Francisco Tomsich

THE SILENT MOVIES

The Silent Movies is a research on dialectics of sound and moving image initiated in 2020 by artists Borut Savski and Francisco Tomsich. It comprises software development, theoretical interventions, sound and video production, concerts, publications and the creation and installment of complex interactive ecosystems of sound and light: never-ending concerts of video installations and sound processes in specific dialogue, as in Elegy (Cirkulacija2, Ljubljana, July 2020), Summer Songs (Cirkulacija2, Ljubljana, April 2023) and After the Party (Alkatraz Gallery, Ljubljana, 2024).

The artistic and cultural association BOJA is a collective platform for creation, translation and dissemination of contemporary poetics in the fields of visual arts, literature, contemporary dance and film based in Izola, Slovenia. Boja produces and co-produces artists-in-residency programmes, exhibitions, screenings, publications, workshops, educational activities for children, exchange programs, concerts, literature events, translations and contemporary dance projects. It is commited to decisively contribute to the development of local cultural scene(s) with a focus on young people and regional networks, with an international scope of partners, participants and supporters.

TRANSLACIJA | TRASLACIÓN

A Ljubljana-based platform for production, exhibition and research on performance art created by artists Tatiana Kocmur and Francisco Tomsich.

TABAK

TABAK is a project on expanded choreography currently articulated as a collective process of creation in contemporary dance by an ensemble based in Izola-Koper (Slovenia) integrated by Natalija Gajić, Nina Grmovšek Seljak, Anastasiya Pruyidze, Valentina Tomažinčič and Francisco Tomsich.

The Contemporary Art Museum of Montevideo -MACMO- is a space to explore ways of thinking about contemporary art. It is an artistic practice that investigates and triggers alternative forms of institutionality. It uses structures, procedures, alliances and institutional terminologies and simultaneously proceeds under the logic of an autonomous project, which allows its constant change. MACMO was founded in 2013 by artists Eugenia González and Agustina Rodríguez. Francisco Tomsich integrates the editor’s board of its magazine MUSEO and works in the application of certain projects, including the exhibition, publication and research programme Ice Floe. The institutional issue. Crossroads between Eastern Europe and the River Plate region (2017).

TDUEPURC

Traspuesto de un Estudio para un Retrato Común [Transposed Study for a Common Portrait] is an international association of artists and the title of an on-going trans-disciplinary project developed since 2008 through a series of expeditions aimed to produce expanded portraits of certain places following a re-enacted protocol of procedures and methods. The group has generated 13 collective exhibitions in Uruguay and Brazil and has produced six expeditions and books: La Coronilla (2008), Conchillas (2009), Riozinho (2009), De Corrales a Tranqueras (2010), FUNSA (2011) and Tambores (2012). TDUEPURC participated in 7th MERCOSUR Biennial (2009) and 1st Montevideo Biennial (2012).

The Laboratorio color y contexto [Colour and Context Lab] was founded in 2009 by Noelia Varela and Francisco Tomsich in the framework of TDUEPURC with the objective of producing painting and drawing materials and tools using only natural raw materials from the studied place, therefore relating material conditions of production with themes and subjects.

The Montevideo-based association of artists and musicians devoted to improvisation and site-specific composition PACIENTES was founded in 2009 in the framework of TDUEPURC #1 La coronilla by Marcelo Rilla, Vladimir Guicheff, Guillermo Stoll, Jorge Portillo and Francisco Tomsich. The ensemble was later joined by Juan Martín López and Fabrizzio Rossi. Pacientes has produced public presentations, concerts and sessions in contexts as diverse as bars and museums, abandoned buildings and art exhibitions. The CD Pacientes en Pehuajó was published in 2008 when the members of the group met to perform the music for the film Pehuajó (Catalina Marín, 2009). The CD La trompa di fallo (historia de la guerra) was released in 2014 by the independent label Feel de Agua (Montevideo, Uruguay).

ROG

Located at Ljubljanica’s riverside (Ljubljana, Slovenia) Rog is primarily a series of buildings used for tanning until 1945, when the complex was expropiated and nationalized. Between 1951-53 and 1994 it was known as the factory of Rog bicycles. It was occupied by a group of urbanists, artists and activists in 2006. Until 2020, it functioned as the workspace of an open informal association (Avtonomna Tovarna Rog) of a large amount of people engaged in social work and the arts. Francisco Tomsich worked in Rog between 2014 and 2018. In 2022, he produced the internationally screened and awarded film This is the place, an experimental documentary on Rog made upon the artists’ video diaries.

META CITY SYMPTOMS

MATERIALNI POGOJI PRODUKCIJE, also known as Meta City Symptoms, was a series of ephemeral and concrete art events and statements conceived for public, neglected, obscure, displaced or forgotten spaces composed and propagated by an international association of artists based in Ljubljana, Slovenia. The procedures and rites were replicated in different locations following the moon’s cycles. Meta City Symptoms was founded in Ljubljana by artists Simon Svetlik, Žiga Pilih and Francisco Tomsich.

WITH RUTH FERRARI

The artistic association between the dancer, coreographer and dance teacher Ruth Ferrari and Francisco Tomsich started in 2009 in the framework of TDUEPURC. Their collaborative research on movement and representation has taken different formats, from a remake of Ulrike Grossarth’s piece Exercises (DO IT, Contemporary Art Space, Montevideo, 2011) to Los hombres sin paz [The Men Without Peace], a research project initiated in 2012 which comprises the production (2014), of an homonymous dance piece for seven male dancers, re-staged in 2016. Since 2017, they are working in Los últimos, a new research on contemporary dance and expanded choreography.

WITH VLADIMIR GUICHEFF

The collaboration between Vladimir Guicheff & Francisco Tomsich around vocal music composition started in 2003 with Concierto jánico, a performance for two voices and two guitars first performed at the opening of Tomsich’s first solo show, Jania. From 2004 onwards, they have collaborated in numerous projects, including the associative writing of the chamber opera El Cantante (The singer, upon texts from the Argentine poet and playwright Gabriel Yeannoteguy, 2004 – 2006), the performance El juramento de Fausto (Faust’s oath, 2010) and Laurel (2012), a duet for soprano and violin. The piece for solo guitar Ícaro [Icarus] was composed by Guicheff in the framework of Tomsich’s exhibition Mudanza/Icaria (2007) and performed for the first time at the opening (Ministry of Education and Culture, Montevideo, August 2007). Las Madres (The Mothers, 2008-2012) was an interdisciplinary performative project commissioned by the Montevideo-based female choir Kárpátia. The working process encompassed different strategies of collective and site-specific creation, and the main outcome was The Mothers, An Introduction and Fifteen Songs for Female Chamber Choir, an one-hour lenght vocal score composed by Guicheff upon a series of songs written by Tomsich for the ocassion. In 2018, they worked together in Landaus, following a similar procedure. A series of texts in verse written in German by Tomsich was the starting point of a composition and a sum of operations for the stage to be collectively produced in Cologne, Germany. Landaus was first performed by the ensemble Kollektiv 3:6 Koeln on 27th November 2018.

.TXT

.TXT is a monthly digital magazine devoted to recent literary production from the Southern Cone and beyond. It was founded in 2004 by a Montevideo-based group of artists and writers (Martín Barea Mattos, Horacio Cavallo, Diego de Ávila, Mariana Figueroa, Virginia Lucas and Francisco Tomsich). The Rio do Janeiro (Brazil) cell started to operate in 2012. .TXT was published and propagated in 2004 – 2005 (First Epoch), 2011 – 2012 (Second Epoch) and 2017 – 2018 (Third Epoch).

SONETOS A DOS

Sonetos a dos is a book of sonnets written four-hands (2005 – 2008) through SMS and e-mails by Horacio Cavallo and Francisco Tomsich. It was awarded with the Fondo Concursable literary prize 2008 from the Ministry of Education and Culture of Uruguay and published in 2009 by Trilce. Some of these poems have been set to music by Tomsich and Cavallo themselves and performed in presentations and readings.