Our Story

The Friendly Falcons and Their Friend the Snake is the collaboration of artists Jeffrey Kurosaki and Tara Pelletier. Inspired by what they deem as lifes magnificent and miniature grandeurs, they create multi-layered narratives with sculpture, drawing, music and performance. Their work is like riding a wave of primary colors and absurdity with an undercurrent of melancholy and whimsy.

In November 2010, The Friendly Falcons will be undertaking a [five]-country tour, performing their nomadic artwork, The Cactus Duet. They will visit Denmark, Germany, France, The Netherlands, and England. The project is a theatrical set that fits into a suitcase and will be put together onsite to tell a story with music and kinetic sculpture. The conceptual underpinnings, design, and form of the work will reflect contemplations on nomadism and wandering. It is an exercise in engineering and editing, as we will bring only what we can carry and use found objects alongside intuitive building techniques to customize each show based on the site and resources. Through song and performance a story will emerge using brief moments and disparate events. It is a fracturing of the linear tale, wherein the parts accumulate one by one to create an overall sense and environment rather than a concrete narrative. The music in the show is written as our musical duo, The Hawk is a Lonely Hunter.

The Impact

Concurrently, we are leading a workshop at Funen Academy of Fine Arts in Odense, Denmark, called Nomad as Art. In the workshop, students will be asked to make a formal or functional artwork that explores the history and ideology of nomadism. We will bookend our tour with our workshop in Denmark, so that we will meet with students before we perform and then after all of our traveling and performances. We love that we will be doing what we are teaching and aim to "report back" to the students, and speak of our own experiences on the road. It would be wonderful to have footage of the different environments and contexts that we experience to share.

We also plan to undertake a US tour, through this project we will learn valuable tools and lessons for planning that tour. It will also enable us to promote that tour through documentation of our past experience.

What We Need & What You Get

Three quarters of this money will go to a video camera and a tripod to document our tour. We would like to record every show we do, so that we can come back and share it with our community and plan our next tour (see above). With the remaining quarter of the money, we will purchase public transportation tickets, cab rides to and from airports (we are carrying a big suitcase), and electrical conversion devices for each country. We are offering different perks to those that can offer donations. Our own handmade soap and postcards from the road. Also, we are working with a friend, Laura Fisk, to make screen-printed posters. 

Other Ways You Can Help

We are booking venues in all of those countries until the last moment- we are hoping to perform as many times and at as many different types of venues as possible. We are open to music spaces, galleries, people's homes, bars, seaside docks, hot air balloons, and inside various large animal's stomachs. If you know of something, please get in touch!