The Urban Poetics Reading Series at the UCLA Hammer Museum announces its collaboration with the Electronic Literature Organization

In its second season under the curatorship of author Catherine Daly, the Urban Poetics series at the UCLA Hammer Museum announces it will collaborate with the Electronic Literature Organization to bring even more spectacular intermedia literature to LA

Under Catherine Daly's curation, the mission of the Urban Poetics reading series has evolved. "We wanted to take advantange of our location in a major art museum to give intermedia artists a way to present their art to the public."

The first season of the series under her curation brought Amde Hamilton, member of the Watts Prophets and founder of the Hip Hop Poetry Choir, together with David Brady. Hamilton performed with his band in an interactive Flash environment designed by Brady. "Hamilton has the opportunity to make a major contribution to the field, since he has performance experience many intermedia artists don't have, and since he does not hesitate to engage the political, even in the electronic environment, where too often 'the default is white'," Daly claims. Urban Poetics also featured Wendy Kramer, a collage artist who reads her collages, in an intimate Q&A environment. "We want to survey ways that literary artists use media."

Collaborating with the Electronic Literature Organization now at UCLA under the aegis of noted critic N. Katherine Hayles "was an obvious next step." The series will pair internationally-recognized intermedia artists with local intermedia artists.

Catherine Daly's new book, DaDaDa (Salt Publishing, 2003) includes two long poems, one written for PDA (Palm VII) and another written as a slide show. More information is available on her site, http://www.catherinedaly.info, the UCLA Hammer site, http://www.hammer.ucla.edu, and the Electronic Literature Organization site, http://www.eliterature.org/.