TAO G. VRHOVEC SAMBOLEC (1972)
composer and sound artist

 

Tao G. Vrhovec Sambolec (SI/NL) is artist and researcher 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. Addressing the visitors through sound, tactility, kinetic movement and vibration, such experiential artistic works ultimately intend to question in what way human bodily presence can be felt and sensed beyond the directness of visuality and vicinity, and further, 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, Festival Neposlušno – 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.

Foto: Marcandrea

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 of DNK – 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


 

Discography

· Tao G. Vrhovec Sambolec – Outlines (Errant Bodies Records, 2017)
· Tao G. Vrhovec Sambolec / Vid Drašler – Par, on: compilation Neposlušno (Sploh and L’innomable, 2012)
· Tao G. Vrhovec Sambolec – Caressing The Studio, on: compilation Slovenian experimental music (SIGIC, Czech Music Information Centre, His Voice, 2012)
· Tomaž Grom, Tao G. Vrhovec Sambolec, Michel Doneda, Jonas Kocher (remixed by Giuseppe Ielasi) – Konstrukt, on: compilation Slovenian experimental music (SIGIC, Czech Music Information Centre, His Voice, 2012)
· Tomaž Grom, Tao G. Vrhovec Sambolec, Michel Donneda and Jonas Kocher – Udarnik (Sploh in L’innomable, 2011)
· Tao G. Vrhovec Sambolec – Reality Soundtrack, on accompanying CD: Site of Sound: of architecture and the ear, Vol. II (Errant Bodies Press, 2011)
· Tao G. Vrhovec Sambolec – From There To Now, in publication: Manual for the construction of a sound as a device to elaborate social connection (Errant Bodies Press, 2010)
· Tilt – Tilt (Sploh in L’innomable, 2006)
· Tomaž Grom / Tao G. Vrhovec Sambolec / Primož Čučnik – Dvojnik (Sploh, 1999)


 

Installations / Performans / Multimedia (selection):

· Tuning In – the neighborhood – sound intervention (2019)
· Reading Voice – installation (2018–2019)
· With a Passerby – installation (2016)
· Unheard – installation (2016)
· Reading stanley brouwn – installation (2016)
· Rhythms of Presence – installation (2015)
· Surface Studies – performance (2014)
· Heredrum – sound intervention in public space (2014)
· Caressing The Studio – multichannel sound installation (2012)
· Tuning In – multichannel sound installation (2011)
· Artist at Sleep – multichannel sound intervention (2011)
· Outline – site specific sound intervention (2010)
· Solid Sound – mixed media installation (2010)
· Virtual Mirror – Sound – sound intervention in public space (2009)
· A Tree is Dreaming of Uirapuru – sound installation (2007)
· Reality Soundtrack – moving sound intervention in public spaces and installation (2003)


 

Artistic research

· Reading Reading (2017– )
· Rhythms of Presence (2013–2017)
http://taogvs.org/RhythmsOfPresenceARPmain.html
http://taogvs.org/Sambolec_Rhythms_of_Presence_Revised_Text.pdf


 

Curator

· Home Sequence, co-initiator and organizer of group exhibition taking place in Amsterdam based artist’s homes (2018–)
· Member of artistic committee of puntWG Gallery, Amsterdam (2018–)
· Member of artistic committee of DNK – Amsterdam, a series of experimental contemporary music and sound art concerts, events, lectures and exhibitions (2018–)
· Dissecting The Ear 2 – group sound exhibition, ŠKUC Gallery, Ljubljana (2009)
· Dissecting The Ear – group sound exhibition, SIGN Gallery, Groningen, co-curator (2009)
· Selector for music at International Festival of Contemporary Art BREAK 2.2 in Ljubljana (2003)
· Founder and artistic director of BITSHIFT – international cycle of sound events, lectures and workshops in Kapelica Gallery in Ljubljana (2001–2006)


 

Bibliography (selection):

· Vrhovec-Sambolec, Tao G. 2019. “Reading Speech”. zine [online] 3 [visit 19. 8. 2019]. Dostopno na: https://nowherecollective.org/zine/3/
· Vrhovec-Sambolec, Tao G. 2017. “Rhythms Of Presence”. Osebna spletna stran [visit 19. 8. 2019]. Written reflection. Bergen: University of Bergen, Faculty of Fine Art, Music and Design.
Dostopno na: http://www.taogvs.org/Sambolec_Rhythms_Of_Presence_text.pdf
· Vrhovec-Sambolec, Tao G. 2016. “Open memory of a suspended, ongoing and unfinished moment of activation / moment that is or was not yet to become, yet not to be forgotten”. In: Dirty Ear Report #2 Sound: Multiplicity, and Radical Listening, ed. Brandon LaBelle, 7–12 [visit 19. 8. 2019]. Berlin/Los Angeles: Errant Bodies Press.
Dostopno na: https://www.dirtyearforum.net/reports/DER2.pdf
· Vrhovec-Sambolec, Tao G. 2016. “For a Group: A score for a group of individuals making a sound installation together”. In: Dirty Ear Report #1: Sound, Multiplicity, and Radical Listening, ed. Brandon LaBelle, 8–10 [visit 19. 8. 2019]. Berlin/Los Angeles: Errant Bodies Press.
Dostopno na: https://www.dirtyearforum.net/reports/DER1.pdf
· Vrhovec-Sambolec, Tao G. 2012. “Reality Soundtrack”. In: Sprawl – structures/feedback/disruptions: A reflection in the Sprawl Festival, a festival for art in public space in Tyrol, ed. Lucas Norer and Doris Prlić, 25–28 [visit 19. 8. 2019]. Innsbruck:
Universität Innsbruck.
Dostopno na: https://www.uibk.ac.at/geographie/personal/borsdorf/pdfs/sprawl-catalogue.pdf
· Vrhovec-Sambolec, Tao G. 2011. “Recontextualizing Sound”. In: Site of Sound: of architecture and the ear, Vol. II, ed. Brandon LaBelle and Claudia Martinho. Berlin/Los Angeles: Errant Bodies Press.
· Vrhovec-Sambolec, Tao G. and Samuel Vriezen. 2010. “Modes of Attention – conversation on sound-public-space”. In: Manual for the construction of a sound as a device to elaborate social connection, ed. Brandon LaBelle, [visit 19. 8. 2019]. BerlIn: Errant Bodies Press in Oslo: Atelier Nord.
· Vrhovec-Sambolec, Tao G. 2007. “Fascinations”. In: Dissecting The Ear. Groningen: SIGN Gallery.


 

Awards

· Hybrid Arts Honorary Mention, Ars Electronica, Linz, Austria (2010)
· Shortlisted finalist for Henkel Art.Award 2010 for Centra Europe and Central Asia – Vienna – Austria (2010)
· Slovenian art award – GOLDEN BIRD for audio-visual art (2001)


 

We point out

Reading stanley brouwn (2015–2016)

Book by stanley brouwn, my steps 12. 12. 2005–1. 1. 2009[1], modified metronome, table. Duration: 21 days.

The work Reading stanley brouwn explores the notion of bodily presence and absence as it manifests through everyday walking, measuring, archiving, reading and rhythmic temporality.

By way of reading the artist’s book my steps 12. 12. 2005–1. 1. 2006, the project establishes a relationship with the Suriname-born, Netherlands-based conceptual artist stanley brouwn’s (1935–2017) work, which addresses the (im)measurability and materiality of the distances and their archiving by counting and writing down the numbers of one’s own steps. I question the understanding of the written documentation-archive of everyday activity as something tied exclusively to the past, and through this process of re-embodiement suggest a reading of this archive as an instruction. This gesture transposes the archive outside the passing of time, giving it a double temporal orientation into the past and simultaneously into the future.

The project contains three elements – the book my steps 12. 12. 2005–1. 1. 2006, my action of “reading”, inhabiting and hosting the book, and an instalacija that repositions the book and the action “in the now” as a ghostly rhythmical instruction, suggestion, norm or support for movement, reflection, or mode of listening.

my steps 12. 12. 2005–1. 1. 2006 consists of twenty-one pages, each with the date and number of steps printed on it. The title, the form and the contents of this book suggest that it contains an archive of the amounts of steps that stanley brouwn took on each marked day, this forming an archive of brown’s steps. I read this archive so that each day for a period of twenty-one days (01.–21. 02. 16) I took the prescribed number of steps, simultaneously recording their rhythms. The instalacija consists of the book and a modified metronome that ticks the recorded rhythm of my steps. Each metronome tick occurs at the exact time of the day a step was taken for the period of 21 consecutive days.

Through inscribing the text into my own body, I inhabit brouwn’s archive with my own presence. My body thus becomes a shared body, where I myself walk and I “walk the other”. The measured-out walk makes concrete the printed number of steps by bringing them back into the everyday in which they originated.
If brouwn’s archive points to a walked distance and thus invites the reader to imagine this distance – of which the measuring unit is an unknown variable, brouwn’s steps ¬– then my reading transposes this (un)defined distance into the qualitative dimension of time: rhythm and duration.
The recorded time of the steps constitutes a new invisible digital archive of rhythms whose variations echo my walked path, intentions, as spatial and social bearings. Like brouwn’s, this archive is imperfect, abstract, directionless, ambiguous, and open, as it affectively radiates a ghostly presence.
Reading stanley brouwn is a part of artistic research project Rhythms of Presence.

Credits:
Software and hardware development: Mr. Stock Interfaces
Software development: Slavko Glamočanin
Carpenter: Seamus Cater
Producers:
Norwegian Artistic Research Programme and Bergen Academy of Art and Design
Zavod SPLOH, Ljubljana
Zavod Projekt Atol, Ljubljana
Project supported by Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia and City of Ljubljana – MOL
Thanks to: Robocross – Berlin

Media Audio/Video: