Dropper’s – Andy Webster & Darren Ray OSR Projects Lobster Trap Commission 2016

In 1965 Gene Bernofsky, Jo Ann Bernofsky and Clark Richet, art graduates of the University of Kansas desired to live and work together free from the hierarchies and restrictions of mainstream life. On a piece of wasteland near Trinidad, Colorado they built an experimental settlement named ‘Drop City' with the aim being for the site to be an environmental research centre, a collaborative space for artists, inventors, free‐thinkers and collectives who wished to celebrate creative experimentation. This group of people who became known as ‘Droppers’, established a non-­hierarchical community, openly sharing ideas, collectively living and working together and this was seen as the goal and potential of counter cultural attitudes of the time, a kind of socialist psychedelica. 50 years on do the Droppers thoughts and ideals still have relevance? What might the practice of the ‘psychedelic socialism’ mean or offer us today? In what ways might we still be looking for the this kind of life - might it produce alternative modes of living often suppressed by immanent capitalism? Collaborative artist’s Andy Webster and Darren Ray propose to explore these questions in their project ‘Dropper’s.’