The Hammer Mix: Decades
MoMA
New York
November 13, 2020
7 PM
Queer|Art presents The Hammer Mix: Decades, a special evening organized in honor of legendary artist and filmmaker Barbara Hammer (1939–2019), whose prolific creative career spanned more than six decades. The program includes a screening of short films made across those decades and explores some of Hammer’s many diverse creative interests, including love and intimacy, travel and human connection, and the art and politics of dying. N. Scott Johnson will perform a special live accompaniment to Hammer’s 2018 film Evidentiary Bodies. A post-screening conversation with film historian Sarah Keller and artists A. K. Burns and Miatta Kawinzi, moderated by program curator Vanessa Haroutunian, will consider Hammer’s influence on past, present, and future generations of artists.
“One of the greatest gifts Barbara gave us, beyond the astonishing quantity of inventive and challenging work she produced in her decades’ long career, was her eagerness to work collaboratively and her passion for creative exchange across generations of queer artists and curators,” Haroutunian writes. “Barbara’s legacy, her boundless energy and imagination, and the embodied sense of fearlessness she put out into the world continues to push conversations forward and inspire new generations of artists.”
The Hammer Mix: Decades coincides with the announcement of the winner of the third annual Barbara Hammer Lesbian Experimental Filmmaking Grant, which Haroutunian manages as a program of Queer|Art. The Hammer Grant is one of several awards Queer|Art gives out as part of its larger mission to connect and empower generations of LGBTQ+ artists.