Reading Vito Acconci
Španski borci, Zaloška 61, Ljubljana, SI
27 – 28 December 2019
How can one unlearn something one has forgotten learning?
Reading Vito Acconci is based on the artist’s encounter with Acconci’s text [READ THIS WORD THEN READ THIS WORD]. In the video, the text is projected and gradually drawn over by an animated trace of the captured artist’s gaze. The artist counts the letters aloud in his native tongue. The animation and the sound are the record of the cognitive activity, bringing to the fore spatial, temporal and kinetic relations between the moving eyes and the graphic territories of the letters. Simultaneously, the video interferes with the field of operations taking place between the projected text and the visitor’s gaze and inner voice. The text is broken into a string of consecutive letters and the temporalities of looking, seeing, perceiving and saying are differentiated. Through these strategies, the video becomes an instrument to unlearn underlying yet forgotten rules of the internalized and sub-cognitive activity of reading that are semantically laid bare in Acconci’s text.
Reading Vito Acconci is a part of artistic research project Reading Reading (2017-). The research project is a manifestation of the various ways to capture, embody and unsettle the temporal relations that unfold between the written text, eye movement, and the (inner) voice while reading. By altering ocular desire and stretching the time between sensing and making sense, the experiential works provide an acoustic, poetic and critical opening to reading as a sub-cognitive activity.
Colophon
Tao G. Vrhovec Sambolec: Reading Vito Acconci, 2019
Text [READ THIS WORD THEN READ THIS WORD] (1969) by Vito Acconci, software, video and sound
Author: Tao G. Vrhovec Sambolec
Software development: Darien Brito
Production: Zavod Sploh & Zavod Projekt Atol
Project developed with the support of: Creative Industries Fund NL/ Stimuleringsfonds Creatieve Industrie and the Mondriaan Fund (NL), City of Ljubljana, Ministry of Culture
Projekt Atol is supported by the Ministry of Public Affairs.
Bio
Tao G. Vrhovec Sambolec is Amsterdam-based artist with a particular focus in sound, new media, real-time interaction, and questions of contemporary mediation in relation to the sense of (bodily) presence. His recent work consists of spatial and sound installations, events and interventions, where (un)mediated sonic events act as central element that affectively evokes human bodily presence, while signaling its physical absence. His works encompass interdisciplinary and mixed media installations, sound interventions and electro acoustic music.
Born in 1972 (Ljubljana – Slovenia), he received BA at Trondheim Music Conservatory (Norway), BA in music composition and MA at Interfaculty Image and Sound – ArtScience, both at The Royal Conservatory in The Hague – The Netherlands, where he also followed Sonology course.
He earned his PhD in Artistic Research from Faculty of Fine Art at University in Bergen, Norway, where he was the recipient of Norwegian Artistic Research Fellowship (2013 – 2016). In 2017 he took part in Research Pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennale. In 2010 his work was awarded at Ars Electronica Festival in Linz – Austria.
Since 2018 he is member of artistic committee of puntWG project space in Amsterdam and a member of artistic committee of DNK – Amsterdam, a series of experimental contemporary music and sound art concerts, events, lectures and exhibitions. Together wit Sascha Pohle, he is initiatior and organizer of Home Sequence, an exhibition taking place in the private homes of Amsterdam-based artists. In 2001 he founded international cycle of sound events, lectures and workshops Bitshift in Kapelica Gallery – Ljubljana. He is currently the recipient of Mondriaan Fund Stipendium for Established Artists – Werkbijdrage Bewezen Talent (2018 – 2022).
His works were shown and performed in various museums, project spaces and festivals, amongst other at Kapelica Gallery – Ljubljana, Public Space With a Roof Gallery (PSWAR) – Amsterdam, Sonic Acts Festival – Amsterdam, Ars Electronica Festival – Linz – Austria, Museum of Modern Art – Ljubljana, AV Festival – Newcastle Upon Tyne, SKUC Gallery – Ljubljana, State Museum of Contemporary Art – Thessaloniki – Greece, Gwangju Museum of Art – Gwangju – South Korea, Reseach Pavilion – Venice – Italy, Madrid Abierto – Madrid, Musica a Metronom – Barcelona, Gaudeamus Music Week – Amsterdam, Forum neuer Musik – Köln, festival of contemporary music Contemporanea 2004 – Udine, CMMAS – Morelia, Mexico, Moon Life Concept Store, Shanghai, Toonspur – MuseumsQuartier, Vienna …
Tao G. Vrhovec Sambolec
