Watch, Read, Listen

Join “Made in L.A. 2020” artist Hedi El Kholti and writer, filmmaker Abdellah Taïa as they read excerpts from their respective works and discuss their shared experiences growing up queer in Morocco and their journeys translating those experiences into writing, art, and film.

The program is presented by the Hammer Museum.

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Dr. Yurika Wakamatsu, assistant professor of East Asian art history at Occidental College, explores Tsukigase, a plum-filled mountain valley in today’s Nara Prefecture that came to be celebrated as a paradisiacal site in nineteenth-century Japan. Tracing Tsukigase’s transformations during this period, Dr. Wakamatsu examines how poets and painters who worked in the Sino-Japanese mode of literati art constructed a fleeting, utopian realm of reclusion by imbuing this remote landscape with imagery drawn from beloved works of Chinese literature.

Image credit: Okuhara Seiko, Plum Blossoms in Tsukigase Valley (detail), 1896, handscroll, ink and colors on silk, 28.4 x 508.2 cm. Koga City Museum of History

Priya Satia, professor of history at Stanford University, explores the ways in which Victorian thinkers drew on a historical sensibility to understand and justify British rule in India. By deferring ethical judgment to the future, historical thinking enabled well-meaning Britons to engage in imperial activities, including the brutal repression of colonial resistance, with mostly clear consciences. The role of historical thinking in Victorian imperialism keeps events such as the Indian rebellion of 1857 at the center of contemporary debates about how and why we study history. This event is the inaugural program of the Kathleen Peck Victorian Studies Series. Future activities will draw on the collections of the Art Museum, the Library, and the Gardens to promote knowledge of the Victorians and their times.

Join writer Jack Skelley and “Made in L.A. 2020” artist Sabrina Tarasoff for a virtual screening and conversation on Gail Kaszynski’s 1983 documentary Fear of Poetry. Kaszynski’s film is an improvisatory 40-minute foray into a fervent, formative period in the lives of poets such as Dennis Cooper, Benjamin Weissman, Amy Gerstler, and Bob Flanagan, who took part in Cooper’s famed Wednesday Night Poetry readings. Drawing on archival footage from those gatherings, including interviews and readings, Fear of Poetry presents a snapshot of Venice in the 1980s: a chorus of punks, poets, artists, and performers co-existing in a place where, according to Flanagan, “love is still possible.”

The program is presented by the Hammer Museum.

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