Queer|Art presents 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.”
Clay I Love You II. 1968–69. USA. Directed by Barbara Hammer. 5 min. Courtesy of the Barbara Hammer Estate and Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), New York.
Multiple Orgasm. 1976. USA. Directed by Barbara Hammer. 6 min. 16mm print courtesy of Canyon Cinema. This film was preserved by Electronic Arts Intermix and the Academy Film Archive through the National Film Preservation Foundation’s Avant-Garde Masters Grant program and The Film Foundation. Funding provided by the George Lucas Family Foundation.
Vever (for Barbara). 2019. USA. Directed by Deborah Stratman. Camera and voice by Barbara Hammer (1975). 12 min. Courtesy of Video Data Bank, School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Would You Like to Meet Your Neighbor? A New York Subway Tape. 1985. USA. Directed by Barbara Hammer. 13 min.
Courtesy of the Barbara Hammer Estate and Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), New York.
Vital Signs. 1991. USA. Directed by Barbara Hammer. 10 min. 16mm. Restored print courtesy of the Academy Film Archive.
Evidentiary Bodies. 2018. USA. Directed by Barbara Hammer. 9 min. With live accompaniment by N. Scott Johnson. Courtesy of the Barbara Hammer Estate and Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), New York.