The Walker Art Center’s Target Free Thursday Nights in June are highlighted by The 4th Bangkok Experimental Film Festival (BEFF4) (June 1, 6 pm). The festival is an eclectic program of artist videos, experimental films, and works memorializing the 2005 tsunami disaster. On the same night at 7 pm, are the latest version of the Walker’s book club, The Artist’s Bookshelf, featuring Colors Insulting to Nature by Cintra Wilson, and Drawn Here: Contemporary Design in Conversation with Thomas Meyer of MS&R and Thomas Fisher. Other highlights include a Mail-in Activity making postcards with choreographer Ralph Lemon (June 8, 7 pm); a panel discussion on the work of photographer Diane Arbus (June 15, 7 pm); Roll, Slide, Fly: Contact Improvisation in Performance, where local dancers gather to perform in preparation for the 30 Years of Contact Improvisation Festival (June 15, 7:30 pm); screenings of short films from the Queer Takes series (June 22, 7 and 9 pm); a gallery talk by photographer Katherine Turczan in conjunction with the exhibition Diane Arbus Revelations (June 22, 7 pm); and another edition of Contemporary Arts in Conversation with Sharon Lockhart and James Benning, moderated by Walker director Kathy Halbreich (June 29, 7 pm).
Target Free Thursday Nights are made possible by Target. Additional support provided by The Institute of Museum and Library Services.
Target Free Thursday Nights
June 1, 8, 15, 22, 29
Galleries open 5–9 pm; special events follow.
Free
Thursday, June 1
Sharon Lockhart: Pine Flat Tour, 6 pm
4th Bangkok Experimental Film Festival (BEFF4): Bangkok Democrazy
Cinema, 6 pm
This series is an abridged version of a weeklong program presented outdoors in the Lumpini Park in Bangkok, Thailand, in December 2005. Founded and organized by Project 304, a Bangkok-based nonprofit art space founded in 1996 by an eclectic group of artists, curators, and filmmakers, the festival since its inception in 1997 has featured many video works and films by exciting regional and international artists. The program at the Walker will be divided into three sections—“Art and Film,” “Thai Experimental Film,” and “Tsunami Program”—and will feature works ranging from one minute to a half hour in length and covering broad subject matters. The “Tsunami Program,” which consists of specially commissioned films made for the first anniversary of the Asian tsunami disaster of December 26, 2004, includes Ghost of Asia by Apichatpong Weerasethakul and Christelle Lheureux. Weerasethakul’s films Blissfully Yours and Tropical Malady made many of the year’s top ten lists in 2004, and the director/artist was also the subject of a recent Regis Dialogue series at the Walker.
Presented as part of the exhibition OPEN-ENDED (the art of engagement), BEFF4 will be shown continuously in the Target Gallery (when no other events are scheduled), with repeat screenings on Friday–Sunday, June 2–4, during gallery hours. Free with gallery admission.
BEFF4 is made possible by generous support from the Bush Foundation.
Book Club
The Artist’s Bookshelf: Colors Insulting to Nature by Cintra Wilson
Star Tribune Foundation Art Lab, 7 pm
Free, but reservation required: 612.375.7600
Cintra Wilson’s semiautobiographical debut novel, set in 1980s California, is about a culture that forces its children to come of age well before they—or society—are ready. For another take on being young in America, visit Sharon Lockhart’s exhibition Pine Flat in the Medtronic Gallery and join a free tour at 6 pm. Books are available in the Walker Shop and at the Minneapolis Public Library (www.mplib.org). Presented in partnership with the Friends of the Minneapolis Public Library.
Drawn Here: Contemporary Design in Conversation
Thomas Meyer of MS&R in conversation with Thomas Fisher
William and Nadine McGuire Theater, 7 pm
Free tickets available from 6 pm at the Hennepin Lobby desk
Founded by Thomas Meyer, Jeffrey Scherer, and Garth Rockcastle in 1981, Minneapolis-based MS&R is celebrating its 25th anniversary of making renewable designs for a variety of clients. Among MS&R’s adaptive reuse and historically situated projects are the Mill City Museum created out of landmark industrial ruins along the Minneapolis riverfront, the new corporate headquarters of Urban Outfitters in Philadelphia’s Navy Yard, and the renovation of the United States Senate Library at the Capitol Building in Washington, DC. Thomas Fisher is dean of the College of Architecture and Landscape Architecture at the University of Minnesota.
Thursday, June 8
Gallery Tour, 6 pm
Mail-in Activity: Ralph Lemon
Target Gallery, 7 pm
Choreographer Ralph Lemon’s investigations of memory and meaning are explored in this participatory action with the artist. Visitors can pick up specially designed and stamped postcards with instructions and questions relating to his installation in the exhibition OPEN-ENDED (the art of engagement). Lemon will field queries and share his thoughts about the work. Fill in your response and mail it back to the Walker. Each card receives a reply; the person who gives the most illuminating answer receives a drawing by Lemon.
Thursday, June 15
Sharon Lockhart: Pine Flat Tour, 6 pm
Panel Discussion: The Revelations of Diane Arbus
Cinema, 7 pm
Free tickets available from 6 pm at the Bazinet Garden Lobby desk
Diane Arbus revolutionized the art she practiced, and her achievement continues to be a wholly original force in photography. At the time of her death in 1971, she left behind a profound and startling body of work that renders the familiar strange and uncovers the familiar within the exotic. Join Elisabeth Sussman, exhibition co-curator and Sondra Gilman Curator of Photography at the Whitney Museum of American Art; Jeff L. Rosenheim, associate curator in the department of photography at the Metropolitan Museum of Art; and Neil Selkirk, photographer and exclusive printer for the Estate of Diane Arbus since 1971, for a panel discussion on the artist’s influences and the evolution of her distinctive vision. Moderated by Walker associate curator Elizabeth Carpenter.
Roll, Slide, Fly: Contact Improvisation in Performance
Cargill Lounge, 7:30 pm
Roll, Slide, Fly brings Contact Improvisation to the Walker Art Center. Contact Improvisation is part of a global network of dancers who explore ways of dancing together in physical contact without using pre-defined steps. Dances can involve two or more partners and range from slow, fluid movements that allow integration of different movement styles, to energetic momentum, and even lifts that require trust and instinct. Contact Improvisation emerged from the same modern dance environment that nurtured artists such as David Gordon, Trisha Brown, and Bill T. Jones. As more people have taken up the practice, including non-professional dancers, it has generated new ideas not only about choreography, but also the body, social relationships, and consciousness.
This event kicks-off Contact at 30, a weeklong festival celebrating 30 years of Contact Improvisation practice in the Twin Cities coordinated by Patrick’s Cabaret from June 18–25. For more information, visit www.patrickscabaret.org.
Thursday, June 22
Diane Arbus Revelations Tour, 6 pm
Film: Queer Takes
Girls Short Shorts and Boys Short Shorts
Cinema, 7 and 9 pm
These two free programs of shorts provide a light look into queer sexuality across the globe.
Girls Short Shorts, 7 pm
Free, but ticket required; available from 6 pm at the Bazinet Garden Lobby desk
Who’s the Top?, directed by Jennie Livingston (2005, U.S., BW, video,
22 minutes); Hung, directed by Guinevere Turner (2005, U.S., color, video, 13 minutes); Hi Maya, directed by Claudia Lorenz (2004, Switzerland, color, 35mm, 12 minutes); Moustache, directed by Vicki Sugars (2004, Australia, color, video, 14 minutes); Granny Queer, directed by Jacinda Klouwens (2004, Australia, color, video, 7 minutes); Coming Out at Work Is a Hard Thing to Do, directed by Kylie Eddy (2004, Australia, color, video, 4 minutes); Something Else, directed by Shannon Olliffe (2004, Australia, color, video, 3 minutes); You Wash My Skin with Sunshine, directed by Kathleen Mullen (2004, Canada, color, video, 6 minutes).
Boys Short Shorts, 9 pm
Free, but ticket required; available from 8 pm at the Bazinet Garden Lobby desk
Billy’s Dad Is a Fudge-Packer, directed by Jamie Danahue, produced by Power Up (2004, U.S., BW, video, 10 minutes); Katydid, directed by Scott Boswell (2004, U.S., color, video, 13 minutes); Bikini, directed by Lasse Persson (2005, Sweden, color, 35mm, 7 minutes); Hitch Cock, directed by Stuart Vauvert (2005, Australia, BW, video, 10 minutes); Filth, directed by Wrik Mead (2004, Canada, BW, video, 4 minutes); Bugcrush, directed by Carter Smith (2006, U.S., color, video, 35 minutes).
Gallery Talk: Photography as Social Process
Meet in the Bazinet Garden Lobby, 7 pm
For any artist photographing people, the relationship of artist to subject is complicated. In conjunction with the exhibition Diane Arbus Revelations, photographer Katherine Turczan discusses the social process of taking pictures and explains how Arbus’ work influenced her own.
Thursday, June 29
Diane Arbus Revelations Tour, 6 pm
Contemporary Art in Conversation: Sharon Lockhart and James Benning
Moderated by Walker director Kathy Halbreich
Cinema, 7 pm
Free tickets available from 6 pm at the Bazinet Garden lobby desk
Although a generation apart, filmmakers Sharon Lockhart and James Benning have cited each other’s work as an important influence on their own practice. Join them for a conversation about the process of creating a picture of America—California in particular—that focuses on Lockhart’s Pine Flat (2005) and films from Benning’s California Trilogy (2000–2001). Pine Flat is Lockhart’s first project to examine American culture. Benning’s 30-year filmmaking career includes more than 36 films. He teaches film/video at the California Institute of the Arts.
