the breaks
We are on-site at break room Wednesdays from 11-5 PM.
Listen to music, grab a cup of coffee, microwave leftovers, rest, and handle archival materials directly from shelves organized around ideas about work, break, and pleasure.
During the breaks, you can listen to new music by artists Cody Perkins, Maya Edmond, Scott Benzel, L. Coats and Tristan Hirsch. Their tracks break down, glitch, and disrupt the typical ambience that isolates and individualizes the ways we rest and create, calling us together into mystery, resonance, heaviness, and bliss. Taking in music and smells, joking loudly, and crying in the archive, remind us that these are shared spaces and can be what the group, collective, or public need. If we are building a world we want to live in then music and our tears do not need to be stifled, hidden, or relegated in our downtime.
In break room we gossip, drink, research, and behave disorderly, exercising the muscles that help us dream and create.
Drop-in or coordinate a time with us HERE.
--------------------------------------Workshops--------------------------
Break room workshops are led by artists who have co-organized a collection with LACA. Together we will handle and discuss archive materials to question and explore moods and feelings that unfold from these collections.
Connect with three collections in break room: the MOCA Union Collection joined by educator, artist, and MOCA Union President Olivia Leiter; the Private Practices: AAPI Sex Worker and Performance Art Collection joined by artist and educator Kayla Tange; and Office Party ephemera facilitated by architect and writer Christina Moushoul.
Wednesday, October 18th at 4PM
MOCA Union collection with educator, artist, and MOCA Union President Olivia Leiter.
Saturday, November 18th at 2PM
Private Practices AAPI Sex Worker and Performance Art collection with artist and educator Kayla Tange.
Saturday, December 9th at 2PM
Scheduling Conflicts, by architect and writer Christina Moushoul of Office Party.
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Museum Unions
Wednesday, October 18th at 4pm
We invite participants to engage with materials from the MOCA Union collection, which contains items that help to tell the story of the unionizing efforts at MOCA by workers who came together to collectively improve their working conditions. This discussion will be facilitated by educator, artist, and MOCA Union President Olivia Leiter.
We will ask together: what items help tell the story of art workers unionizing efforts? What biases and fantasies are you bringing into the collection? What materials might be missing from this collection?
Private Practices
Saturday, November 18th at 2PM
Join artist and dancer Kayla Tange to reflect on Private Practices: AAPI Sex Worker and Performance Art collection. This collection highlights sexual labor and healing-focused celebrations of Asian perspectives and was organized shortly after the 2021 Atlanta shooting. It contains paystubs, apparel, set pieces, police reports, a nuisance lawsuit against an adult business operating in an apartment, and craigslist postings for live/work spaces.
We will ask together: In what ways do you think your own stories influence how you make sense of these materials? What feelings are you experiencing while going through a collection including private materials?
Office Party Workshop - Scheduling Conflicts
Saturday, December 9th at 2PM
Join architect and editor Christina Moushoul to discuss the material remnants left behind in break room, including the collective calendar that visitors contributed to over the course of the exhibition’s run. Moushoul will discuss her work with the research and design collective Office Party, which critically examines the role of parties and similar ephemeral spaces as the origin of complex social and material networks with urban, political, and environmental effects.
We will ask together: How can the media of scheduling operate both as tools of projection and tools of reflection? Between their intended rigidity and the complex dynamics of the workplace, where lies their ability to account for things that don’t go according to plan?
---------------------------------Support Group---------------------------
Support Group is a working group for artists to reflect and speak about shared experiences. In break room, the group will explore topics such as housing, placemaking, experiences of getting fired or let go, childrearing and caretaking, mental health, momentary distraction, spirituality, and celebration. Facilitated by artists Deondre Davis and Anima Correa, these sessions will mix and celebrate forms of art therapy, word of mouth, and group work.
The aim during these sessions is to learn from each others’ experiences with the hopes to improve conditions for each other.
Saturday, October 28th from 4–5PM
Saturday, December 2nd from 4–5PM
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Workshops/Support Groups are limited capacity, please RSVP in advance.
All events are FREE
Cake by artist and baker DaMon Golatt.
Coffee and tea by artist Mikey Muench of Senses Coffee Project.
LACA's project at the Hammer is organized by Hailey Loman, Andrew Freire, Nicholas Gaby, Saiga Largaespada, and Keko Jackson.
Editors: Kate Rouhandeh and Hugo Cervantes.
Graphic Design: Caleb Miller.
Made in L.A. 2023: Acts of Living at the Hammer Museum
October 1–December 31, 2023
