This dispiriting world we inhabit, there often doesn’t feel like any point in going on.
But being in this space tends to draw one back in to refocus intentions. From the shelves brimming with ideas to plants lush with life and when friends and fellow travellers gather in joy or commiseration, there is a comfort in the knowledge and actuality of not being alone, of the constellations that made and surround this possibility.
Surely it should continue and be further nourished, be another way for us to keep finding each other, and though little experiments are in progress, we have challenges ahead and truly need your help.
Last year, we made the commitment to renew our lease by another two years, in the blink of an eye we’re now more than halfway through it, having just marked the infoshop’s third year open in Tiong Bahru-Bukit Merah.
This does mean there’s just about half a year left, and soon we’ll have to talk to the landlord about the lease again. There’s also the possibility of moving if a better place is found or offered, but a top priority now is to find a more sustainable way for us to make rent. We won’t be able to go on regardless if we can’t afford it, and here’s how you could assist.
We’ve had a Patreon for years that isn’t highlighted enough. It allows for easy monthly subscriptions and we want to use it to raise at least $600 per month. For greater assurance though, we hope it could cover rent in full, which will likely be going up to $1200 or more.
We could reach our lower goal with 80 more people contributing $6, or 40 at $12. To give more options, we’ve just added a $9/month tier as well. Paynow is also available to those we’ve already met and trust, and for larger sums. What would it take to gather three times of 80? These numbers are a fraction of the over 3000 of you following on Instagram, which might be for one reason or another but we sincerely hope there are friends and comrades who are not just willing but excited to help us out at this critical time.
Since 2018 wares has been self-funded by the loose assembly of friends building up and caring for the project, with rent, books, printing, maintenance and more paid from our own pockets. At present, a couple of us cover 80% of rent in varying splits, which is topped off by around $200 coming from Patreon plus fluctuating donations and sales — all of which has gone back into the project. We want to change this as it’s becoming untenable in an already hostile world with rising costs and shifting personal situations.
Back in March we mentioned one of us had a medical emergency, they’re doing well and still in the midst of recovery, but as someone who contributes a big part to rent, this has meant for them a strained ability to keep up with precarious wage labour and in turn a shrunken window for desired tasks at the infoshop. In their own words:
“I would really love to dedicate more time and energy to wares as I adjust to new rhythms, and I think I could do that if so much of it didn’t go to worrying about and working for rent, especially now with the medical bills too. It’s hard to ask for help but I and we truly need it for the space to go on, and we want to go on.”
There have been other unsteadiness among us too, while things still go on behind the scenes from week to week, unexpected departures and shifts in employment and housing have dampened energy and moods, making for our long lapse recently, but we're slowly and surely returning to activity.
We want to build some distributed resilience shared between more of us: many people pitching in small sums lightens the burden on a few people paying large sums. The present set up has us just maintaining level, often dipping low, unable to push forward with things we want to do, such as hosting projects, organising events, acquiring inventory and print equipment, sustaining direct aid, connecting with spaces, artists and publishers, bringing the library outside, and contributing to developments in liberatory organising and thought locally. We will talk more about some immediate plans soon but for now, we hope you’d heed our call, especially in a city where space for in(ter)dependence is so privatised, financialised, and increasingly under threat.
Help support Singapore’s only communal library featuring a wealth of printed matter lovingly curated for autonomous liberatory thought and practice. Keep open a social space and hub for rest, gathering, work, and self-organised activity led by an intentional ethos; a fledgling distro for anti-commercial zines, books and other printworks you can’t find at typical stores; a site for collective creative and rebellious imagination to be nurtured, expanded, and circulated; a node of continuity among transnational networks of friendships building another better world.
We understand money can be tight, spreading the word absolutely helps too. Aid us with post engagement and fighting this alg0-monster, tell your friends offline, convince those with the means to share, carry our stickers and flyers to give away, and of course, come visit, dwell, share, and explore. We are open! (And will get on top of the emails) Check out our reconfigured space with a wider entrance and air purifier now, new materials added in the past months from friends and friendly publishers, and much more to come.
Thank you for being here, for your solidarity, rage, and love in this wretched world, and see you around soon!
Last year, with the launch of Mynah Magazine's fourth and final issue, it seemed a good time to begin stocking select titles for sale at the infoshop. It ended up taking half a year to pick and order a few other books as well as make changes to the space. You can read more about this in an email and Patreon update sent last week to friends, visitors, and supporters. Part of it accounts for those few months of online inactivity as the bulk of this work happened, unseen and entangled in demoralisation, while other portions sketch out plans, threads, hopes, and challenges for the project.
We purchased a few copies with the combined intentions of supporting Mynah, exploring more varied encounters through the infoshop, and creating additional ways of sustaining it. Having also been added to our library, this cosy little space is likely now one of the few places where you could find and read all four issues.
To close out the calendar, a rare proper post featuring this little print flyer from the Institute of Barbarian Books. They had sent a whole bunch over with an order of zines a couple of years back: on the reverse is an illustrated flag also printed in 3 colour riso, and inside the fold, information in English and Japanese on the struggle for liberation and the transnational BDS movement. It’s (been) hard to gather words as demoralisation lingers still, this perennial insulation suffusing over everything on the island fortress, a hostility many have mistaken for safety. How is it that we exist amidst such apparent abundance yet seem so incapable? Or is it precisely the appearance of which that has made us so? An elaborate illusion that has us convinced there will be a slice of pie left to partake in – if only we worked hard enough and win? What explains the hemming and hawing upon orders of silence, all while productivity trudges on, in dense atomised isolation. Crisis normal. But a shared crisis. The terrifying reality of the nation state and extractive interests plays out both in genocide and the everyday curtailment of even the act of imagining a path apart. It must be evident that the call for liberation is necessarily for all – or makes no sense; to be free from these colonial and colonising structures of oppression, those ableist, racist, sexist hierarchies that end life with such ease. If anything has become clearer, it is that everything will have to begin from the interpersonal, how we meet and share our time, energy and care for one another, to fight for and build a life worth living, something shared in common. But there is much to be done.
[Originally posted on instagram on 31 January 2023]
That's it for #CutCopyPaste2023! Everything came together so late for us that there wasn’t time to make a proper post ahead of it – even this was meant to go out on Sunday morning, but here we are, such is life.
Thanks to the trust and openness of Thing Books (@thingbooks.shop) and Shrub (@shrub.0128), we got a rare invitation to bring a selection of zines and other printed matter out to share at this first edition of the spun-off zine fair. Pitched as “a little otherwise”, it was a modest intervention into a hectic marketplace that often seems to only say “everything's fine”, presenting dwelling place to read, rest, or be challenged. Hopefully it demonstrates in a small way varied potentials of print and self-publishing, and how that intersects with autonomous, liberatory networks for collective learning, healing, organising, joy, care, action, and much more.
[Also published as a series of slides on instagram]
Let's quickly run through some changes!
At around 23m2 (240sqft), our new infoshop is about double the size of the old room in Geylang, though this is of course smaller than the entire space was.
The space has air conditioning now!
Capacity for activities is 12, but we will keep it to around 6 during regular visits to let everyone have some space.
Being small and cosy, it can get busy at times, so bring earphones if that can help you focus. We may also explore having specific silent hours/days if there's interest for it.
We've kept our fridge, and now have access to a shared dispenser with hot water.
Food is welcome now, but just be considerate and careful with other folks (especially as we still encourage mask wearing) and the library’s materials.
Read on for more on:
How to visit or book the space, locale, accessibility, and community principles!
[Also published as a series of slides on instagram]
It's hard to believe it's already been half a year since moving from Geylang, but we're finally back, and for the second time this year, wares infoshop library is open!
Returning to this is exciting. Supporters on Patreon have already had a peek at what's been happening, and we've been inviting friends and past visitors to help test out using the space. There's much to update everyone on and future plans to sketch out: ideas, invitations and provocations which will unfold over the next few weeks here and on the blog. We start this first part with a summary of the journey so far, but if you've been waiting to visit, the website already has new information with hours up, so go check it out and make an appointment.
With such stubborn adherence to so-called “justice” and “peace”, they've killed another man. The fifth in four months. There's just grief and anger, which reinforce further how we must move past (think past, plan past, make past) the nation state and capital for other, better ways of collective life. On the housing blocks, council-installed flags line the corridors pretending everything's fine.
[Originally published as a series of slides on instagram, we reproduce it here verbatim, each image slide accompanied by transcribed text, with image descriptions at the end of the post.]
A quick and short post, sharing some of the notes visitors left for us and each other before we closed the library, and also to say:
Just in time, we made it, we've found a new home!
We've been resting, feeling out this space, understanding its new surroundings, and are excited to get it ready to welcome visitors again.
[Originally published as a series of slides on instagram, we reproduce it here verbatim, each image slide accompanied by transcribed texts, with image descriptions at the end of the post.]
As with searching for a new space, this has been another big step to take. Between that, choosing and learning the platform, life and work, and everything urgent or distracting in this broken burning world, it's taken longer than expected to get things ready.
For four years, wares has been a self-funded project, its physical site afforded by larger creative groups sharing most of the heavy burden of rent. Such arrangements are now past and has been difficult to find again, perhaps a symptom of the times, or just obscured by this rushed situation we didn't choose.
While we have thought of alternatives to getting a new space, they still need major reorientation and will dampen momentum and desires for sure. It's been difficult to know truly whether such a space is needed and wanted by community, if only because this “community” hasn't quite come into form yet – and even if in our guts and hearts, through what we've experienced here and elsewhere with each other, or from what dozens of you have said while visiting over these past weeks, it is something we want – and want to share with more.
