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Please join
FOGGY NOTION BOOKS, FULTON RYDER, INC.,
and ARCANA: BOOKS ON THE ARTS for the launch of
NOTES FROM A REVOLUTION:
COM/CO, THE
DIGGERS & THE HAIGHT
BOOK LAUNCH + FILM SCREENING + CONVERSATION
JUNE 17th 5:00 PM - 7:00 PM
ARCANA: BOOKS ON THE ARTS
@ THE HISTORIC HELMS BAKERY
8675 WASHINGTON BOULEVARD, CULVER CITY, CA 90232
310.458.1499
MAP + DIRECTIONS
The first forty books
sold at the event will come with two limited posters -
one by Richard Prince and one by Lorraine Wild -
specially created for this project.
One set per purchaser only.
A selection of original Haight-Ashbury broadsides will be exhibited.
Refreshments and a screening of screening of Nowsreel
on the Diggers will be followed by a conversation with Charles Perry,
Claude Hayward and Harvey Kornspan, moderated by Kristine McKenna.
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The social upheaval of the sixties gave rise to fascinating coalitions and communes, but the Diggers stand apart from them all. Formed in Haight-Ashbury in 1966 by members of R. G. Davis's subversive theater company, the San Francisco Mime Troupe, the Diggers took their name from the English Diggers, a seventeenth century agrarian collective devoted to creating a utopian society free of ownership and commerce.
Under the leadership of Peter Berg, Emmett Grogan, Peter Coyote, and Billy Murcott – they were true anarchists, with roots in the Theater of the Absurd, Existentialism, and strategies of direct action. They coined slogans designed to prod people into participating and staged art happenings, public interventions, and street theater infused with wicked humor. The Diggers also provided free food, clothing, medical care and lodging to anyone in need as part of their effort to create a unified and mutually supportive community.
A critically important part of their methodology were the hundreds of broadsides that they regularly produced and distributed throughout the Haight, printed by the Communication Company, a maverick, short-lived publishing outfit founded by Chester Anderson and Claude Hayward. A selection of these graphically inventive, lacerating and sometimes funny broadsides are gathered together for the first time in Notes From a Revolution, which offers a fascinating and oddly moving record of the counterculture in its early bloom.
Kristine McKenna
is a Los Angeles based writer and art historian, and is a partner, with
Donna Wingate and Lorraine Wild, in thepublishing imprint Foggy Notion
Books. She has published twelve books on various aspects of popular culture.
Claude Hayward partnered with Chester Anderson in 1967 to co-found
underground printing press, the Communication Company, and published daily
bulletins that were distributed throughout the Haight and unified the
community. At the end of 1967 Hayward founded a commune in Covelo,
California, and in 1971 he moved to northeastern New Mexico where he
currently serves as the elected Majordomo of the Acequia de Tecolotito.
Harvey Kornspan was born in Youngstown, Ohio, and in 1964 he moved to San Francisco where he managed the San Francisco Mime Troupe from 1965-66. He was a managing partner in the Steve Miller Blues Band from 1966-68, and in 1969 he moved to Los Angeles, where he was a fellow at the American Film Institute from 1970-71. From 1976-2008 he was director of production for advertising and promotion at CBS.
Charles Perry majored in Middle East Studies at the
University of California, Berkeley, where he roomed with Owsley Stanley, the
amateur chemist who single-handedly introduced, produced, and supplied San
Francisco with LSD during the mid ‘60s. In 1968 he was founding editor and
staff writer of Rolling Stone Magazine. He published The
Haight-Ashbury: A History in 1984, widely regarded as the definitive
book on the subject. From 1990-2008 he was a staff writer for the Food
Section of the Los Angeles Times. Perry is a co-founder of Culinary
Historians of Southern California, and has translated four medieval Arabic
cookbooks.
Edited by
David Hollander & Kristine McKenna
Introduction by Peter Coyote
Essay by Naomi Wolf
Conversation with Claude Hayward by Kristine McKenna
Flexi-bound / 8 1/2 x 11" / 176 pages / 150 color
images
Published by Foggy Notion Books in partnership with
Fulton Ryder, Inc.
U.S. $40.00
sales@arcanabooks.com
