P.O.V
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Commune
Matt Stack on Commune
In each edition of our journal*, we ask a handful of people to reflect on our chosen theme. This is Matt Stack on commune:
As a Gen-X son of Boomers I have met actual hippies. My uncle and aunt lived in remote locations with alternative lifestyles, and sent postcards when their boat got stuck in Samoa. As a Bunbury teenager I explored the abandoned hippie commune of Belvidere on the Leschenault Peninsula. Shelter, Lloyd Kahn’s illustrated guide to alt-traditional building, was my gateway to architecture. For me, Commune resonates with cutting-off from the mainstream to pursue other ideals, and I’m a bit susceptible to that.
Matt Stack, 2021
My closest-to commune encounter was in a collective of fine art and architecture students who formed the Jacksue Gallery in Murray Street from 1995-1998.
We would have scorned the term Commune, but nonetheless we formed our own alternative world behind an opaque shopfront
I now work in the relentlessly mainstream world of state government planning, but there remains a commune-dweller part of me who can never fully believe that the way things are, is the way things have to be.
* Matt is an architect and urban designer working on the Metronet project at the Department of Planning, Lands and Heritage. Copies of Commune can be purchased at The Fulcrum Press, with all proceeds going towards projects within First Nations communities.
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