Our commons are free closing weekend talks, tours, and readings

2pm: An Intimate Walk Through the Digger Archives: Radical Print Culture and the Convergence of Two Revolutions

Join Eric Noble—archivist, historian, and onetime member of the Kaliflower Commune—for a guided tour and reflective journey through the radical print culture on display in Our commons are free. Drawing on over fifty years of collecting and curating Digger materials, this presentation will focus on selected broadsides, street sheets, and communiqués from the Digger Archives to trace the convergence of two transformative forces: the queer aesthetic of the San Francisco Beat Renaissance and the radical social agenda of the English and San Francisco Diggers.

In 1955, the Beats reawakened an avant-garde spirit that queered American literature and reshaped artistic expression. A decade later, the San Francisco Diggers, drawing in part on the legacy of Gerrard Winstanley and the 17th-century English Diggers, launched a communalist experiment in revolutionary living. Their fusion gave rise to the Kaliflower intercommunal network—a flowering of queer communal culture that included the visionary Angels of Light Free Theatre.

This walk-through—about 40–45 minutes—will move between specific artifacts on display, bringing to life the creative and political currents that flowed through this history. With each object, we’ll open a window into the lived experience of a movement that sought not just to protest society, but to reinvent it from within.

3pm: Creating The Angels of Light performances: A behind-the-scenes glimpse with Beaver Bauer

Join Beaver Bauer—who began her theatrical career as a Performer, Creator, Designer and Writer for The Angels of Light whose Free Theater was created through the Digger “free” movement. These performances were conceived of and made possible by sharing a communal life together. Discussing some of the costumes, masks and other regalia in her collection that are currently on view in this exhibition, we’ll get behind-the-scenes insight into backstories, process, influences, and how the amazing worlds of The Angels of Light were created.

4pm: You Are The News: Voices of the San Francisco Diggers—A reading of texts from the exhibition Our commons are free

As part of the closing weekend programming for its current exhibition, Our commons are free, a project by Ben Kinmont, Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture presents You Are The News: Voices of the San Francisco Diggers. This reading of texts excerpted from a range of Digger broadsides and street sheets featured in the exhibition captures the vibrant content and tone of the group’s urgent use of language. Ranging from simple community announcements and news flashes to fiery social exhortations and psychedelic poetry, this script-in-hand performance weaves verbatim fragments from the Digger publications to create a spoken word tapestry of this unique collective’s vital role in San Francisco’s 1960s counterculture. By turns fierce and funny, ranging from the mundane to the visionary, this staged reading, crafted by FMCAC’s public programs curator Brad Rosenstein and performed by a small acting ensemble, brings the exhibition’s many voices to life.

The FMCAC exhibition, Our commons are free, a project by Ben Kinmont, is a meditation on the work of the San Fracisco Diggers -- the radical community actors who emerged within the countercultural movement of the 1960s and 70s -- and their resonances with the artist's own life and work. The project presents the Diggers through the lens of four presses & their Digger-related publications and street sheets. It highlights how the Diggers used mimeographs and offset printing to establish a community based on a “free” economy: free food, free medical care, free goods, free housing, and free information. These publications didn’t merely document the movement — they were an essential service for community building, resource sharing, and revolutionary living.