FCJ-143 Ouvert/Open: Common Utopias.

In recent years, the commons has been revitalised as a utopian concept for resistance against global capital and commodification. Refusing the dichotomy of public and private ownership, the commons offers an alternate vision of collectively negotiated land use and practices as a shared space. In this article, we consider the utopian nature of the commons through the example of a project we started in the spring of 2010 in Montréal, Ouvert/Open. By examining how the idea of the commons manifests in the virtual and physical spaces of this project, we highlight the inherent contradictions that emerge in contemporary activist practice.