THE FRINGE WARE MISSION

Actions of "selling out" and "cashing in" are often thought to be binary in nature. Sellouts are bad, right? But the intricate, interconnected grey area (™ Em Delaney) in which we live, survive, work, and make art in the world is an experimental plain. The idealistic artist, the socioeconomically aware citizen, and the nasty ol' capitalist economy are all delicately intertwined.

From this perspective, living and working ethically in the Big Bad World becomes less an experience of angst and guilt, and more one of creativity, compromise, and even fun. Not only can we develop individual Cash-In Theories, but we can craft businesses and marketplaces that parallel the mainstream economy, occasionally intersecting it.

I've been involved in many such indie enterprises, and one of my favourites was Fringe Ware, Inc. Based in Austin, Texas and online from the early to late 1990s, FW imagined a confluence between the existing marketplace and a set of values we could all live with. Genius Fringe Ware co-founder Paco X. Nathan sez that I may publish here the Fringe Ware Mission Statement from back in the day, back when the average person didn't throw around words like "sustainable," back when I had a blue mohawk, back when we thought we were going to change the world with the Internet… hm, look how that turned out! Anyway, this is some good reading and I hope you enjoy it.

Fringe Ware, Inc., is a small commercial enterprise dedicated to community development around a fringe marketplace, where the edges of diverse alternative cultures intersect. We feel that the Market is the core of any community, and sick markets mean sick communities… just look around.

FWI acknowledges the essential importance of trade, but our mission is to create a context for E. F. Schumacher's "Economics as if People Mattered."

What's in the Fringe Market? We focus on publications, events, and products that we find interesting, fun, and enlightening. We publish printed and electronic periodicals including Fringe Ware Review, TAZMedia, and Unshaved Truths; operate a retail bookstore and mail order service selling street tech, gizmos, wearable subversive memes, etc.; host an Internet mailing list for information from/about the cultural and technological fringes; and organize events with other organizations on the Fringes.

We're learning that people can survive quite nicely without huge corporations, huge governments, and huge dogmas pushing their lives. So here is the FWI alternative: start your own corporation. Trade with other like-minded people throughout the global village. Encourage innovation and promote entrepeneurship. Promote fair, cooperative business practices. Emphasize products that facilitate creativity, health, and play. Explore consciousness alternatives. Build community through advanced, available technologies, e.g. computer networks. Respect and consider the natural environment by promoting sustainable resource use. Have fun, be weird, and make what it takes to survive.

Welcome to the fringes of art, technology, and society. From here innovation emerges, and here survival, through cooperation and use of the unexpected, counts. --Thanx! 

Comments

[Hugo JUNOT]

Thank you for kind words about FringeWare!

Once upon a time, a California politician got labeled "Governor Moonbeam" for suggesting that the state purchase a satellite to help provide emergency communications. Years later, California owns satellites for that purpose and the label has been retracted by the journalist who penned it.

Looking at how ecommerce tipped the balance circa 1997, how the Long Tail became a big business strategy circa 2002, how sustainability erupted into the mainstream circa 2006, then FringeWare did not do too badly with its vision circa 1992.

[dynamo]

FringewaRe Review kicked ass. You guys were onto something early.

[Dave]

Fringeware changed my life!

[Jon Lebkowsky]

Hey, wonderful to see a remembrance of the work we did so long ago. I've been thinking a lot about FringeWare lately - the mission statement we wrote was rather predictive of scenes that have emerged online since, and I still find myself talking about, and exploring, the same thoughts and themes.

[Wiley Wiggins]

One of the most important times of my life and a mission to remember and preserve.

Pictures and ephemera:

http://www.laughingbone.com/fringe

[magdalen]

seriously. this was amazing stuff, folks. jon and paco stirred it up and shook it down.

i can't believe there was a Men of Fringe Ware calendar and i didn't know about it??????? holy crap! look at you weirdo hotties. rrrwow. any copies left?

[gregoryp(tm)]

I still have most of my copies o' Fringeware, but it wasn't until mid-90s when I showed up to Austin that I realized what a Total Scene it all was. I hung out at the coffee shop next door and would go to these weird parties at FW. When I heard the place had shut, I knew that an important part of Austin culture had succumbed to the dot-com boom.

Funny thing, that? That the beast we thought we'd straddle and ride off into the sunset just drove gentrification through the roof and most of us OUT. Of Austin. San Francisco. Seattle. Ironic, huh? The worst kind. sigh...

[magdalen]

and most of it helped it become the beast, and then suckled at the beast's teat.

always a conundrum: how much to sell out, when, and why? and if you do stuff for "good" reasons, what if it ends up becoming a big sellout scene with or without ya?

[Erika Whiteway]

I've been thinking about FW alot too. After being offline for about eight years post-FW I came back to to find confusion and a chorus of excited cries of a New Utopia. Gee, that sounds so familiar! I don't think FW sold out, I think we were eaten by
our mainstream admirers who couldn't maintain the mission and they sold us out.