Musics/Musiques

Garage Rock, Folk, Jazz, and Experimental Music.
The Tours/Mpls scenes of the moment with our local bands like the Sex Rays and the Goondas and Tours's band The Finkielkrauts (named after their philosophy professor) are digging roots to the 50's and it sounds great and RAW. By  contrast the Heliotrope Festival has come every Spring for the last 9 years and nods to standard song structure only to stretch and bend these roots, with 30 bands in three days this year. And not to ignore Jazz and Folk, Tours's equivalent of the Cedar Cultural Center is Le Petit Faucheux  which does for jazz what the former does for world music.There are always too many more to go into and the below list awaits your contributions.

http://flaneurproductions.com/heliotrope.html

http://www.citypages.com/2012-05-23/music/heliotrope-9-at-lab-theater/ 

http://thegoondas.bandcamp.com/

http://www.myspace.com/thesexrays

http://pneu.bandcamp.com/

http://thefinkielkrauts.bandcamp.com/album/smog-ep

http://www.myspace.com/cheveu

http://www.myspace.com/heliotropefestival


http://www.thecedar.org/


http://www.petitfaucheux.fr/

http://www.myspace.com/jelloslave 

http://www.myspace.com/skoalkodiak

Pamela and Frank Gaard need no introduction if you saw their show at the Walker Art Center recently or perhaps picked up a copy of the Art Police somewhere, sometime in Paris. I am hoping to pair them with one Rémy Chabréyrou in Tours a young icono-clusterer of pant depicting America more rigorously than most Americans. Their similarities of place and culture may make one question what is the there there or anywhere for that mater.


http://frankgaard.com/


http://emyr.ultra-book.com/portfolio

https://picasaweb.google.com/117747621002829922098

The Bodycartography Project

A locally based international dance company run by Olive Bieringa and Otto Ramstad, their inspiration starts at the development of the cell and extends to that of the world. Highly traveled, they received a commission from the Lyon Ballet in 2010 and have brought two French dancers over to rehearse for an upcoming show at the Walker Art Center in October of 2012. They are planning to perform in Tours in 2013.

http://www.bodycartography.org/

The Critics' Show, Hopkins, MN

As Cultural Liaison I am forever thinking of collaborative shows between artists from the two cites. Recently I was asked to be one of four curators of a group show at the Hopkins Art Center called "The Critics' show, Artists Seeing Artists" which took place from April 19- May20, 2012.  Many of the artists included are in mind for a Mpls/Tours exchange. To this end and to stimulate interest of artists and organizers in Tours as well, I interviewed show organizer Jim Clark. Enjoy!

To understand the city one must also understand its suburbs. Tours is in a way a long continuous chain of them from beautiful Saint Cyr to industrial Saint Pierre de Corps. Minneapolis's first 'burb Hopkins is a time tunnel to the 1950's when buildings were two stories maximum and cars cruised main street to show off their American splendor. The video will speak for itself. The artists and news links will take you deeper:

http://hopkins.patch.com/articles/the-critics-show-introduces-underexposed-artists-to-community

http://jennackerman.com/

http://chuckaveryphoto.com/

http://allenbrewer.com/home.html

http://www.andyducett.com/

http://www.katelyn-farstad.com/

http://www.mnartists.org/work.do?action=list&rid=211113

http://johnjfleischer.com/

http://ryutanakajima.com/#

http://www.vespercollege.com/vesperites_dannoyes.html

http://www.shannynjoypotter.com

http://seansmuda.com/

http://pamelavalfer.com/home.html

http://nateyoungart.com/nateyoungart/home.html 

Welcome Bienvenue to Minneapolis and Tours

. . . a blog started to stimulate cultural exchange between the two American and French sister cities. Organizing official collaborative efforts is long term and costly, but here's to the viral!

NB Il y a une fonction de traduction automatique qui traduira toute la texte en Français!

In 2011, I was appointed Cultural Liaison by the Mpls/Tours Sister Cities organization for the task of identifying and encouraging artistic exchanges. My blogs about this, for Metro Magazine, may be read: here. While there, I was offered a show by Tours' OZ'Art Gallery, which I am going back for in June 2012.
 
My background as a francophone started as an exchange student at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Brussels, Belgium. After various academic endeavors around the states I settled back in Minneapolis in the 80's where I experienced a true synaesthesia of Art, Music, Film and Dance, etc. I was hooked into remaining. I regularly exhibit my art, run the Shoebox Gallery, have served as panelist on the Minneapolis Institute of Art's Minnesota Artists Exhibition Program, and have been the Minnesota State Fair Photography judge.

On these screens will be published interviews from both cities in order to tempt you to go further by visiting the sites of their artists, dancers, musicians... and perhaps fomenting your own exchange.

                                -Sean Smuda, Cultural Liaison for Mpls/Tours Sister Cities