Performances and Public Programs
OPENING CELEBRATIONS SAT | JUNE 2 | 12–3PM | LA><ART
SUN | JUNE 3 | 2–5PM | L.A. MUNICIPAL ART GALLERY
HAMMER BASH! THU | JUNE 28 | 7PM | HAMMER MUSEUM Come celebrate the kickoff of the Hammer’s Made in L.A. 2012 music series with a live set by KCRW DJs, free museum admission, and a cash bar. The night will feature a special performance by Made in L.A. artist Scott Benzel.
D’ETTE NOGLE - MEDITATION BELL FOR MUSEUM D’Ette Nogle conceived of this project in response to the Hammer’s weekly mindfulness sessions led by UCLA’s Mindful Awareness Research Center (MARC), which was “created to bring to a renowned mental health research institution the ancient art of mindful awareness in a scientifically supported and rigorous form.” At the conclusion of each session, the facilitator chimes a bell. For Nogle’s intervention, a bell will chime at 20-minute intervals throughout the museum in an effort to allow the institution’s affiliation with mindfulness to literally permeate its spaces.
JUNE 3 | L.A. MUNICIPAL ART GALLERY JUNE 7, 22 | JULY 5, 19 | AUG 2, 16, 30 | HAMMER MUSEUM Zac Monday will use his cast of characters donning vibrant, ornate, fantastical hand-crocheted costumes to present different scenarios around the gallery spaces. Enacted by performers, these figures call attention to architectural moments, emotional expectations, and the psychogeographic space of the museum. They animate the building with mysterious, playful, and haunting physical forms that dawdle, crawl, and linger. Performances take place without set times, bringing an element of spontaneity and the unexpected to museumgoers’ experiences.
SIMONE FORTI - NEWS ANIMATIONS TUE | JUNE 12 | 7PM | LA><ART THU | JULY 19 | 7PM | BARNSDALL GALLERY THEATRE THU | JULY 26 | 7PM | HAMMER MUSEUM THU | AUG 16 | 7PM | HAMMER MUSEUM THU | AUG 30 | 7PM | BARNSDALL GALLERY THEATRE Developed in the mid-1980s, Simone Forti’s News Animations encompasses the translation of the imagery and language of newspaper reports and newscasts into improvised movement compositions. Listening to and reading the news in the months leading up to Made in L.A. 2012, Forti has produced a series of writings and drawings that she will translate into collaborative improvisational performances done throughout the duration of the exhibition at all three venues.
KENYATTA A. C. HINKLE - KENTIFRICA IS: AN ETHNOMUSICOLOGY PERFORMANCE THU | JUNE 14 | 7:30PM | HAMMER MUSEUM THU | AUG 2 | 7:30PM | BARNSDALL GALLERY THEATRE Drawing from her long-term autoethnographical project Kentifrica, which encompasses the creation of a revival of a continent where the histories of Kentucky and the ancestral heritage of West Africa converge, Kenyatta A. C. Hinkle will present two concerts by ethnomusicologists studying Kentifrican musical forms. Working in collaboration with performer/composer Kevin Robinson and instrument maker and musician Eugene Moon, Hinkle has created a series of instruments and original musical compositions inspired by different regions of Kentifrica.
ASHLEY HUNT - NOTES ON THE EMPTYING OF A CITY THU | JUNE 21 | 7:30PM | BARNSDALL GALLERY THEATRE TUE | JULY 10 | 7:30PM | HAMMER MUSEUM Notes on the Emptying of a City revolves around Hurricane Katrina and the questions of race, visibility, and speech that the catastrophe continues to reveal. Alone on stage, Ashley Hunt narrates his experiences of working with a delegation of social justice activists in New Orleans while presenting images of the city interspersed with video of citizens’ testimony. What looks at first like a traditional slide lecture quickly turns into storytelling, completed at the end by a discussion with the audience.
SCOTT BENZEL - (THRENODY) A BEGINNER’S GUIDE TO MAO TSE-TUNG—FOR 2 TAPE LOOPS, DANCERS, CELLO, VIOLA, VIOLIN, AND PERCUSSION FRI | JUNE 22 | 7:30PM | HAMMER MUSEUM THU | JUNE 28 | 7:30PM | HAMMER MUSEUM This performance features two reel-to-reel tape machines in the center of the performance space. The tape loops are stretched between dancers costumed as the faux Maoist rebel portrayed by Sharon Tate in a 1967 issue of Esquire. The photo-essay that inspired this performance was accompanied by aphorisms from Chairman Mao’s Little Red Book and featured a scantily clad Tate surrounded by luxury goods. In Scott Benzel’s translation, each dancer employs a different appliance to maintain tape tension. The looping tapes play an electronic composition while a cellist, violist, violinist, and percussionist play both a predetermined score and improvised reactions to the loops.
MATH BASS - BRUTAL SET FRI | JUNE 22 | 8PM | HAMMER MUSEUM SUN | JUNE 24 | 3PM | HAMMER MUSEUM Math Bass brings a chorus of collaborators together for a performance that meditates on bodies absorbed in stillness. A sculptural set made of staircases and cinder blocks creates a stage on which performers act out different phases of physical and emotional transformation. Language serves as both image and object as voices interact with set pieces in this spiraling narrative. This new work is the latest of Bass’s innovative performances that playfully negotiate bodies in space.
FIONA CONNOR - LOBBIES ON WILSHIRE JUNE 28–JULY 12 | MUSEUM HOURS | HAMMER MUSEUM As part of her installation Lobbies on Wilshire, artist Fiona Connor will initiate a two-week publishing workshop within the architecture of her installation. Connor will work with invited guests and museum visitors to produce an alternative publication to the Hammer Museum’s official catalogue for Made in L.A. 2012. Connor’s publication, produced on-site using a commercial photocopier, will document the various reactions to the exhibition from within the space.
MICHELLE DIZON - PERPETUAL PEACE FRI | JUNE 29 | 8:30PM | BARNSDALL GALLERY THEATRE Perpetual Peace is a live performance that accompanies a feature-length video about contemporary globalization in the Philippines. The artist’s narration and a live music score contextualize a lush and challenging set of images shot by Michelle Dizon in the Philippines. The work explores the nexus between the legacy of colonialism, the extraction of resources from the third world, the biopolitics of migrant labor, the U.S. remilitarization of its former colonies, the postcolonial diaspora, and the human cost of empire.
ARTIST CONVERSATIONS THU | JULY 12 | 7:30PM | BARNSDALL GALLERY THEATRE Participating artists will frame and contextualize their work through talks, discussions, screenings, and performances. Artists include Meg Cranston, Vishal Jugdeo, Dashiell Manley, Nicole Miller, and Ry Rocklen.
KOKI TANAKA - INTIMATE ORCHESTRA SUN | AUG 5 | 2PM & 2:30PM | HAMMER MUSEUM Koki Tanaka will elaborate on his video installation by activating the Lobby Gallery with an intimate performance. Tanaka will invite 10 flutists to perform simultaneously for 10 audience members, each flutist playing directly to one audience member who is situated nearby. Like Tanaka’s video, which focuses on two marimba players negotiating the same instrument, this piece transforms the usual artistic arrangement and invites unexpected outcomes in a live musical experiment.
NZUJI DE MAGALHÃES - DAILY PERPLEXITIES SUN | AUG 5 | 3:30PM | HAMMER MUSEUM SUN | AUG 12 | 3:30PM | HAMMER MUSEUM In Daily Perplexities, four hand-painted pianos are played simultaneously by several pianists, who perform a score inspired by the lives of children. Nzuji De Magalhães covered her pianos with images of a scene that could exist in L.A., Africa, or somewhere in between. The delightful manner in which these pianos are played—players stand behind them and play them “upside down”—reflects the artist’s innovative ways of approaching her work.
VINCENT RAMOS - HERE THE POETS CHOP THEIR FINGERS SERVED UNDER GLASS SAT | AUG 18 | 4PM | L.A. MUNICIPAL ART GALLERY Vincent Ramos’s installation features several unannounced performative actions representing cultural archetypes/stereotypes from the postwar period that have emerged from the artist’s extensive research of Venice Beach in the 1950s. On August 18 actress Christie Herring will give an in-character lecture as local late night horror host Vampira.
THE ARTIST THEATER PROGRAM: A GROUP SHOW OF FILM AND VIDEO BY VISUAL ARTISTS TUE | AUG 21 | 7:30PM | HAMMER MUSEUM Organized by Erika Vogt as a community-building effort using the screen as a site for experience, the screening is a chorus of parts: moving parts, speaking parts, skeletal parts, muscle parts, parts for the eyes, parts for the senses, parts for thought, and parts for the imagination. Artists include: Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet, Alice Könitz, Paul Sietsema, Adam Putnam, James Welling, Madison Brookshire and Tashi Wada, Math Bass, Shannon Ebner, Lucy Raven, W.A.G.E Coalition, and musicians Mark So and Tashi Wada.
ZACKARY DRUCKER - ZACKARY DRUCKER & HER FRIENDS: FILMS & CONVERSATION WED | AUG 22 | 7:30PM | HAMMER MUSEUM Zackary Drucker hosts an evening of film screenings and conversation examining the poetics and politics of conflated gender, performative documentation, and queer cinema. Films: The Queen, starring Mother Flawless Sabrina (1968, dir. Frank Simon, 68 min.); Broken Goddess, starring Holly Woodlawn (1973, dir. Dallas, 20 min.); At least you know: you exist (2011, dir. Zackary Drucker with Flawless Sabrina, 16 min.). Followed by a conversation with Drucker, Flawless Sabrina, and Woodlawn. Cash bar at 7:30PM, screening at 8:30PM. |