Our commons are free a project by Ben Kinmont
Fort Mason Art presents Our commons are free, a project by artist Ben Kinmont exploring the rich history and lasting influence of the San Francisco Diggers – the radical community actors who emerged within the countercultural movement of the 1960s – at Fort Mason Center For Arts & Culture (FMCAC). Exhibiting the group’s innovative street sheets and printing operations, Kinmont tracks the Diggers’ push for new societies based on “free” ideals of individualism, community care, and a rejection of consumer capitalism.The show includes a comprehensive collection of rare Digger publications, ephemera, and photography courtesy of the Digger Archives; Angels of Light Free Theater masks, and performance regalia by Beaver Bauer, Rodney Price, and Martin Wong; plus new film, wall, and assembly projects by Kinmont.
Exhibition Details:
On view: June 22, 2025 through August 10, 2025
Hours: Wednesday to Saturday, 12:00 p.m. (Noon) to 6:00 p.m.; Sunday, 11:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.
Opening Reception: Saturday, June 21, 2025, 3:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m.
The Store House, Landmark Building D, across from FLAX Art & Design store
Free Admission
Founded in 1966 and including figures like Billy Murcott, Emmett Grogan, Peter Coyote, and Peter Berg, the Diggers evolved from street theater roots to establish free kitchens, stores, crash pads, and the first free medical clinic within the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood. They framed their strategy as “guerrilla theater” – what an early Digger street sheet called “Life acts! Acts that can create the condition of life they describe.” The Diggers would proclaim the “Death of Money” in a December 1966 Haight Street parade as they moved to create those free zones and situations.
Our commons are free traces the evolution of Digger publications from their earliest broadsides (in what came to be called The Digger Papers) through the development of the Communication Company’s underground press, to the post-Summer Of Love Free City News, and ultimately to the Friends Of Perfection Commune’s Kaliflower newspaper, which circulated among hundreds of communes at its peak. The exhibition’s focus on print culture 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.
Kinmont came to the San Francisco Diggers through his interest in their namesake: radical pamphleteers in mid-17th-century England, whose advocacy for an agrarian “commons” available to all would be remade by the 1960’s Diggers as a release from capitalism. “My interest in the Diggers began as a student of American Studies and antinomianism in the early 1980s,” Kinmont explains. “Although I recognized the name of the San Francisco Diggers from my childhood – it was something I associated with theater and free food – their ideas were vague in my memory until I participated in a panel with Peter Coyote in 2002, and subsequently encountered Communication Company street flyers in the rare book market.” Kinmont adds: “Many discoveries, both personal and historical, have occurred during the creation of Our commons are free. At numerous points in my research, the history of the San Francisco Diggers has folded into the story of my own family.”
Kinmont opens the show with a forty-foot timeline piece illustrating the rich artistic, political, and personal histories exhibited in this project: from the Diggers’ beginnings in the San Francisco Mime Troupe and the Hunters Point Uprising through pageants and free spaces in Haight Ashbury to the Angels Of Light Free Theater, including performances by Hibiscus and sets by Martin Wong. Kinmont has made a new film, Saints Paradice, drawing from never before seen footage of the Angels made by member and filmmaker Jilala Jet von Jalopy. Kinmont’s own Antinomian Press appears in the exhibition as a contemporary publisher sharing the Diggers’ print legacy, circulating a free essay about the history of the group that was contributed by the Diggers’ archivist Eric Noble. These free texts can be picked up from a free store in the exhibition space and through special printing events on the street throughout the exhibition’s run.
“I’ve long admired how Kinmont’s project-based work roams outside the art world and its spaces, turning instead to streets, stores, and kitchens for intimate encounters and exchanges,” says Frank Smigiel, FMCAC’s Chief Curator and Director of Arts Programming and Partnerships. “In surfacing and responding to these Digger communications, he recreates their world and offers us the opportunity to meet and maybe even practice this ‘free’ way of being, acting, and doing things.”
Our commons are free marks the launch of FMCAC’s new summer gallery season, complementing its established winter program in Gallery 308. As Mike Buhler, CEO of Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture, notes: “Fort Mason has always served as a place where San Francisco’s past, present, and future converge. With Our commons are free, we continue our commitment to being a gathering space where visitors can engage with the rich artistic and cultural history of our city while contemplating its current state. The Diggers’ radical vision of community and freedom resonates deeply with our mission to foster creative expression and social connection. As we approach our 50th anniversary, exhibitions like this remind us of the vital role cultural spaces play in preserving and reimagining our collective heritage.”
About Ben Kinmont
Ben Kinmont is an artist, publisher, and antiquarian bookseller whose work explores alternative systems of exchange, archival methodologies, and social sculpture. His project-based practice often involves publishing and distributing materials outside traditional art world channels to create more direct connections with audiences. Kinmont started his Antinomian Press in 1995 as an alternative to the commercial gallery system and as a means to distribute the free books and ephemera crucial to project-based artwork.
About Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture
FMCAC is a non-profit operating within a Historic Landmark District along the northern waterfront of San Francisco. FMCAC hosts a lively mix of arts, cultural, and educational programming in renovated military buildings repurposed as a cultural center.
Free Admission
Image Information: #1 The Diggers, Invisible Circus Announcement, 1967; #2 Ben Kinmont, Saints Paradice (still), 2025; #3 Ben Kinmont, Street Press (activation in Paris), 2023; #4 Ben Kinmont, Our commons are free, installation at Air de Paris, 2023
