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Showing posts from June, 2025

Event Blog 3 - John Halpern talk at UCLA: 'LEVERAGING COMMUNITY & MEDIA ASSETS: A Look In and Out'

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John Halpern’s lecture, “Leveraging Community & Media Assets: A Look In and Out,” offered a unique perspective on how media can be used to engage, provoke, and connect. Instead of relying on fast edits or dramatic visuals, Halpern slowed things down. He opened the talk with an original film of the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge which was quiet, steady, and almost meditative. It felt more like a space to think than a typical art film. Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge: Screenshot of J ohn Halpern talk at UCLA April 23, 2025 Later, he showed a clip where he referenced a “fat chair” from 1964 and a “rubberized box.” At first, these sounded random, but they’re actually tied to major conceptual art movements. The “fat chair” comes from Joseph Beuys, who covered a basic chair in fat and wax to challenge what we expect from everyday objects. The “rubberized box” recalls Eva Hesse’s industrial, tactile sculptures that used materials like rubber to evoke emotion and unpredictability. Both pieces resist...