Digging the Commons: Enacting “Free”
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Screening + Symposium
Wednesday 5 November, 10am-1pm
William MacMahon Ball Theatre, Old Arts Building
University of Melbourne, Parkville Campus
Screening (10:00am): Nowsreal (dir. Peter Berg and Kelly Hart, with anon. contributions by members of the Diggers/Free City Collective in the spring of 1968)
Symposium (11:00-1:00): Digging the Commons: Enacting “Free”
This symposium examines the radical literature of the English and San Francisco Diggers and the trajectories and vicissitudes of communalism and social (r)evolution in the Anglophone West, with broader, more fundamental reconsiderations of the commune model and the conception of utopia. The discussion explores the longue duree of Winstanley and the True Levellers (the English Diggers) and the San Francisco Diggers (who grew into the Free City Collective and eventually the Planet Drum bioregional project) by presenting three perspectives:
Dr. George Mouratidis will present a comparative reading of the radical – very often poetic and theatrical – treatises, pamphlets, broadsides and “street sheets” of Gerrard Winstanley/the True Levellers and the San Francisco Diggers; Remy van der Wiel, KC will discuss his involvement with Melbourne’s own Free Store on Smith Street, Fitzroy in the early 1970s which provided free legal and medical services to local community, as well as his involvement in establishing the free Fitzroy Legal Service and the socio-political climate that produced them; and researcher, creative and community activist Lavinia Kailis will discuss issues of food security and sustainability as well as her work with the Just Food collective.