How many men at this hour are living in a state of bondage to the machines? How many spend their whole lives, from the cradle to the grave, in tending them by night and day?
– Samuel Butler
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April-November, 2020, Blackball, Greymouth, Seven Oaks Community Waltham, Oamaru, Canterbury Museum, Christchurch Art Gallery, The Christchurch Club, Mesopotamia, Barrytown, Kura Tawhiti - Castle Hill Station, Te Mata Hapuku - Birdlings Flat, Ōhinehou - Lyttelton, Scargill
A multidisciplinary project exploring Samuel Butler’s 1872 utopian novel Erewhon: Over the Range.
The Canterbury High Country at the foothills of the Southern Alps was where Butler arrived in 1860 at the age of 23 from London, fresh from completing a degree in Classics at Cambridge and escaping ordination into the Anglican clergy. Butler named the land Mesopotamia (which translates from Greek as ‘the land between two rivers’) after the ancient land in the Middle East (now modern day Iraq and Syria) believed to have been the birthplace of human civilization. His time here as a sheep farmer inspired Erewhon which he wrote upon his return to London 4 years later. Retracing Butler‘s footsteps, Te Puna Toi and Free Theatre alongside our collaborators have explored the historical, fictional, cultural, political, spiritual and musical dimensions of his journey ‘Over the Range’. We have gathered and documented the stories connected to the geographical locations featured in Butler’s novel and engaged different communities on our own creative journey and contemporary search for an 'Erewhon' of today. This is an ongoing project, to watch our films and go on our journey to date, see our project website: www.erewhonproject.com. 
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