Category: Updates

Categories
Library Stocking Updates

Mynah, and brief notes on doing

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.

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Categories
Activity Texts Updates

Introducing: commun~

something incomplete,
something stretch-
ing out, staking time,
space, and desire
to feel and fill out,
becoming…

(in / as
loose assemblies)

something
ungovernable,
perhaps evoking,
approaching, those
hows and whats in:
commoning,
communing,
communicating,
communising…

Against isolation, let’s gather!

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Categories
Texts Updates

much to be done

Photo of a stylised and simple drawing printed with 3 colours: red, green, and black, on off-white paper. It features an olive tree growing out of a wrecked tank sat on a mound, its tracks and barrel broken. A childlike figure, head wrapped in a keffiyeh, sits on the tank, they reach out picking the olive fruits, placed into a basket beside them. A flower blooms nearby, and two birds fly free around the tree, one with an olive branch and fruit in beak. At the bottom of the drawing, handwritten with all uppercase letters: “FREE PALESTINE!”

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.

Categories
Activity Archive Updates

a little otherwise

Event details: Friday – Sunday,
27 – 29 January 2023, 12– 8pm
Temasek Polytechnic

[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.

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Categories
Updates

Been wanting to visit?

A square image that is mostly an abstract colour field. It is blurry and cloud-like, primarily being bright yellow, orange, pinks in the centre, with purples, dark blues, and greens on the top and bottom fringes.

[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!

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Categories
Updates

We're Back! And Open!

[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.

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Categories
Texts Updates

as flags hang

A rectangular portrait image with text laid over rather abstract visuals. The background is a halftone photo in dark red and grey of what looks like an object-strewn street after a riot. Large lowercase serif text in white occupies the top, middle, and bottom of the frame, reading: “as flags hang the state hangs death feeding that violent celebration of riches oblivious to the rage and love and possibility held in abolishing it all” In the middle of the frame superimposed by the above text is an inset square colour-reversed photo in contrasting beige, purple, and dark red of what looks like a massive oil storage tank engulfed in flames and smoke. Small lowercase sanserif beige text lines each edge of the square, reading: “this world's burning / extracting life / crisis normal / absent all care”

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.

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Categories
Updates

A New Home

[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.

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Categories
Texts Updates

We've got a Patreon up and running!

[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.]

patreon.com/wares

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.

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Categories
Updates

Bad News and Invitations

Bad news hits hard. About a week after announcing that we're open again, we heard from the landlord that they would not be putting the space back up for rent. Somehow, after four years here we didn't expect that this might happen. Perhaps complacently, continuance was assumed to be a done deal, with friction more likely to be with our co-tenants. Yes, probably rent negotiations, but not an outright non-renewal of the lease, and with such short notice too.

It's upsetting to say the least, if also absurdly ironic after that look back on the work and recovery of the last year. Indeed facing the dilemma of plans in crisis normal, do you laugh or cry? But isn't that just the reality of things, power held over us by those who get to decide, regardless of how “nice” they may be? As we wrote in December, along with preparing for a whole bunch of other desires, finding a more accessible site and crowdfunding were already in the plans, we just have to push them to the fore now.

The infoshop remains open, but sadly only till the end of March. Following from the last post, a new appointment form is now up (also on linktree) for both library visits and space bookings. Hours are on the website and instagram story highlights. Please use the space. We will try our best to fill as many dates as possible, and hope to see you around this last month.

The stakes are different going forward, ripe for reorientation. If you believe in this project and what potentials space can cultivate, we want to hear and honour your ideas:

What do you need or want in a space? What could help your organising or social life? What would make you want to be around more? Do you want to help fund a new space, or to contribute in other ways? Do you have a project that needs space? How far are you willing to travel, if a desired space and community can meet you there? Share your thoughts by email, when you visit, or with a comment or DM on instagram.

In the coming week(s) we will be launching a Patreon, which would help gauge what sort of recurring support is possible, and guide the search for a new place to rent. If you have any leads, or want to share a space, or even host us, your help would be greatly appreciated!

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