[Archived from original facebook event page on 28 December 2021]
16 December 2018
Event details: Friday, 21 December 2018, 5pm – 12am
If we describe our lived world as at once disquieting and pacifying, what could help push against the enveloping sense of exhaustion, isolation, and powerlessness?
From this Friday, wares begins organising intentionally quiet evenings for reading and rest accompanied by ambient sound and music. This, in response to the noisy spectacle of leisure and escapism; to negate social relations defined by being labourers for and consumers of value and content; to serve as a spatial node for worlds to meet and potential imaginations for autonomy to materialise.
You are invited to pick up a book, zine, pamphlet, or other printed matter to dwell with, either in our shared library or the main room of soft/WALL/studs. We will be joined by live ambient improvisations played over the course of the evening. Come through at any point, and stay for as long as you'd like. We ask of each other to enter a quietness and attentiveness in inhabiting the space, to respect the need to be silent or at rest, and encourage communing at other registers to instead happen along the exterior parapet.
The music will be shaping these zones, but also allowed to sit in the background of contact; we hope to dissolve the line between performer and audience, stage and floor, and have us be mindful of not approaching only as spectators, but meeting as listeners and active agents in common. In a loose assembly, we’re making music for a library, but also holding space for more folks to initiate and collaborate against the disquiet.Entry is free; as usual, donations to the space, for drinks, stickers and publications would help cover costs and be very much appreciated – but so too would your presence and care.
“Ambient is never only music. It is a confluence of sound, situation and listenership; moreover it’s an unspoken contract between the creator, listener and place, seeking to achieve a specific type of musical experience.” – 12 notes on future ambient
22 December 2018
Thank you all for joining us yesterday, for reading and resting together, for holding this space of quiet for one another. It was such a wonderful atmosphere that we haven't experienced ourselves either, we're energised and would love to try doing this again. Let us know if you wanna get involved or have ideas for improvement!
If you'd like to hear more of Yu Tong's music or support his work directly, click through to his bandcamp page: https://cosmologists.bandcamp.com/
Also, the infoshop library is still open as usual three nights a week, follow us here and on Instagram for schedule updates.
