We’ll be teaching kids to break into cars, making pickles, screening an opera by and for dogs, playing music in the parking garage, hiding in the closet, running around, passing out on the lawn, and more.
Samuel Bing of the band Fol Chen (Asthmatic Kitty) will produce a customized, one-of-a-kind song for each person who participates in the Fol Chen Verbal Algorithm Composer-Free Song Generator. This is a one day event only!
Come fill out a survey about your experience at the Walker, turn your survey in to Samuel Bing, and receive a CD of your very own custom song minutes later. He will also host a field recording workshop the day before, on Wednesday, July 27th from 1pm-5pm — stop by and borrow a field recorder to tape your own sounds from around the museum, then give them back to Samuel Bing for use in future song-making. At the end of Summer Jubilee, Samuel will release the songs as a digital download Open Field EP.
Krystal Krunch (Asher Hartman and Haruko Tanaka) will be teaching participants how to develop their psychic skills at Turrell’s Sky Pesher on Thursday, then offering individual psychic readings to the public on Friday on the Open Field. This is a safe, non-denominational, fun series of relational events that will help you lift the veil and leave you feeling light as a feather. Magical-mystical attire encouraged.
Reading Workshop in James Turrell’s Sky Pesher: Thursday, July 21st Mini Energy Readings on the Open Field: Friday, July 22nd Listen to Krystal Krunch perform a psychic energy reading of the Walker’s spaces every night, July 21st – July 29th, on 88.3FM.
Chris Kallmyer, experimental musician, may or may not be playing a trumpet for some duration of time as an exploration of the spaces inside the Walker. Spaces could also be outside the Walker. Spaces may not be involved. (Trumpet optional.) Who: Chris Kallmyer What: maybe trumpet When: unknown Where: unknown
Los Angeles and Minneapolis musicians will partner to create site-specific sound works for the Walker Art Center’s parking garage. These pieces will create a warm ambient environment for visitors as they park their cars, stop in to listen, or even nap to the music. Come pull up a bean bag chair or backseat, and experience the acoustical charm of the parking structure. Instrumentation may or may not include: push mowers, multiple mobile bell choirs, tubas, and prepared car horns.
Join Los Angeles’ Echo Park Film Center at the FlatPak House for hands-on workshops in filmmaking and film pickling, and stay for a screening in the evening. Creating equal and affordable community access to film and video resources since 2001, the EPFC are taking their show on the road this summer in a big blue bus that has been transformed into the EPFC Filmmobile: a full-service, eco-friendly screening and educational facility on wheels. They are stopping in Minneapolis at the Walker for one night only — make sure to catch the bus!
Tragedy on the Sea Nymph is a filmed 10-minute operetta depicting the romance and tragedy of clandestine lovers shipwrecked at sea. Starring an all-dog cast accompanied by live human singers and musicians, this piece explores the remarkable connections between the affectations of operas and the lives of dogs — marked by focused, myopic attentions; yearning; love, and loss. Dogs and humans welcome to attend, BYO water bowls and hankies.
Join musician Emily Lacy for a twelve-day world tour of the Walker Art Center. Starting every day from a different location on the Walker campus, she’ll be creating improvised music in reaction to each different space, with an ear towards wistful country songs and vocal electronica. Each performance begins at 2pm; length of each performance will vary.
Join us for a hands on workshop for parents, children and teens where participants will learn to break into a car, hotwire it, and escape from its trunk.
For most kids (and adults), modern cars are simply these gleaming, aggressive-faced jellybeans that house air-conditioning units and MP3 players while they idle in traffic. But underneath their shiny surface lurks all manner of exciting machinery that needs some demystification. That’s where we come in. In this class, we’ll focus on a few key aspects of cars, and our interactions with them, while learning a bit about the physics and mechanics behind how it all works. This is a hands-on workshop, with an actual car to break in and out of. Taught by car historian and inventor Jason Torchinsky, who has already successfully guided at least six children in Los Angeles towards future grand theft auto.
We are gathering as many Apple II computers as possible together in the FlatPak House for what can only be called a “Beeptacular Spectacular” concert using vintage computers as an orchestra.
As a grand “musical” experiment, Jason Torchinsky has written a crude 16-tone sequencer for the Apple II, and will try and gather up as many Apple IIs as possible to perform a live, dynamic sort-of concert/musical event. Machine Project’s resident music guru, Chris Kallmyer, will be on hand to discuss the nature of music, and generally help make things somewhat listenable. Who knows what the end result will sound like? A chorus of angels, poking at touch-tone phones? All the computers from the background of every sci-fi movie from the 50-80s going off at once? A serenade by a truckload of R2-D2s? You’ll have to come and listen for yourselves. Please bring your own Apple II if you’ve got one!
Look around the Walker for the black rotary dial phone on a fake rock. When the phone rings, pick up! There is probably a poet on the line waiting to read to you. The poetry phone offers mobile personal poetry performances, given via telephone by a variety of poets. Readings take place throughout the day in a variety of locations across the Walker campus. Poetry curated by Joshua Beckman, who is a poet himself, and enjoys the occasional phone call.
After some 400 years of one-sided communication, and an endless series of heartbreaks, tragedies and injustices wailed into any available ear…finally Opera is ready to listen to you. Joined by small chorus of singers, Juliana Snapper, a longtime mouthpiece for opera, will act as Opera’s ear. They will employ a three-step “active listening” process developed through clinical research to (re-)establish a healthy connection in partners who have – like Opera and her audience – become gradually estranged. We invite you to join us in a journey into operatic re-connection. Come and sit for a bit, share your feelings, tell Opera what happened — and have the experience of truly being heard.
Sound artist Kamau performs live on the Open Field using the sun’s rays. Via solar panels and a light-to-frequency converter, you’ll be able to listen to sounds composed by measuring the rays of the sun as the light changes throughout the day. As a favor to Kamau, please refrain from doing any raindances until at least Friday July 29th.
Make your own amplified melon! All you need are simple soldering skills we will teach you, and one small melon, which we can provide while supplies last. In one afternoon you will:
1) build your own contact microphone 2) combine your mic with a melon to make an amplified melon 3) join our amplified electric melon drum circle 4) eat your melon when you’re done and/or take your melon rinds to the World of Pickling at the Walker Open Field and pickle your rinds.
All participants will be able to borrow soldering materials. No advanced registration required. Drum circle or previous electric melon experience also not required.
Come help build a brick pizza oven from scratch in one day, then enjoy a dinnertime pizza party with the Walker Art Center’s staff and artists from Machine Project! Extra slices will be given to anyone who sticks around afterwards to help take the oven apart at the end of the night.
“Andre you forgot about the fire” is a project by sculptor Michael O’Malley. It is a gesture that remakes one of Carl Andre’s now iconic firebrick pieces, Equivalent. The remaking serves as both remembrance and prelude; once completed, the piece becomes source material for the making of a temporary pizza oven. This shift marks a further extension into the use of everyday material to include conversations about the built environment, DIY, and vernacular culture as artistic practice. It also produces some of the best-tasting pizza you’ll ever have, and creates a hands-on workshop setting for learning how to build your own brick oven. RSVP requested — please contact the Walker Art Center if you’d like to participate.
Join artist Sara Roberts for sound-based group participatory activities using Earbees.
What are Earbees?
Earbees look a lot like transistor radios, but instead of playing top 40 they record whatever you like and play it back looped. They can be placed somewhere particular, hidden, stacked, gambled with, buried, and thrown, there are lots of possibilities. The inventor of Earbees, Sara Roberts, will lead some favorite activities and we’ll see if you come up with some more. Make noise, make more noise, make better noise!
Join us for Machine Project’s grand finale event: a three-part exploration of the American lawn and ways to cut it, via goats, choreographed gasoline-powered ride-on-mowers with mounted oscillators tuned to the drone of their engines, and push mowers. Come help us examine the sonic nature of the Walker’s Open Field, while giving the lawn a much-needed trim.
Adam Overton suggests private actions you can perform yourself, should you choose to do so. Written specifically for the Walker Art Center.
