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.
[Archived from original facebook event page on 28 December 2021]
Event details: Sunday 17 November 2019
3 to 4:30pm – sharing presentation
4:30 to 7:30pm – open woodcut/linocut printing
wares warmly welcomes friends from Denpasar Kolektif in Bali to soft/WALL/studs and Singapore! They are visiting with a selection of woodcuts, linocuts, prints, posters, and zines, and will share with us about their space and activities, which ranges from music gigs to counter-development organising and autonomous cultural events, in relation to Bali and broader situations. Part of this is a showcase of posters and flyers from the Bergerak Bersama gig series, as well as publications that chart varying creative gestures for solidarity and life made within these contexts.
Prepare and bring your own t-shirt, tote bag, patch, loose fabric, or paper, because we will also be printing these woodcuts and linocuts together after the sharing presentation! Black ink will be used primarily so pick a lighter background colour for your substrate of choice – we'll be posting up pictures of the blocks in the comments. (Please note that it would take at least a day for this oil-based ink to dry – you may leave printed materials for collection on another day in the week.) This is a pay-as-you-can activity, and there will be other merch available. As relief printing is a manual process, there may be waiting involved depending on the turnout; we encourage folks to mingle, and the infoshop library will also be open for browsing for the day.
It doesn’t matter what they call it, settling on “commemoration” of this bicentennial only thinly veils the fact that they know what's wrong: that a history and legacy remains intact and unbroken, a foundation for what we still live with today, and that their desire to celebrate and acknowledge its “benevolence” has to be cynically checked for “political correctness” in place of actual confrontation and dismantling.
[Archived from original facebook event page on 28 December 2021]
Event details: Friday, 25 January 2019, 5pm – 12am
Joined by: cosmologists and PUPA
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?
wares is 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. (Business as usual? NAW!)
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, however we welcome donations to the space, or for drinks, stickers, and publications. These proceeds help sustain activities as well as our musician friends and would 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
[Archived from original facebook event page on 28 December 2021]
It's that time of the year again.
What the art week represents now is a normalisation of production and consumption under capitalism. The fate of the contemporary art fairs shouldn't even matter to us. Let them come, let them fail. All we have to know is that any idea of art driven by excitement for grooming the collecting class serves only a select few. Yet the logic of the market goes well beyond the walls of warehoused gallery booths and the commodified luxury object. This is evident in the very origin of the art week, and the way vibrancy is forcefully created through funding a deluge of activities to appear at the same time. This is an image operation for tourists and traders, but a mere extension of treating artists as content creators. They tell us this is good for the industry, necessitating the hardening of professionalised hierarchies, as if this programme could get infinitely bigger, in denial that the competitive system of art being modelled after is designed to not accommodate everyone. We clamour for gigs, thankful with whatever we land, implicitly accepting that hype and exposure in a space of scarcity is still better than nothing at all. But that scarcity is symptomatic of something untenable, like the vast differences in wealth distribution and the possibilities for life we see foreclosed everywhere.
[Archived from original facebook event page on 28 December 2021]
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
[Archived from original facebook event page on 26 December 2021]
After a long hiatus, wares will be doing more this year, but it didn't feel right starting that off while so much else was scheduled to happen in January. For years the spectacle has been taking over. We decided to look into the cultural landscape of Singapore and the conditions that frame contemporary art today and try to understand it in a larger picture. Our response timed with Art Stage and the Singapore Art Week is rooted in withdrawal and cultivating refusal. Needless to say, this is not another thing to consume, but a holding open of space that could persist otherwise. We say NAW, we are over this, we're resting.