Hammer Museum

We were invited behind-the-scenes at the shoot for Yoshua Okon's latest video Octopus. The piece, shot on location at a Los Angeles Home Depot store, explores the relationships among Guatemalan day laborers who at home fought on opposite sides of the Guatemalan civil war, yet here in the U.S. are working side-by-side in their efforts to find employment. The work was produced during Okon's residency with the Hammer. He explains more about the work in this video. (Run time: 8 minutes)

8/3/11 --- Eve Babitz is an American writer who gained notoriety by posing nude with a fully dressed Marcel Duchamp during his 1963 retrospective at the Pasadena Art Museum. She is the author of several books, including the infamous memoir Eve's Hollywood, Slow Days, Fast Company; and Fiorucci, The Book. She is a key figure in a new book, Rebels in Paradise: The Los Angeles Art Scene and the 1960s by Hunter Drohojowska-Philp. A journalist and art critic, Drohojowska-Philp is also the author of Full Bloom: The Art and Life of Georgia O?Keeffe, considered the most definitive biography of the artist to date. Join the two authors as they discuss one of L.A.?s most provocative decades. (Run time: 1 hour)

Hammer student educators are UCLA students from a variety of disciplines who serve as the museum's docents. They work with the Academic Programs department to research and develop their own tours. In this video they discuss what it's like to be a student educator and how the program has influenced them. (Run time: 4 min.)

6/10/11---In Conjunction with the UCLA Film & Television Archive film series Kazakhstan: Montage of Cinemas. Kazakh traditional music ensemble Turan performs on ancient Kazakh instruments, including the lute-like zhetygen, sherter, and dombra (all plucked); the kyl kobyz (an ancient bowed instrument); the flute-like sybyzgy and saz syrnay; together with a host of percussive instruments, mouth harps, and throat singing. Founded in 2008 by a group of students from the Kurmangazy Kazakh National Conservatory, the members of Turan are award-winning folk artists who have performed around the world. (Run Time: 1 hour, 2 min.)

5/26/11 --- German artist Silke Otto-Knapp has had recent solo exhibitions at the Kunstverein Munchen; Gavin Brown's Enterprise, New York; The Banff Art Centre, Canada; Modern Art Oxford, UK; Overduin and Kite, Los Angeles; and Tate Britain, London. She has participated in group exhibitions such as Modern Modern at Chelsea Art Museum, New York; Rendez-Vous Nowhere at the Montehermoso Cultural Center, Spain; the 9th Istanbul Biennial; and The Undiscovered Country at the Hammer. She is a visiting lecturer in painting and drawing in the UCLA Department of Art. (Run time: 1 hour, 53 min.)

7/6/11 --- The world has been caught by surprise as youthful revolutions have swept across the Middle East toppling entrenched dictators in the so-called "Arab Spring." But as the dust settles there are mixed results in terms of democratic progress and reform. Dr. Rabab el-Mahdi, an activist and participant in the Egyptian revolution and a professor of Political Science at American University in Cairo, and Jawad Nabulsi, a community organizer who was active in Tahrir Square, join us. (Run Time: 1 hour, 40 min.)

JazzPOP enters its sixth year of jazz without borders at the Hammer, bringing three wildly inventive and daringly original groups to perform in the courtyard on the first three Thursdays in August. Curated by San Francisco bassist Lisa Mezzacappa. KJazz 88.1 is the official media sponsor. (Run time: 53 sec.)

6/22/11 --- The recent catastrophic nuclear meltdowns in Japan have cast a shadow over the future of nuclear power that was undergoing a renaissance as a possible "clean energy" solution to the global warming crisis. Albert Carnesale, the Chancellor Emeritus of UCLA, Victor Gilinsky, a former commissioner of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and nuclear physicist Arjun Makhijani, head of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, discuss the future of nuclear power. (Run time: 1 hour, 33 min.)

The Hammer's curatorial department leads free and insightful 15-minute discussion about works of art currently on view or from museum collections. This talk was led by Allison Agsten, curator, public engagement. She focused on Shiko Munakata's "Fish, flower and female Buddha", 1957. (Run time: 4 min.)

6/12/11---J.J. Abrams is the Emmy- and Golden Globe-winning co-creator of the television series Lost. The producer, screenwriter, director, and composer is also creator of the TV series Alias, co-creator of Felicity and Fringe, and director of several films, including Mission: Impossible III (2006) and Star Trek (2009). Michael Giacchino is the composer of scores for the films Up, Ratatouille, and the television series Lost, among many others. He has received numerous awards for his work, including an Emmy, multiple Grammys, and an Academy Award. (Run Time 1 hour, 26 min.)

For the live sound performance "Insect Ensemble" performers were scattered around the Hammer Museum courtyard making inset noises with hand percussion and mouth sounds. Organized by musician and sound curator Jessica Catron. (Run time: 2 min., 15 sec.)

3/2/11---George Baker is associate professor of Art History at UCLA, where he has taught modern and contemporary art and theory since 2003. A New York and Paris-based critic for Artforum magazine throughout the 1990s, he also works as an editor of the journal October. Baker is the author, most recently, of The Artwork Caught by the Tail: Francis Picabia and Dada in Paris and several other books, including James Coleman: Drei Filmarbeiten and Gerard Byrne: Books, Magazines, and Newspapers. In conjunction with the exhibition Richard Hawkins: Third Mind (Run Time: 1 hour, 29 min.)

5/17/11 --- There are 97 guns for every 100 Americans, and in the last decade, 140,000 U.S. citizens have died from guns. Yet, gun control appears to be a politically dead issue even though a majority of gun owners are in favor of sensible restrictions. Joining us to discuss the proliferation of guns and the lack of controls are Stephen Higgins, the former director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, and Colin Goddard, a survivor of the 2007 shooting at Virginia Tech. Goddard, who is featured in the prize-winning documentary Living for 32, is an accidental crusader for stricter gun laws, and Higgens has spent his career trying to reduce the number of guns and victims of gun violence in America. (Run time: 1 hour, 35 min.)

On May 15th, 2011 the Hammer Museum hosted its second annual K.A.M.P. (Kids' Art Museum Project), an event imagined by artists for kids. Artists Charles Long, Jorge Pardo, Leo Marmol, and Ron Radziner led group projects that kids of all ages participated in throughout the day. The evolution of their work is captured in this time-lapse mash-up video. Enjoy! (Run time: 3 min.)

For her Hammer Project Linn Meyers made a large-scale, site-specific wall drawing on the Hammer's lobby wall. In this video she discusses her process, technique, and allows us to watch her work. (Run time: 5 min.)