As I was casually reading through my friend’s Facebook statuses on the afternoon of Jan. 12, my heart stopped when I saw Tom Morello, guitarist for Rage Against the Machine, arguably the greatest political band ever, was to be speaking for free at Hammer Museum.
Thirty minutes later, I was standing in line at the Hammer Museum box office waiting to get tickets to the event. As I rushed into the auditorium to grab a front-row seat, it dawned on me that in my hurry to get to the museum, I had neglected to actually find out exactly what the Harvard-educated Morello would be speaking about.
As it turns out, I had found my way into the latest incarnation of the Hammer Museum’s Hammer Conversations, in which two high-profile thinkers discuss a variety of topics. This particular conversation was between Tom Morello and Sam Durant, a visual multimedia artist and California Institute of the Arts professor whose work focuses on cultural, social and political issues.
