This new John Berger book edited by Tom Overton and Matthew Harle brings together for the first time John Berger’s work on mineworkers and the miners’ strikes and has been edited as a set of actions for today. Publication of The Underground Sea marks the 40th anniversary of the 1984-85 Strike, at a time when people are rediscovering the necessity, power and possibilities of collective action. Including transcripts and an image-essay of his rarely-seen BBC programme, Germinal, interviews and his essay “Miners”, it places itself in the heart of a Derbyshire mining village, with reflections on the everyday life of a typical pit community. Berger grapples with the politics of witness as he studies the miners’ labour and the wider community shaped in service to this work. Reflecting on their precarity he goes back to Zola’s novel for hope that “a new world is germinating underneath the ground. And when it arrives it will crack open the earth.”
More info on the book : https://canongate.co.uk/books/5120-the-underground-sea/
Tom Overton introduced the book The Underground Sea during a talk at Virreina Centre de la Imatge in Barcelona the 6th of October 2023, in link to the great exhibition « Permanent Red » about John Berger’s works. This exhibition curated by Valentín Roma is now closed but we still hope this exhibition hopefully travels and reopens somewhere else, don’t hesitate to contact us if you have any idea to make it possible.
Video of the talk online (spanish) : https://ajuntament.barcelona.cat/lavirreina/en/resources/john-berger-underground-sea/731
