All right, I think we can get
started.
Thank you all for joining us today.
My name is Aram Moshayedi.
I'm one of the curators of the
museum and technically speaking,
I'm the Robert Soros Curator of
the Hammer.
And this is a weekly series,
as many of you know, focusing on
works in the collection where
Hammer curators discuss
specific objects that are
more often than not on view.
The series will focus on artists
featured in Made in L.A.: A Version.
Free reservations to visit the
Hammer are now available.
Visit our website
to reserve your time to see
our biennial now open at
the Hammer Museum and the Huntington
Library, Art Museum and Botanical
Gardens in Pasadena.
Today, as I mentioned, my
name is Aram Moshayedi and I'm going
to be speaking on the work
of Hedi El Kholti.
After the presentation, I will be
able to answer
the questions that you might have,
a few Zoom notes before we
begin, when the presentation
starts, please select "Speaker
View" in the top right corner of
your screen and in the top middle
of your screen, please click
on "View Options" to ensure
side-by-side and fit-to-window
are checked.
I should also check that.
Please note that today's program is
being recorded.
You have the option to toggle your
camera on or
off using the camera icon in the
bottom left corner, Whatever you're
most comfortable with.
You will remain on mute until the
end of the presentation, at which
point I will unmuted those who have
questions.
During the presentation.
If you have any questions for me
or any technical issues, you can ask
those using the chat feature at the
bottom of your screen.
So with that, is it
possible Keane, to
pull up the slides?
Right, thank you.
Okay.
In an otherwise undated,
untitled zine, seemingly
edited and organized
by Hedi El Kholti, a
collaged image appears on page
seven.
I use the word "seemingly" because
in the spirit of a zine
as a potent and informal
literary device, there are
few to any identifying details
included throughout its pages.
El Kholti is credited as a
translator, and a text
attributed to him appears where a
postscript might otherwise
appear.
But there is no colophon, there
is no title page, There is
no table of contents, there
is no list of illustrated works,
there is no caption or
distinguishing information for the
image in question.
These are the publishing protocols
we have come to expect.
Next slide, please.
We have come to expect from
our more official channels,
but none of the items I've just
listed can be found in the pages
of this curious zine.
Even the most rookie reader could,
however, decipher that the zine is
the product of a compulsion that is
tireless, desirous,
and laborious.
Three words that aptly describe
its contents and its maker
Hedi El Kholti,
an import to Los Angeles
in 1992.
Originally from Rabat, Morocco.
And I failed to mention at the
beginning that this is a love letter
to Hedi.
The unnamed zine in question
offers its readers for the first
time the English translation
of Rene Schérer and
Guy Hocquenghem's first
chapter of Co-ire
album Systématique de l'enfance.
Co-anger Systematic Album
of Childhood, the English
translation first published by the
French philosophers in their native
language in 1976.
From what I have been able to
decipher elsewhere, El kholti's
translation is the only extent
read of the text in English,
though the zine makes no attempt to
advertise or sell itself
as such, sometimes
things just need to happen.
Information needs to be shared
at its most expedient,
but also at its most strategically
surgical, albeit limited rate
of distribution.
Not everything, for instance,
has to be advertised, broadcast,
liked, retweeted or
expressed virality
to have value in this
world.
Without knowing this information, El
Kholti's compulsion to share
Schérer's and
Hocquenghem's text is
restrained.
I would venture to say buy a print
run of no fewer than twenty five
and no more than one hundred
handmade copies.
And how few of even
those copies might eventually make
their way into libraries or
archives, assuming such
institutions will still exist
in the future when they're temporary
custodians, avid readers,
hoarders, and the downtrodden
and degraded class of writers,
those whose works,
whose works and collecting habits
will only if they are
of the fortunate few, see
themselves interred there.
And for anyone who doesn't
kind of follow that
long sentence, the argument I'm
trying to make is that not every
writer can be as
lucky to be as pseudoscientific
and as mediocre and as
effectively canonized as someone,
say, Malcolm Gladwell.
Admittedly, in preparation
for today's talk, I was fortunate
enough to have access to El Kholti's
zine because I have committed myself
to this life of love.
I have committed myself to those
few...
who think collecting and preserving
important documents such as this,
as rarified or inaccessible
as they sometimes may be, is
their burden to carry despite
a culture that tells them otherwise.
In that spirit, it is worth
quoting an excerpt from El Kholti's
translation of Schérer and
Hocquenghem's Co-ire,
which is often described in short
form—and my apologies here
for the cliff notes—as an
examination of childhood sexuality
from a Marxist perspective,
and I quote,
"We are prone towards revelation
and particularly the revelation
of childhood.
We didn't look behind the screen.
We only wanted to let images glide
on the page, not in
turn to expose the constellation
in full brightness, but to keep
it in an adequate twilight.
We systematically took the stance
of suggesting, rather than
explaining in the hope that
our enterprise will
find accomplices."
As a recent inheritor of these words
and as someone who has been
fortunate to witness El Kholti's
contributions to writing and
publishing, editing, and translation
and watering hole programing
through unofficial channels such as
the one containing these words and
in his capacity as a co-editor
of Semiotext(e), the Los Angeles
based publisher of critical theory,
philosophy and art criticism;
I, too, want images to glide
on the page.
I too want to keep and
to be kept in an adequate twilight
and I to find the value in
suggesting rather than explaining.
So let me now try to offer
some suggestions towards the
collaged image that appears on page
seven of El Kholti's
zine as we witness it glide
from one context to another,
from a cut and paste original
to a Xerox copy to
an offset print page insert
in a catalog to a poster
in the galleries of a museum.
There are two visual reference that
situate the contents of this image
in a historical time frame specific
to the 1980s, even if
its production is surely decades
later.
David Bowie, from the era
of his 1980 release Scary
Monsters and Super Creeps,
is poised at center.
An off kilter harlequin icon
as he appeared in the music video
for the song Ashes to Ashes,
revisiting Bowie's lyrics, this
precarious figure at center is
something of a visual
palimpsest—"Ashes
to ashes, funk to funky.
We know Major Tom's a junkie,
strung out in heaven's high,
hitting an all time low."
Bowie continues with foreboding
choral closure.
"My mother said to get
things done, you'd better not
mess with Major Tom.".
Bowie as Harlequin, a
junkie in disguise, our
Major Tom crush, who's
return from far above the world,
far above the moon, is met
with all the pain and suffering of
lived experience in the reality
of sordid detail.
Bowie's left heel beautifully,
delicately slips from a silver
leather flat as he tips his toes
forward on a very barren,
snowy landscape towering
over him, a monstrous amalgamation
of horror, alluding to blood
and gore and terror of an unknown
shapeshifting entity.
The ground of El Kholti's collage
is taken from a movie poster for the
French language release of John
Carpenter's 1982
horror sci-fi masterpiece,
The Thing.
The words above just
got out,
[unintelligible] de la terreur
loosely translated into English
as "until the end of terror"
or "deep into terror",
float and glide between the poster
as artifacts, as movie
memorabilia, and
the image as a complex web
of associative meaning.
Here on page seven of El Kholti's
untitled zine, the collage
appears in relation to the
translated words of Schérer and
Hocquenghem disembodied
from the authors and translators
original intent.
A personalized, edited selection
of words on preceding page six
serve as a series of elicit
captions.
So I'll read these illicit captions
from the preceding page.
"Abduction, dreams
preyed upon, street acrobats,
distant figures, quivering
body, father,
haunted, demonic power,
beautiful children, Britain,
tepidness of the home,
terrifying, conjuring,
absence, indivisible,
superficial freedom,
vagrancy, dread.
Our epoch is lenient with
runaways.
Eventual return,
double-edged safety."
This is the lexical atmosphere of
the adjoining image as it appears
in Xeroxed form, bound
simply by two staples,
the date of the images appearance in
this form is likely to fall sometime
after or near spring
2017, as evidenced
by a collage that appears elsewhere
in the zine.
Next slide, please.
An advertisement for Christopher
Williams exhibition at David Zwirner
in London, open letter: The
Family Drama Refunctioned?
(From the Point of View of
Production) on view
from March 17th to
May 20th
2017 being the give away.
A cross-section view of a flayed
camera appearing here and
excruciatingly close
proximity to its terrorized
subject.
Paired with another of
El Kholti movie memories,
the Williams camera shares intimate
psychic space with a filmic
genre otherwise absent
from the discourse surrounding the
original artwork.
I would never mean to imply Williams
a kind of post-conceptual peeping
Tom, but El Kholti's suggestion
here casts the artist's work in
perversion.
Just as the protagonist, Mark Lewis,
played by Karl Böhm in the
1960 film, Peeping Tom,
automates his camera with a
customized knife synchronized with
the devices shutter to perfectly
marry representation and death
into wedded bliss.
El Kholti, for his part, shows the
same union in a vernacular
that is familiar and strange all
the same.
Next slide.
Leading the zine and the period
of time in which it first debuted in
the world, Bowie and the Thing
appear again in the pages of the
catalog representing the exhibition
at hand, the year is
now 2020, or at least
it was supposed to have been.
The image is full color, offset
print and insert into the catalog
pages in a sequence and format
all its own.
The image is one of ninteen collages
that form the basis of
El Kholti's visual contribution
to the catalog.
But Bowie has been divorced from the
words of Schérer and
Hocquenghem in this instance.
Instead an adjacent movie poster,
presumably for the American release,
announces John Carpenter's The Thing
coming this summer to a theater near
you.
The tagline is circa
1980s, that distant time when
theaters were nearer than they are
now.
It is reminiscent of something
I read recently by Wayne
Koestenbaum, who in a private
correspondence with a mutual friend,
offered the lines, "I come
to touch.
I come without touching.
I touch in order to come."
The clipping of homoerotic desire
that sandwiches itself between the
fissure of The Thing and the
impending "...coming this summer"
offers more than explanation,
even more than suggestion.
It offers a place in the sun,
a place an adequate twilight
that glides in equal measure.
And no matter what your
sexual orientation might be,
the line above "man
is the warmest place to hide"
is enticing to say the least.
Next slide, please.
And here, finally,
...finally, at least for the
purposes of today, David
Bowie glides into the galleries of a
museum
printed in poster form,
available as a commoner
offering free for the taking,
just as the late Felix
Gonzalez-Torres reimagined property
and ownership in the pristine,
touchless space of exhibitions.
The pile is discreet and unassuming.
El Kholti's original gesture, taking
on new meanings, new associations,
new correlations and new comparisons
in this context.
Next slide please.
It has taken a number of distinct
methods of distributive
forms for this
image to make its way into the
Hammer Museum, but at least for the
time being, it is where its contents
can live and circulate among
an adjacent to other artistic
works of this historical moment.
It is a place where this image might
disperse itself well beyond
the exhibition and the world
that David Bowie was so in need
of leaving for another better one.
So.
Can I have the last slide, please?
I'm happy to answer any questions.
That was quick and rough, and I'm
apologize for a bit of a rocky read,
but hopefully you glean
something and
I can check the chat and see if
there's any questions.
But so far.
I think we're okay.
Lisa, let me figure out how to
unmuted you.
Hello.
Hi.
Hi. Yes,
I really don't understand the
presentation.
What exactly
is the visitor going to see
at the Hammer of what you were
talking about?
So if
I'm correct, what you're talking
about is your reading
somebody's description
of a pamphlet
or some kind of handout
and so what
is the viewer going to see when
they go to the Hammer?
It was the last image of the pile
of posters that
is shown on this kind of low plinth.
And otherwise, Hedi's contribution
to the exhibition exists in the
catalog for
the Made in L.A.
exhibition. So those are kind
of two places to encounter it.
There's also one of the catalogs
that's being included in the
presentation of the museum, where
the pages of the sequence of images
changes from day to day.
So so if you visit, you
get you get a catalog?
No, I mean, you do if you go to the
store and buy it.
You have to buy the catalog.
Yeah.
Oh, I see.
And and I don't
understand why
it's been given such importance,
because you have the writer,
El Kholti.
That's the writer?
Hedi El Kholti.
Yes.
He's the creator of the zine
and the creator of the poster that's
exhibited in the show.
So it's being given importance
because it's a contribution to the
exhibition and it's what
we do.
I see, but I just don't
understand, it's not
presented as a proper piece
of art?
I suppose, if that's your question.
I think it's for you to answer.
I mean, I can't tell you what a
proper piece of art is.
I can tell you...
What I mean, in a traditional sense,
like it's not presented as a poster.
It's not presented...
It's not I mean,
I just don't understand
why he's gotten so much importance
like with this presentation
and stuff like that.
I just I just don't understand what
what warrants it...
Maybe if you ask Banksy
about it, what makes art
like relevant and materially
important to our time.
Maybe that's a question that you
should ask...
saying maybe you should ask that
question to yourself i think.
I just want to understand
the
logic and how
this
this came to be a presentation at
all and I just don't
I just don't know...
Why was this chosen?
What, what?
Make an argument to me
why you think this is so relevant
and so important?
That's an.
A great point to make.
I mean, I would say that the context
of these talks or the premise of
these talks is that we're we're
providing a bit of kind of
context or insight into works
of art that are on view.
I mean, I think maybe part of
your question can be answered by
your eventual visit to the museum,
hopefully, if that can take place.
But in terms of decisions that are
made, it's I,
I don't really understand.
I mean, I think your question is
like, why do we get to determine
what's on view in the galleries of
the museum or...?
No, no. I just want
I just want to know
why you think this is
this is so
relevant to the show?
What
inspired you about it?
[vocal overlap]
I didn't curate the exhibition. I am
having someone who has
witnessed the work of Hedi
in Los Angeles for the
period of time that I've lived here,
which is since 2004.
I've seen his contribution
in a literary way, but also
as a member of a kind of
community of artists and writers
who have shaped the identity of the
city.
And I actually think
that the the work that is
being presented in this
exhibition is unique in the
fact that he's not someone who
is known as a visual artist.
And so even the fact that he is
kind of taking something that is a
deeply personal and intimate part
of his practice that exists
primarily for himself, but
that has been in the past,
a visual complement to
his writing and to the writing of
others that has really been
distributed to very few people
and in an inner circle
that he's now making a kind
of different gesture with that work
and that it's on view
in a very public way,
in a way that everything else that
preceded it was quite private
in relative comparison.
That to me is interesting.
Whether or not you look at the image
and you find anything compelling
into it.
I think it's about seeing it in
context. It's seeing it in the
context of Hedi
as an individual, as a contributor.
It's seeing it in the context of the
museum. It's seeing in the context
of itself both as a contribution
and the ninteen other images
of which it's a part.
It's seeing it in the context of
your own point of view
as someone who has a hesitancy
and a resistance towards
things that are maybe unfamiliar
to you.
And all of that is the context
through which I hope you look at
works of art and
with openness rather than
being closed off from them.
And I think that's what the purpose
of this talk is, is to actually
hopefully and either in this context
or next week, the same time
that it opens something up.
And that's all we're trying to do.
I think we should, if we can,
I would love to talk to you offline,
but if there are any other
questions, it'd be nice to give
someone else the opportunity.
Let's see anything?
Could I ask you
about the wallpaper
image?
The wallpaper image.
Which one is that? I'm sorry.
Is there not a wallpaper
image by the artist?
Oh, yes, I mean, it's a it's a
you're right and it's something I
think I didn't touch upon.
It's like one of the other
ways that this imagery has kind
of taken on a different life beyond
itself. I think for the purposes
of this, I really wanted to
focus specifically on this
one singular collage and
it's life.
But the others
that have been enlarged at the
Hammer, I think in two
locations, much in the same
way, are pulling
from these different sources that
are both from
Hollywood, kind of
the genre of horror and
science fiction films,
but also paired with art references.
And so seeing them
together in that way, it gives you a
sense of of a different
scale of presentation and it's
different kind of bodily
encounter that one might have with
them.
But you're right, I should have
mentioned that in relationship to
this as like another life
of the of this type of imagery.
Thank you,
Nicole L asks us, "Is
there something particular to the
imagery that is grounded in a sense
of place such as Los Angeles?
I mean, I think that the
the cliche in some way
that we have inherited
that Hollywood or that
that filmmaking or movies
is a particularly
Los Angeles or Hollywood phenomenon
is one that has largely been eroded,
though I would say
perhaps Hedi's interest
in that type of visual
material is it's
one among many forms of
visual culture
that kind of enter into it.
And it's not specifically Los
Angeles as a place of film
production because less and less
that's actually becoming
less and less the case, but
how these things kind of actually
figure into a
kind of visual
cultural landscape
that is much broader than Los
Angeles can ever really contain.
And
so
I think if that's it.
Thank
you.
Lauren Mackler has a question.
I'm sorry I didn't see you...
I didn't want to interfere.
Oh, no, I don't see you I don't know
how I would know that.
First, I really want to thank you
for this presentation, because I
think what you did is really pick
one also aspect,
one specific piece of Hedi's work
and you sort of pulled it into all
these different platforms, which I
think is part of what Myriam
and Ike really saw in Hedi's work
and for everyone else here, I guess
I should introduce myself.
I'm one of the three curators of
Made in L.A..
So as part of the process that sort
of you know,
we met Hedi and we
invited him to be a part of this.
But I think, Aram, your presentation
is so touching because it also
really embodies the way in which
Hedi plays a role in the community
in Los Angeles.
So I think that also is something
that we see in today's presentation.
But to speak to some of the
questions earlier, you know,
Hedi's work appears in so many
different ways to be really a mirror
of the very many mediums
that Hedi himself uses, the very
many platforms that Hedi uses,
including writing,
collage making, curating film,
because we're doing a series of
programs with him as well.
But also this kind of larger idea of
distribution, which I think you
pointed to really well with this
idea that his work appears
in the intimate pages of a zine,
but then also as a stack of posters
that can be pulled from and taken
away, but also at this kind of large
scale on the wall and sort of in an
architectural way.
So I guess it's not necessarily
a question except to maybe sort
of re-center back onto your
presentation, Aram and say that
I really understand the kind of way
in which you've articulated your
thoughts around this.
And, you know, maybe
there's anything else that you want
to pull to.
I want to say that I'm sorry that
I didn't adequately introduce this
talk in relationship to Made in
L.A.. I think that I'm in the
mindset that it's been with us
now and I think as
so I apologize also if that wasn't
clear to anyone. Also to credit
Lauren, Myriam Ben Sala and Ike
Onyewuenyi as the curators of this
exhibition.
But I would also say, Lauren, thank
you for this opportunity to
talk about this work, because
in some senses, I would
say that this singular collage
was like something of a fragment,
which up within a much
larger whole, not only of Hedi's
own output, but within the kind of
the wider
network of what the exhibition is.
And so it was really
enlightening for me to focus
on this one small aspect
within the exhibition, to actually
understand many of the other things
that you're and the other curators
are interested in pursuing.
So I want to say thank you.
Thank you, Aram.
All right, everybody,
have a great day.
I want to say, before we go,
thank you for joining.
Special thanks to Bank of America
for presenting Made in L.A.
2020: A Version.
To support programs like this and
future programs, we invite you to
become a Hammer member or donate
to the museum by visiting
Hammer.ucla.edu/support.
Be sure to join us next week
for Erin Christovale's Lunchtime
Art Talk on Made in L.A.
artist, Alexandra Noel.
Thank you so much.
Have a great day.
Bye bye.