Between Earth and Heaven : The Architecture of John Lautner
Exhibition Walkthrough
Co-presented with the UCLA Department of Architecture + Urban Design

This walkthrough is part of a new series of gallery talks featuring practictioners discussing the work of others in their field. Craig Hodgetts, FAIA, Principal and Co-Founder of Hodgetts + Fung Design and Architecture, is an internationally recognized architect known for his imaginative synthesis of architecture, arts, and technology. He is a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Hammer Lectures
Hank Willis Thomas
Photographer Hank Willis Thomas’s work reflects on the symbols of commodity culture and the impact of violence in African American communities. He gained wide recognition with his series Branded, a group of images where he digitally added a scarred Nike logo on different parts of the body of a black model, such as the chest and head. Willis Thomas has exhibited at the Studio Museum in Harlem; Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco; PS1, New York; and National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C. He is the first recipient of the Aperture West Book Prize, a new annual prize for artists living west of the Mississippi. He lives in Oakland, California.

The Aperture West Collaborative Series provides lectures given by some of today’s most significant photographers. Generously supported by Freestyle Photographic.

Hammer Screenings
Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison
The making of Cash’s landmark album is the narrative arc of this new documentary about a concert recorded in a prison cafeteria and captured by legendary rock photographer Jim Marshall. Two prisoners’ lives are also interwoven into the structure of this film that examines the transition of Cash’s character and his career. The presence of life in Folsom, the obstacles its prisoners faced and the struggles Cash encountered are brought to the surface. Original animation, interviews, and long lost archival material make this a compelling journey with one of America’s most celebrated icons revealing a complex unknown man in black. Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison celebrates his music, the history of an unprecedented recording, and its significance in understanding a life forever defined by darkness and light.

West Coast Premiere.
Post-screening Q&A with filmmaker Bestor Cram.

HAMMER Forum
Counting Votes and Making Votes Count
Debra Bowen & Richard Hasen
Since the 2000 election in Florida, we have grown increasingly insecure about the integrity of our voting systems. Electronic ballots have added to fears that election results can be manipulated. The latest information on the status of voter reform is discussed in advance of the November Presidential election by California Secretary of State Debra Bowen, a pioneer in open government reform and personal privacy rights, who is responsible for overseeing state and federal elections to ensure the integrity of voting machines. She is joined by Professor Richard Hasen, one of the leading experts on voting systems, election law, and campaign finance regulation, and co-editor of the Election Law Journal.

HAMMER Readings
Phillip Lopate
Phillip Lopate is an acclaimed essayist, novelist, poet, and editor. He is the author of Waterfront: A Journey Around Manhattan and Being With Children, as well as the essay collections Bachelorhood, Against Joie de Vivre, Portrait of My Body, and Totally Tenderly Tragically (his film criticism). He is the editor of The Art of the Personal Essay, and American Movie Critics. He teaches in the graduate programs of Columbia University and Bennington, and lives in Brooklyn, New York.

A series of contemporary fiction and poetry readings organized by Benjamin Weissman, author of two books of short fiction, most recently Headless, and professor of creative writing at Art Center College of Design and Otis College of Art and Design.

This series is made possible, in part, with support from Bronya and Andrew Galef.

Sunday Afternoons for Kids
Shape-Shifters
Salvador Plascencia
Create characters with multiple identities! Transform gentlemen into werewolves! Write shape-shifting stories of your own with the help of author Salvador Plascencia, winner of the 2008 Bard Fiction prize. He is currently working on a novel on American shape-shifters.

Hammer Lectures
Novo-Kino: The History of Cinematic Agit-Prop
Mark Boswell
Nova-Kino is an experimental cinematic movement with departure points from the Russian twenties, film noir, situationism, the classical avant-garde, and post-modern appropriationist theory. Experimental filmmaker Mark Boswell traces the roots of collage filmmaking to its origins in Futurism, Dadaism, and Constructivism up to the present. He co-founded the Alliance Film/Video Cooperative in Miami, and teaches in the Media Arts Department at the Pratt Institute of New York.

HAMMER Forum
A Third War: The Threat of War with Iran
Robert Baer & Trita Parsi
Is a war with Iran a possibility before President Bush leaves office? Former CIA officer Robert Baer makes the case that the US has unwittingly made Iran an emerging superpower. Dr. Trita Parsi argues that allowing Iran to use enriched uranium for fuel under the strict guidelines of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty puts the US in a strong position against nuclear weaponization and avoids engaging in a third war in the Middle East. Baer’s writings have been used as the basis of the film Syriana. His latest book is The Devil We Know: Dealing with the New Iranian Superpower. Parsi is the author of Treacherous Alliance-The Secret Dealings of Iran, Israel and the United States. He is the president of the National Iranian American Council.

Hammer Presents
An Evening with Michel Gondry
Creator of influential music videos and feature films, French Academy Award-winning filmmaker Michel Gondry discusses his own technical and conceptual process and his new book, You’ll Like This Film Because You’re In It: The Be Kind Rewind Protocol. He presents clips from his own films and homemade films from visitors to his DIY interactive installation Be Kind Rewind at Deitch Projects. Gondry has collaborated with such luminaries as Björk, The Chemical Brothers, and The White Stripes. His feature films include Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, The Science of Sleep, and Be Kind Rewind.

HAMMER Forum
Healthcare: Is Universal Healthcare the Answer?
Steffie Woodhandler, M.D.
Over 45 million Americans are without health insurance, and an estimated 14 million of the uninsured suffer from chronic diseases. Many other developed nations have embraced the single-payer approach. Could this be the answer? On the eve of the presidential election, Dr. Steffie Woolhandler, M.D., M.P.H. discusses the future of healthcare in the US. She is the co-founder of Physicians for a National Health Program, which advocates a single-payer system. She practices primary care internal medicine at The Cambridge Hospital, teaches at Harvard as an Associate Professor of Medicine, and is co-Director of the General Internal Medicine Fellowship Program.

Hammer Presents
1868-2008 A House Divided
The Lincoln-Douglas Debates Revisited
7pm Performance by artist Sharon Hayes
8pm Lecture by historian Ronald C. White

In the final weeks leading up to the 2009 presidential election, artist Sharon Hayes and historian Ronald C. White revisit the Lincoln-Douglas debates, a series of seven debates between Abraham Lincoln, a Republican, and Stephen A. Douglas, a Democrat, in 1858 for an Illinois Senate seat. These debates presaged the issues that Lincoln faced in the 1860 presidential campaign. Sharon Hayes works in performance, video, and installation through protests, speeches, and organized demonstrations in which crowds and individuals are invited to rethink their roles in the construction of public opinion. She is a graduate of UCLA’s MFA program and is an assistant professor at the Cooper Union, New York. Ronald C. White, Jr. is the author of Lincoln's Greatest Speech: The Second Inaugural, and The Eloquent President: A Portrait of Lincoln Through His Words. A graduate of UCLA, he is a Fellow at the Huntington Library, Visiting Professor of History at UCLA, and Professor Emeritus of American Religious History at San Francisco Theological Seminary. His upcoming work A. Lincoln: A Biography will be published in 2009, the year of the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial.

This event is presented and developed in collaboration with Clockshop, a non-profit arts and culture organization based in Los Angeles that supports and produces projects and conversations by artists, writers, and civic leaders: http://www.clockshop.org.

HAMMER Readings
Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum
Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum is the author of Ms. Hempel Chronicles and Madeleine Is Sleeping, which was a finalist for the National Book Award in 2004. Her fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, Tin House, and The Best American Short Stories. She directs the MFA Program in Writing at the University of California, San Diego, and lives in Los Angeles.

A series of contemporary fiction and poetry readings organized by Benjamin Weissman, author of two books of short fiction, most recently Headless, and professor of creative writing at Art Center College of Design and Otis College of Art and Design.

This series is made possible, in part, with support from Bronya and Andrew Galef.

Hammer Presents
Larry Ochs Sax & Drumming Core
Larry Ochs Sax & Drumming Core perform their original take on modern jazz improvisation, full of musical dialogue and melodic, polyrhythmic exchanges, including the cinematically-inspired opus dedicated to Akira Kurosawa. Led by Larry Ochs on tenor and sopranino saxophones, the group also features Scott Amendola (Nels Cline Singers; Madeline Peyroux; Charlie Hunter) and Don Robinson (Cecil Taylor; Glenn Spearman) on drums, plus special guests from Tokyo: Satoko Fujii on synthesizer and piano, and Natsuki Tamura on trumpet.

HAMMER Readings
Molly Peacock
Molly Peacock is the author of six volumes of poetry, including The Second Blush and Cornucopia: New & Selected Poems. Her poems have been published in The New Yorker, The Nation, and The New Republic among others. She is also the writer/actor of a one-woman show in poems, “The Shimmering Verge,” which toured the US and Canada, including an off-Broadway showcase. Former President of the Poetry Society of America, she was a co-creator of the Poetry in Motion program on New York City’s subways and buses.

A series of readings organized and hosted by Stephen Yenser, poet and professor at UCLA and author of A Boundless Field: American Poetry at Large and Blue Guide.

Hammer Presents
3 From 33 1/3
33 1/3 is a series of books about a wide variety of seminal rock and pop albums. Join three of the authors for readings and special multimedia presentations. Hayden Childs’s Shoot Out the Lights puts into context Richard and Linda Thompson’s album—from the personal history driving the songs, to the recording difficulties they encountered and the subsequent fall-out. He has appeared in Lost in the Grooves: Scram’s Capricious Guide to the Music You Missed. Kim Cooper’s In the Aeroplane Over the Sea sheds light on the underground classic album by Neutral Milk Hotel. Cooper is the editor of Scram, and co-editor of the anthologies Bubblegum Music is the Naked Truth and Lost in the Grooves: Scram’s Capricious Guide to the Music You Missed. Scott Plagenhoef’s If You’re Feeling Sinister provides perspective on how Belle & Sebastian transformed from a cult secret into a polished, highly entertaining, mainstream pop group. He is the Editor-in-Chief of Pitchfork.

Hammer Presents
Halloween in Hades
7-11pm
Plumb the depths of fiery fear with three of LA’s hottest performance groups. The ghoulish music, ghastly dancers and gruesome visuals that descend upon the Hammer Courtyard will have you shrieking with horror. Dress to kill and enter the costume contest. Cash bar all night. Ian MacKinnon’s Discount Cruise to Hell is a musical performance collective that specializes in bawdy audacity, outrageous debauchery, and mind-bending glitter rock. Purveyors of paranormal dance, the electronic duo Hecuba present cinematic and often wild performances looking for the inner future. We Are the World is a frenzy of movement, music, and visuals from Work, Nina McNeely, and Ryan Heffington. Plus a special spooky screening in the Billy Wilder Theater presented by the UCLA Film & Television Archive.