Tomaž Grom: Gross, Offcuts
Author and performer: Tomaž Grom
Title: Bruto / Gross
Year of creation: 10. 12. 2006 (premiere), Theatre Glej, Ljubljana
Author, performer: Tomaž Grom
Suggestions: Špela Trošt
Producer: Zavod Sploh
Co-producer: Theatre Glej
Work info:Sound performance
Description of work:
On the pressure of art production/consumption. On ucertainty, marginality, a continual struggle for survival, an endless production and offer of ideas, concepts, communication and aesthetic pleasures. A display of “weaknesses”. On the evaluation of one’s own worth.
A performance on the pressures of production and consumption of creativity. About the rift due to identifying with sales. About evaluating self worth. About settling for conditions and circumstances that allow for creative “freedom”.
The artist’s uncertainty, marginality, subordination, and constant fight for survival trigger an unfailing production and supply of ideas, concepts, communications and aesthetic delights. The artist becomes the artistic object, subject and material, all at the same time: goods. Goods direct our happiness and desires. With each and every new sale, the uncertainty of creation and existence takes one more step forward in time.
The performance thus explores the relationship of the individual to production/consumption, when the supply becomes an unbearable necessity for the confirmation and preservation of self existence. It is an attempt to candidly acknowledge true helplessness.
The performance Bruto / Gross wishes to render an area of pure presence by the body of sound. The prevailing expressional element becomes spontaneous sound, as a direct reflection of supplying the self.
“In the sound performance Bruto / Gross – as a difference from my concerts – I as a musician could, for the first time, hide behind the idea of an artist. I could afford to put the procedure of creating music up front, as a reflection of an artist’s point-of-view.”
Tomaž Grom
More:
Bruto (video documentation of the performance)
Author and performer: Tomaž Grom
Title: Ništrc / Offcuts
Year of creation: 20. 12. 2008 (premiere), City Museum of Ljubljana
Idea: Tomaž Grom, Špela Trošt
Performers: Tomaž Grom, Nuka Grom, Enej Grom, Aria Bragalini, Devi Bragalini, Niko Novak, Marina Gumzi, Dj Bakto, Alja Kapun, Grega Zorc
Producer: Zavod Sploh
Co-producer: Yanvii – Italia
Work info: Sound performance
Description of work:
Offer of music for performing arts and film: pieces that have not been given a chance of public hearing.
The as yet unheard pieces of music and sound by the author Tomaž Grom are publically enacted in the performance art format. These pieces, intended for performing arts and film, have emerged over the last 15 years, but were for various reasons turned down or have remained unused by directors and choreographers.
Thematically, the project goes a step further to the sound performance GROSS which was primarily concerned with exploring beaurocratical conditions and repercussions thereof in art creation. The focus this time is not so much on what preconstitues artistic production but on the fate of the artistic product itself. Since the fate of the artistic product is invariably in the hands of the receiver, the performance aims to test its communication with the audience. It explores the dynamic relationship between the spectator and the performer. Author offers his work, the viewers or listeners make their choices, decide what and how they will accept/purchase. The audience buys with their eyes and ears, as it were, so the author is compelled to all the time come up with good strategies of offering and selling the artistic article.
The idea of the sound performance emerged from the perceived need to merge artistic activity in two areas; music and theatre. Sound/music – theatre, an intersection of two art practices is the impetus behind the performance BRUTO-OFFCUTS. Music-as-entirely-abstract art form and theatre-as-entirely-concrete and real become the basis for a sound performance. The performance will address questions of imposed and free authorship, of the relationship between authorship and mere execution of artistic action, between conscious and unconscious authorship, between consciously controlled and randomly constructed meanings and signs. In other words, a stop-and-think about one’s own creative medium, about rejecting its set strategies, principles, about the pressures of production/consumption, especially in art. About the strategies adopted when as an author you are rejected and exposed. The performance explores the individual’s relationship to production/consumption, when gratification becomes an intolerable urge for asserting one’s own existence. About life that is being bought-sold.
The performance deals with all of the above themes directly and indirectly through the medium of the sound and music material.
The event takes place within the fields of music, performance and visual creation.
Tomaž Grom (1972)
Tomaž Grom has performed in a variety of musical roles. He has also toured and made appearances at several festivals throughout Europe and Canada. He has created music for numerous theatrical, dance and puppet performances and produced three author records: La passion de Jeanne d’Arc (solo double bass), THE DOUBLE and TILT (with Tao G.Vrhovec Sambolec). He is also classified to the musical miles that draw their expression from acoustic and digitally processed sounds. Playing with the groups ALZHEIMER3, TILT, CPG IMPRO and also as a soloist, he dedicates much time to exploring expanded techniques for playing the contrabass in combination with electronics; he quite deftly steers between free improvisation and predetermined structures. His creations make a determinate mark on his unfailing exploration of his own sonic potential. Whereby the principle of spontaneous sound guides him. In the year 2007 he received an award Zlata ptica (for innovative creativity) from Liberalna akademija.
More at: www.sploh.si/artists.html