Tao G. Vrhovec Sambolec
Reading Reading is about how the reader moves through the written text as the text moves through them, capturing and stretching the temporality just before the text is activated into meaning, and before the reader’s subjectivity is shaped by the encounter with the text. The time before the view, the time before making sense, the time before speech-voice.
Errant Sound
Rungestraße 20, 10179 Berlin
www.errantsound.net
Opening: 8.2.2020, 18:00h
Exhibition: 9.–29.2.2020
Opening hours: Thu–Sat, 15:00–19:00h and by appointment: projectreadingreading@gmail.com
Event: 21.2.2020, 19:00h
Brandon LaBelle: The Inner Acoustic – performative talk +TBA
Reading Reading (2017–) is an artistic research project on reading as interface between interior mental state and exterior world that asks if what separates them is a temporal, flexible and virtual gap rather than a fixed corporeal border. Within several installations, the project manifests ways to capture, embody and unsettle the temporal relations that unfold between written text, eye movement and (inner) voice while reading. The experiential works alter ocular desire and stretch the time between sensing and making sense. In so doing, the indescribable zone between word as an event in time and word as an object in space is affected, providing an acoustic and poetic opening that anarchically disrupts reading as a sub-cognitive activity.
The exhibition includes installation Reading Voice (2018–19), video Reading Vito Acconci (2019) and publication Reading Reading (2020).
N.B: Since the work Reading Voice is accessible for one person at a time we offer individual appointments during the exhibition times or by appointment. Please feel free to make an appointment by email projectreadingreading@gmail.com, or by talking to the assistant at Errant Sound.
Reading Vito Acconci (2019)
Text [READ THIS WORD THEN READ THIS WORD] (1969) by Vito Acconci, software, video and sound Duration: 18:20 min
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 Voice (2018–19)
Installation
Text, sound, construction, software and hardware
Reading Voice is an installation that explores the zone between, on the one hand, a spoken word as an event in time, and, on the other, a written word as an object in space. The cognitive activity of reading is disrupted and various spaces of encounter are staged between the reading body and the written text. Central to the installation is a booth for a single viewer with a digital screen displaying text, an eye tracker and custom software that sonifies the reader’s gaze by instantly sounding phonemes they look at. This process unsettles the established relations between the voice, looking, written words and meaning. The disruption activates and stretches a pre-view of a view as an open temporal interval emerging between sensing and making sense. In addition a wall text and a printed booklet stage variants of the relations between text and reading body, their dispositions highlighting how each specifically define and affect the encounter and intra-action between the body and the text.
Reading Reading (2020)
Publication, 24 pages, first edition of 300
Design: Dongyoung Lee with Tao G. Vrhovec Sambolec
The publication is a companion to the installation Reading Voice – a poetic contemplation on the first encounter between reader’s gaze and written text.
Tao G. Vrhovec Sambolec (SI/NL) is an artist and researcher with a particular focus on 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 elements that affectively evoke human bodily presence, while signalling its physical absence. The experiential works address visitors through sound, tactility, kinetic movement and vibration to question how human bodily presence can be felt and sensed beyond direct visuality and vicinity. Further, the works inquire after what kind of new poetics these re-articulations can form.
His works have been presented internationally at various museums, galleries, project spaces and contemporary art biennales and festivals, amongst others in Kapelica Gallery – Ljubljana, Public Space With a Roof Gallery (PSWAR) – Amsterdam, Errant Sound – Berlin, Aksioma Project Space – Ljubljana, Sonic Acts Festival – Amsterdam, Sound Disobedience Festival – Ljubljana, Ars Electronica Festival – Linz – Austria, Museum of Contemporary Art Metelkova, +MSUM – Ljubljana, AV Festival – Newcastle Upon Tyne, ŠKUC Gallery – Ljubljana, State Museum of Contemporary Art – Thessaloniki – Greece, Gwangju Museum of Art – Gwangju – South Korea, Reseach Pavilion – Venice – Italy, Madrid Abierto – Madrid, Gaudeamus Music Week – Amsterdam, Forum neuer Musik – Köln, CMMAS – Morelia, Mexico, Moon Life Concept Store, Shanghai, MuseumsQuartier – Vienna, Sound Gallery – Bergen.
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). He is currently the recipient of Mondriaan Fund Stipendium for Established Artists, The Netherlands (2018 – 2022). 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.
In 2018 he became a member of artistic committee of puntWG Project Space in Amsterdam and a member of artistic committee ofDNK – Amsterdam, a series of experimental contemporary music and sound art concerts, events, lectures and exhibitions.
In 2018 he co-initiated and is co-organizing together with artist Sascha Pohle Home Sequence – a yearly exhibition taking place in the private homes of Amsterdam-based artists.
www.taogvs.org
www.realitysoundtrack.org
www.homesequence.net
The exhibition is organized by Mario Asef for Errant Sound e.V.
Software designed by Darien Brito and Giuliano Anzani
Construction by Scenart
Produced by Zavod Projekt Atol – Ljubljana and Zavod Sploh – Ljubljana
Supported by Creative Industries Fund NL, Mondriaan Fund, Ministry of Culture of Republic Slovenia and Municipality of Ljubljana
Special thanks to Brandon LaBelle
–––––––––––––––––––
This exhibition is the third in a series of exhibitions presented under the heading Visual Approach to Sound, which aims to reflect on sound from the perspective of visual art. For this series, visual artists are invited to present works that are based on the forms and methods of visual art but which are also defined by a central acoustic aspect.
Visual Approach to Sound is conceived and organized by Mario Asef for Errant Sound Berlin.
Reading Voice – documentation from Tao G. Vrhovec Sambolec on Vimeo.
With kind support by:
