UCLA + PST Blog: Stories and observations from UCLA events, activities and people

Wednesday Sept. 25, 2024—Walking through the Hammer

Mounting obsessions

When your office is in the same building as the Hammer Museum it’s really easy to become obsessed with different works in any given exhibition. And it’s really easy to microdose on different things that are going on at any given moment.

These days, my main obsession centers around the newly commissioned work that is currently in the Hammer lobby called Sovereign. There is a really cool sound/music element to this piece that permeates the space, including the adjacent parking structure, creating a very effective siren song that, depending on the time of day, becomes a sort of duet with the cacophony of traffic and cars moving through the lot.

Inside are these larger-than-life epic explorers created by Cannupa Hanska Luger, who was raised on the Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota. I love to walk among them, look closely at their garb and demeanor. Who are they? Where did they come from? What would they say if they could speak? Is this creature their pet? Are they holding universes between their hands? I may never know the answers and I am good with that. I'll keep asking the questions, obsessively.

It’s such a beautiful representation of very earthly materials presented in an otherworldly fashion and really embodies the theme of indigenous futurism that runs throughout multiple works in PST Art 2024. (But more on that later).  –Jessica Wolf

Saturday Sept. 14, 2024-"Silent Echoes" opens at Royce Hall

Inspiring active listening

If this image of Royce Hall hall could speak it would be telling you to come listen to the sounds of non-human, non-living species with whom we share the planet. For the opening moment of Bill Fontana's "Silent Echoes" sound exhibition which will be installed Royce Hall through October 5, the artist mingled with visitors to describe his approach to capturing audio footage by way of recording devices strapped to the bells of Notre Dame cathedral and in the caves of the Dachstein Glacier in Austria. The sounds emanating in the Royce quad daily from 12-5, Thursdays through Sundays are meant to be a "duet" of sounds from these two unique and often fragile places, Fontana said.

Fontana was a student of and frequent collaborator with famed composer John Cage, who he said inspired him to think differently about experimental sound compositions.

"I've been very invested in understanding and actively listening to the physical vibrations of everything you see," he said. In this piece the bells of Notre Dame are not being rung, they are "listening" to the sounds of Paris and responding with tones and vibrations.

Fontana also said he believes sound to be a healing property and hopes that the UCLA community will stand in the Royce quad and experience the space in a new way thanks to the installation.

Visitors to the "Silent Echoes" opening also were treated to a sneak peek at another "Atmosphere of Sound" exhibition in the ArtSci gallery on the fifth floor of the UCLA California Nanosystems Institute building on campus. The exhibition opens on October 4 and features UCLA alum Katie Grinnan's interactive soundwork "The Sensitives" which is inspired by the ways in which an octopus interacts with the world. Grinnan described and demonstrated how she programmed notes using data from nucleotides. -Jessica Wolf

Saturday Sept. 14, 2024- Forgotten Messenger performance at Hammer Museum

Out of the gallery, into the courtyard

On opening day of Breath(e): Toward Climate and Social Justice, artist Yangkura performed as the "Forgotten Messenger" in his monumental trash costume, accompanied by contemporary musician and composer Kyungso Park, performing on the gayageum, a traditional Korean stringed instrument.

This work is on view in the Breath(e) gallery, but came to life in the courtyard for a brief moment. There was something very poignant and disarming about the creature's hunched back, shuffling steps and single blinking eye as it moved to the beautiful music and responded to sounds of singing bowls that Park asked audience members to provide. -Jessica Wolf

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Friday Sept. 13, 2024-Hammer Museum

Director's reception and public party for Breath(e)

Artists like gardener Ron Finley mingled with visitors and patrons at the public preview party for the Hammer Museum's exhibition Breath(e) Toward Climate and Social Justice.

Patrons danced in the courtyard and lined up to see the exhibitions which include a variety of traditional and multimedia works. -Jessica Wolf

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Thursday Sept. 12, 2024-Press Preview tours at Fowler and Hammer

Weaving indigenous perspectives

PST Art actually began in July at the Fowler Museum with the opening of Sangre de Nopal/Blood of the Nopal: Tanya Aguiñiga & Porfirio Gutiérrez. This project brings two Los Angeles-based textile artists who are indigenous to North America in direct conversation with each other’s practice and in service of illuminating the ecological and botanical scientific knowledge of the Zapotec peoples, which stretches back thousands of years. The exhibition is focused on the ways in which indigenous artists in North America once bred, hybridized and used a certain kind of beetle, the cochineal which populate prickly pear (nopal), to create different shades of red dye for textiles.

It’s really an example of indigenous innovation, said Freddy Janka, board president of the Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara said during a press preview in the morning. In Zapotec there are not different words for “art” and “science,” he said. The Fowler exhibition is presented in collaboration with MCASB, where the exhibition will travel next.

Inside the Fowler, the artists and curators have created a space to celebrate the revival of traditional practices, invite audiences to participate in a community weaving project, and share their personal migration and labor stories.

“For me art is a way to help deal with the trauma and difficulty of living on the border,” said Aguiñiga, who grew up near Tijuana, Mexico and crossed the border daily for school. She said she uses craft as a way of maintaining and reviving traditions of her ancestral homeland. She creates pigments form pulverized pieces of the 30-foot-tall U.S. Mexico border wall and rust from parts of the fence that extend into the sea.

Gutiérrez, who has three works in exhibitions across PST Art 2024, also said he sees his work as a healing modality. He hopes the exhibitions help audiences recontextualize migration into an indigenous context and recall the fact that humans have moved across these spaces for 10,000 years without walls or lines drawn on a map to delineate nationality. -Jessica Wolf

Things are blooming at the Hammer Museum

Hammer Museum director Anne Philbin welcomed media to the press preview for Breath(e): Toward Climate and Social Justice, offering deep gratitude to Getty Foundation for its ongoing vision and leadership, not only for the ways in which PST Art initiatives have impacted artists, arts patrons and visitors to Los Angeles, but for the “long tail of research” that has been generated over all three PST Art initiatives, all of which the Hammer has been part.

“The impact over the past 12 years cannot be overstated,” Philbin said. “And there really is a spirit of collaboration that is unique to our city.”

Philbin, Hammer staff and Breath(e) guest curators Glenn Kaino and Mika Yoshitake began conceiving the exhibition against the backdrop of the of the 2020 election, the COVID crisis, the racial reckoning of summer 2020, and the fragility of our democracy. “The very act of breathing is both a fundamental act and an act of resistance,” Philbin said. “And this exhibition is about more than art and science, it reflects the Hammer’s larger mission of art and ideas for a more just world.”

Kaino and Yoshitake guided media on tours through the galleries. Kaino said the works are selected to move between literal and abstract reflections of our relationship to materials, the natural world and a changing climate in a non-linear often poetic way.

The Hammer invited Los Angeles activist and self-proclaimed Gansta Gardner Ron Finley to re-create the microclimate of his own backyard with a living garden where visitors can sit, talk, pluck edible fruits and flowers from the greenery. One of Finley’s goals as an artist is to demystify the act of gardening, Kaino said. -Jessica Wolf

Get obsessed with bees

Over the course of the next few months you might hear Hammer staff and curators talk about their “obsession” with bees.

Believe them.

And then be sure to spend some time with Garnett Puett’s work-in-progress sculpture that is being created in collaboration with the artist and a colony of bees that he is caretaker of. Tucked carefully away into a darkened enclosure, in which only two or three people can enter at a time, Puett’s precious insect friends traveled with him from their shared home in Hawaii. Over the course of Breath(e), the hive will erect honeycombs around a structure of entwined humanlike figures to create Untitled (Apisculpture), 2024. Other previous collaborations between Puett and his bees are on view nearby.

“We really became obsessed with expressing a collaborative process that de-centers the human experience,” Kaino said. Viewers of the bees at work are completely separated from the insects by glass and cannot cause harm to them (or get stung). (The bees themselves have access to a window to come and go). But Kaino also said he hopes that during quieter moments when just a few humans are gathered in near the hive that they will enjoy being confronted with the collective buzzing sound and think about the delicate balance of our very human fear responses. -Jessica Wolf

Sci-fi from around the world

May Hong HaDuong , director of UCLA’s Film & Television and UCLA professor Chon Noriega were on hand at the Hammer Museum to offer a sneak peek at  “Science Fiction Against the Margins,” a sweeping 12-week festival that brings independent voices from 21 countries to the Billy Wilder Theater at the Hammer Museum. With 40 productions, from feature films to tv episodes to experimental shorts, we’ll see perspectives that travel through space, through an earth that is “running out of space,” several “moon-based meditations,” and more.

One of the films in the festival is the 1997’s “The Sticky Fingers of Time” which the Archive is currently remastering.

“I see restoration as one of the most generative forms of time travel,” HaDuong said. -Jessica Wolf

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Tuesday Sept. 10, 2024-Getty Press Conference

Mentors, A.I. and the future of artmaking

Refik Anadol, UCLA alum and adjunct professor who has two pieces in different exhibitions in PST Art 2024, acknowledged the work of artists who have helped lead to this moment in time and specifically called out his teacher and mentor, UCLA Department of Design Media Arts Professor Victoria Vesna, who is co-curator of "Atmosphere of Sound," a PST exhibition on the UCLA campus.

Anadol’s two works in PST Art both use artificial intelligence to create pieces from data-rich photography archives. “Digital Capture: Southern California and the Pixel-Based Image World,” opening at UC Riverside on Sept. 21 and “Seeing the Unseeable: Data, Design, Art” opening at the Artcenter College of Design in Pasadena on Sept. 19.
In both projects he is exploring the use of archives of humanity to create a collective memory of humanity, he said.

“I think that truly we are in one of the most breakthrough moments of humanity,” he said.  “But I think if AI means for us anything and everything, I think the question should be also, Can it be for anyone and anything? I think the balance, comes from the artistic practices and questions that I think we can push these possibilities to begin demystifying. In both our exhibitions, if anyone visits them, they will see a process video, which is very crucial to say 'where are they in use?' And how can we be sure the systems are truly what we ask for and how they can enhance the artistic creativity?"

Anadol said he hopes this is a moment for people to start to understand AI better.

"Also, I want to maybe choose this moment to also think about--if AI means, that this new being, the intelligent thing that in history has never happened, can we also think about maybe a new medium, a new terminology? Because AI is challenging us to question reality, question creativity. I think during the PST Art, we should also talk about how can we bring every single voice of humanity under these large language models. How can we be sure it's inclusive and brings everyone, anyone, everything, one together? -Jessica Wolf

Embodying the collision of art, science and collaboration

Getty welcomed media from around the world and across the country plus curators and programming partners from across Southern California and around celebrate the imminent opening of this year's iteration of PST Art under the theme Art & Science Collide, the nation's largest art event.

 Ahmed Best, (the actor who brought to life Jar-Jar Binks in the “Star Wars “prequels, now an educator at Stanford University) called himself the embodiment of the collision of art and science as he served as master of ceremonies.

 Best talked about being part of early conversations with artists and scientists and what it means to bring those two kinds of creative people together.

 "What is this collision that we're talking about?," he said "I believe this collision is a vulnerability in both of these people who are trying to find that cohesive human experience that we all share. It's magical when it comes together, because at the end of the day, we're all just trying to figure this whole universe thing out."

 This year's PST Art is the third iteration and at the press conference Katherine E. Fleming, President & CEO, J. Paul Getty Trust announced that Getty is committing to officially making PST a regularly funded program, running every five years after the next iteration in 2030.

 It’s something that is uniquely suited to our city and culture, she said.

 "Los Angeles is unquestionably the collaboration capital of the world,” Fleming said.  “We have 70 plus institutions working together in perfect harmony. I cannot imagine another place in the world where that would have been not only possible, but really welcomed. It was born of institutions, large and small, coming together in the realization that the most vital and compelling subjects in the arts, the ones with the real potential to alter our fundamental outlook on and understanding of the world, they're really way too vast for any one institution to address. None of us could have surveyed the entire history of art in LA from 1945 to 1980. We couldn't, any of us on our own have traced the continuity of Latin American and Latinx art from Argentina to Brazil to Southern California. But PST Art made it possible for us to do that together." -Jessica Wolf