Tao G. Vrhovec Sambolec
BIO
Tao G. Vrhovec Sambolec (SI/NL) is an Amsterdam-based artist 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 signaling 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 what kind of new poetics these re-articulations can form. Vrhovec Sambolec’s works have been presented internationally, including the venues Museo Reina Sofía, Madrid; The Listening Biennial, The National Gallery of Arts Tirana; Kapelica Gallery, Ljubljana; Errant Sound, Berlin; Aksioma Project Space, Ljubljana; Cukrarna Gallery, Ljubljana; Sonic Acts Festival, Amsterdam; Sound Disobedience Festival, Ljubljana; Ars Electronica Festival, Linz; V2_Lab for the Unstable Media, Rotterdam; Museum of Contemporary Art Metelkova, Ljubljana; AV Festival, Newcastle; ŠKUC Gallery, Ljubljana; Gwangju Museum of Art; Research Pavilion, Venice; MuseumsQuartier, Vienna.
WORK AT THE EXHIBITION
0.004 Hz, 2020
Sound, Tupana drum, printed matter (240 × 0.8 cm), wooden trestle 540 × 21 × 90 cm
(L, W, H), newspaper-style publication (315 × 235 mm, 64 pages), edition 1000.
c. 7 × 4 × 3 m (L, W, H)
The work 0.004 Hz examines an event that originates from a dispute between Serbia and Kosovo, which for several months in 2018 imperceptibly affected everyday life in an area of Europe comprising 25 nations by slowing down some electrical household clocks for six minutes within that period. The work embraces this event as an opportunity to encounter and contemplate the temporal gap or delay that disrupted the measured flow of time itself, resulting in something that the artist calls ecstatic interval. This interval amplifies fuzzy and unstable relations between the understanding, measurement, representation and experience of temporality and causality, while it illuminates the invisible, involuntary and unexpected “shadow connectivity” between distant people, places, cultures, political spheres and everyday life, that the continent-wide electrical power grid enables. The accompanying publication collects official announcements, news reports and interpretations of the frequency deviation that are juxtaposed with articulations of the ecstatic interval across literature, art, theory, philosophy and science yielding uncanny relations and familiarities.
0.004 Hz (2020), sound, Tupana/Tapan drum, printed matter, newspaper-style publication, trestle. Installation view. Courtesy of the artist. Produced by Aksioma – Institute for Contemporary Art, Ljubljana, Slovenia. Photo by Domen Pal.
0.004 Hz (2020), sound, Tupana/Tapan drum, printed matter, newspaper-style publication, trestle. Installation detail. Courtesy of the artist. Produced by Aksioma – Institute for Contemporary Art, Ljubljana, Slovenia. Photo by Domen Pal.
0.004 Hz (2020), sound, Tupana/Tapan drum, printed matter, newspaper-style publication, trestle. Installation detail. Courtesy of the artist. Produced by Aksioma – Institute for Contemporary Art, Ljubljana, Slovenia. Photo by Domen Pal.
0.004 Hz (2020), printed publication in newspaper format, black and white, 315 × 235 mm, 64 pages, edition 1000. Graphic design: Luka Umek with Tao G. Vrhovec Sambolec. Courtesy of the artist. Published by Aksioma – Institute for Contemporary Art, Ljubljana, Slovenia.
Profile photo: Kathrine Uldbæk Nielsen