Interdisciplinary Initiative at the Walker, 2016–2020

The Walker has been producing, presenting, and commissioning sound art performances and installations for more than 50 years, encouraging artists working between visual and performing arts to experiment with new modes of expression. Celebrating interdisciplinary experimentation, Resonance: A Sound Art Marathon (May 18, 2019) was inspired by the Walker’s 1980 New Music America festival and the trajectory of jazz experimentation at the museum over the decades.

Layering and interweaving the visual (instruments, sculpture) and the aural (sonic landscapes, jazz, found sound), the 10-hour marathon featured an international group of artists—Tarek Atoui, Heather Barringer, Philip Blackburn, Jules Gimbrone, Walter Kitundu, Haroon Mirza, Mankwe Ndosi, Camille Norment, Matana Roberts, Christine Sun Kim, Craig Taborn, and Preston Wright—who played in auditory and visual accord with the audience, while exploring the resonances between visual art and sound performance. Though the event was to be held outdoors in the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden’s Cowles Pavilion, projects were relocated and presented in the Walker’s McGuire Theater and Cargill Lounge due to adverse weather conditions. The immersive, experimental performances and structures of Resonance: A Sound Art Marathon created a world all their own, one bound by time and space, built and destroyed in just one day.