From 26th January to 8th February 2023 in Cirkulaciji 2, Ajdovščina subway Ljubljana – in the afternoons – with potential to develop into ecstatic evening = participatory art:

Goran Tomčić – “Pompom Nets – Ljubljana”

Participatory art event “Pompom Nets – Ljubljana” will be held at Cirkulacija2 everyday from 26th January to 7th February. The participatory events hours are daily from 16:00 to 19:00. On Prešernov Day, 8th February, the accumulated participatory work will be presented as a site-specific installation.

Thousands of acrylic pompoms, fishing line, needles, and energy of the participants are awaiting the additional participants to join us in building a large site-specific installation “Pompom Nets – Ljubljana.” The participatory events hours are daily from 16:00 to 19:00. Events organized around the project are developing daily, and all are public. During the events, the participatory work continues, making the whole space as an interconnected workshop. Except for the events already listed above, additional poetry readings, performances and other events will be added to the project and announced as soon as confirmed.

Program:

Thursday, 26.01. From 16:00 to 19:00 – Pompom Nets – Ljubljana – making, the migrants and refugees, together with the activists of Infokolpa will join us.
https://www.facebook.com/infokolpa

Friday, 27.01. From 16:00 to 18:00 – Srebrno zlato projekt performance and participatory pompom nets making. Organised by Nomad Dance Academy Slovenija.
https://www.facebook.com/NomadDanceAcademySlovenija

Monday, 30.01. From 16:00 to 19:00 – Jelena Oleami: Beading Seeding Dance – ritualno performativna izkušnja z Jeleno Oleami in sejalci.
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100063492432663

Tuesday, 31.01. From 17:00 to 19:00 – Rawley Grau, best known as a translator from Slovenian into English, will read from his and Christina E. Kramer recent translations of Aco Šopov poems.
https://www.asymptotejournal.com/poetry/reader-of-the-ashes-aco-sopov/?fbclid=IwAR2hLLf_bSdPVNnKLxb8VyvPNMF3G2za3XGZpyZiP8UUAlL_OMGCvM7-JxY

Saturday, 4.02. 2023 From 18:00 – Poetry Reading by Pino Pograjc
Pino Pograjc, rojen leta 1997, študira anglistiko in primerjalno književnost na magistrski stopnji na Filozofski fakulteti v Ljubljani. Odraščal je v Kamniku, kjer je na tekmovanjih v slam poeziji prvič bral svoje pesmi pred občinstvom in nekajkrat zmagal. Je del antologij Srca v igri in Mimobežnice. Od 2020 do 2022 je pisal literarne kritike in prispevke za spletno platformo Stigma, leta 2022 je pri natečaju Rdeča nit sodeloval kot del žirije in postal del selekcijske žirije za Festival LGBT Filma v Ljubljani. Leta 2022 je založba Črna skrinjica izdala njegov pesniški prvenec Trgetanje, za katerega je dobil nagrado za najboljši literarni prvenec, ki se podeli v sklopu Slovenskega knjižnega sejma. Lepo vabljeni na sobotno pesniško popoldne!

In parallel: Pompom Nets Škofja loka -> https://www.loski-muzej.si/dogodki/odprtje-razstave-gorana-tomcica-pompom-mreze–pompom-nets-skofja-loka/

“Pompom Nets” is an ongoing participatory art research project. The issue of the research is a relational experiment, which allows the aesthetics of uncertainty. The project creates temporary installations and new ways of being associated.

The participation is a true collaboration in which everybody can become a co-researcher, or as another French philosopher, Jacques Rancière, suggests, an “activated spectator.” There is no privileged medium as there is no privileged starting point. Rancière implies that the politics of participation might best lie in putting to work the idea that we are all equally capable of inventing our own translations. Unattached to a privileged artistic medium, this principle doesn’t divide collaborators into active and passive, capable and incapable, but instead invite us all to appropriate the research for ourselves. Participatory art opens the minds up to a new ways of interaction and leaves the participants with new perceptions of the World.

Each station of this project brings something new to the project, which means I am open to challenges and new approaches. Each time I make this project I have several starting points and lots of unknowns, which is why I continue building the project.

The major first step of the every new situation of this project is to find ways to build and engage a diverse, local public. Right from the start, the project has attracted the involvement of many individuals, initiatives and institutions, and what I have learned throughout the process is that a community develops from working together in ways that transcend the limits of any one discipline or a desire. In this way, the research and practice of the project embodies the very notion of, as proposed by Bruno Latour, a “collective experiment,” which allows and thrives on the uncertainty. The project is constantly modified by what is learned from different experiments, while searching to produce and share the common knowledge.

The starting point has a few requirements:

1. lots of acrylic pom poms, fishing line, needles, scissors
2. A place where to make them. Ideally there are tables and chairs in the space. We have about two weeks at Cirkulacija.
3. The participants. An idea is to have groups of 10 to 15 participants at one point of time, sewing pom pom on fishing lines for several hours. So daily I imagine having two different groups of participants.
4. The lines which are made by participants become a part of a temporary installation. As more lines are made, at the end of each day they are added to the installation. The installation titled “Pompom Nets – Ljubljana ” will carry on and it will change shapes and forms and will be shown in inside and outside spaces until I leave Ljubljana.
5. So much can happen during the participatory part, I leave this to the participants, they might have a conversation, sing, perform, challenge the project, they might want to wear them, the list is endless. But one thing is for sure, the softness of pompoms is very therapeutic, people love to touch them. The public also loves to talk about the meaning of participatory art and in general, art of today, and I am preparing lectures so I am ready and happy to talk about the issues around the project.
6. Participants help and take initiative in setting up the installation both inside and outside

See more images of the project here — https://www.gorantomcic.com/pompom-nets

Concept here: http://www.cirkulacija2.org/wp-content/uploads/GoranTomcicPomPomNets.pdf

Goran Tomcic: https://www.gorantomcic.com/

SOLO EXHIBITIONS AND PROJECTS

2023 “Pompom Nets – Skofja Loka, Galerija Ivana Groharja, Skofja Loka, Slovenia, forthcoming
2023 “Pompom Nets – Ljubljana,” Cirkulacija 2, Ljubljana, Slovenia, forthcoming
2022 “Pompom Nets – Cape Coast,” University of Cape Coast, Cape Coast, Ghana
2022 “Pompom Nets – Venice Stories,” participatory project, Venice, Italy
2021 “Pompom Nets – Hvar Stories,” participatory project, Island Hvar, Croatia
2021 “Pompom Nets on Havel,” participatory project, Havel, Germany
2021 “Pompom Nets in Snow,” participatory project, Plötzensee, Berlin
2020 “Pompom Nets,” participatory project, Cais Palatifico Da Carrasquiera, Portugal
2020 “Pompom Nets,” participatory project, Hangar, Lisbon, Portugal
2018 “Pompom Nets: Growing Happiness,” participatory pompom project, Sucuraj, Croatia
2018 “Rainbow (Silver and Gold),” special project Symphony of the Seas,
cruise ship installation, Royal Caribbean, Miami, FL
2018 “Pompom Nets: Pompom Waterfall,” Vitrine 01, U-Bahnhof Birkenstraße, Berlin
2016 “Pompom Nets: Pompom Constellation,” special project at Context Art Fair, New York, NY
2015 “Pompom Sky,” Multimedijalni Kulturni Centar, Split, Croatia
2014 “Heart Strings,” Dimensions Variable, Miami, FL
2011 “Eternal Embrace,” Mali salon, MMSU, Rijeka, Croatia
2010 “Lose Something Every Day,” Kurt-Kurt, Berlin, Germany
2010 “Pompom Bouquet,” Galerie Adlergasse, Dresden, Germany
2010 “Without Words,” Kibla, Maribor, Slovenia
2010 “Against My Heart,” Freies Museum, Berlin, Germany
2009 “Shimmering Heart (Gold), Rigo Gallery, Novigrad, Croatia
2009 “Passage,” Galerie Delikatessenhaus, Leipzig, Germany
2007 “Overlap,” The Windows at the Kimmel Center, NYU, New York, NY
2005 “Shimmering Heart (Silver),” Participant Inc., New York, NY
2004 “Kairos (Lost You Somewhere),” Raccoon Space, Queens, NY

Photo: Borut Savski

Photo by Goran Tomcic, “Pompom Nets – Ljubljana” at Cirkulacija2, Ljubljana, 26.01. – 08.02. 2023