting one another. Mutual aid represents our own efforts in the area which we've put on pause due to exhaustion, and will be fleshed out as we reorganise and rethink how we build and practice long-term resilience and interdependence, towards a network of more localised connections. The blog holds updates and thoughts we have written, consolidating and archiving past texts, and may expand into more regular publishing. Other content, readings, contact information, and friends can be found on the links page.
wares is an autonomous collective project and we pay for everything out of our own pockets, supplemented by donations from visitors and the sale of select items. Now that we're renting our own space in this most expensive city, the pressure to keep things afloat has increased. We are asking for support from friends, comrades, fellow travellers, and wider networks – if you are in a position to do so, consider checking out our Patreon to make a monthly contribution, even a small amount goes a long way to help expand what we can do!
Beyond mere "sustainability" of a singular project, we're dreaming broader and deeper, to where life can thrive in common with the centring of care, nourishment, and solidarity; where the making of a physical site for liberatory relations to unfold also means a staking of commitments against a world that wants an end to such life.
