Irena Tomažin (1979) was born in Ljubljana, Slovenia. She graduated at the University of Ljubljana – Department of Philosophy. She was actively involved in the art of dance and theater since secondary school when she was a member of the theater group IHT. Further dance-theatre and voice education she gathered in programs such as EN-KNAP Laboratory; the educational program Agon of EMANAT; the Performing Arts seminars of Maska Ljubljana, as well as in many workshops and seminars in Slovenia and abroad. In 2004 she received the danceWEB Scholarship for Contemporary Dance (ImPulzTanz Festival Vienna, AT) and was selected in 2007 as a trainee at the Grotowski Institute (Wroclaw, PL).
In 2001 she made her dance debut Hitchcock’s Metamorphoses together with conductor Mitja Reichenberg and in 2005 her second solo Caprice, which focused on the voice. After this solo she started to work more intensively on the voice. In 2006 she made a re-work of Caprice for City of Women Festival (Ljubljana, SI), entitled Caprice (re)lapsed. For both pieces she was bestowed with the Liberal Academy's Golden Bird Award. Soon after followed the projects As a Rain Drop into the Mouth of Silence (2008), for which she received an award at the Gibanica Festival in 2009, and Out of Discord in collaboration with Josephine Evrard. In 2012 she produced her fourth solo The Taste of Silence Always Resonates.
Mathieu Copeland invited her in 2011 to work with him on the project Une exposition à être lue in Geneva (HEAD), where she collaborated on curating the exhibition, holding lessons for partners and working on project’s book, in which her composition for voice and body were published. In 2013 they continued to collaborate on the project Chorégraphier l’exposition, (Ferme du Buisson, Paris), where she again contributed her composition and the text Voice’s Empty Spaces.
Since 2006 she runs her solo project for voice and dictaphones iT, with which she holds guest appearances in Slovenia and abroad. In 2011 she produced an album Crying Games, produced by Atol Institute, together with Aldo Ivančić with whom she worked in BAST collective and on album Retinal Circus. In the framework of international project Co-voicings (2013-14) they will publish an album The Taste of Silence, with music from her performance The Taste of Silence Always Resonates.
Irena Tomažin holds regular voice workshops in Ljubljana and abroad.
Works
Performances:
2017 Mes(t)o glasu / Moved by voice
2015 Telo glasu / Body of Voice
2015 Obrazi glasov / Šum // Faces of Voices / Noise
2012 Okus tišine vedno odmeva / The Taste of Silence Always Resonates
2010 Splet okoliščin / Out of discord (In collaboration with Josephine Evrard)
2009 Ptih! / Ptih! (In collaboration with Hanna Preuss)
2008 Kot kaplja dežja v usta molka / As a rain drop into the mouth of silence
2006 (S)pozaba kaprice / Caprice (re)lapsed
2005 Kaprica / Caprice
2001 Hitchcockove metamorfoze / Hitchock's metamorphosis (In collaboration with Mitja Reichenberg)
Music:
CD: Okus tišine / The Taste of Silence (2014)
CD: Irena Tomažin & Chirstof Kurzmann, Ljubljana-Wien (2013)
CD: Crying games, iT (2011)
CD: Irena Tomažin & Marko Karlovčec, To kar se primeri kaplja rdeče / That Which Happens is iIself Dripping Red
CD: Retinal circus, BAST KOLEKTIV (2007)
Collaborations:
Dance and theatre plays: Bara Kolenc, Dušan Teropšič, Mala Kline, Maja Delak, Kayo Mikami, Dragan Živadinov, Emil Hrvatin, Barbara Novakovič, Silvan Omerzu, Magdalena Reiter, Sebastian Horvat, Hanna Preuss, Eric Dean Scott, Josephine Evrard, Sergej Kovalevich, Jaka Andrej Vojevec, Tino Sehgal (Documenta 13), Anne Hirth, Christian Kesten, Mathieu Copeland …
Improvised music: Tomaž Grom, Neža Naglič, Marko Karlovčec, Seijiro Murajama, Liz Allbee, Okyung Lee, Noid, Klaus Filip, Christof Kurzmann, Lee Patterson, Xavier Charles, Tetsuya Umeda, Christian Kesten ...
Awards
2006 Liberal Academy’s Golden Bird Award for performing arts (performances Caprice and Caprice (re)lapsed)
2009 Festival Gibanica Award for choreography (performance As a Rain Drop into the Mouth of Silence)
2015 Best Performance Award selected by the audience: Irena Tomažin: The Taste of Silence Always Resonates
Best Performance Award selected by the jury: Irena Tomažin: The Taste of Silence Always Resonates (Members of the jury: dr. Paula Caspao, Jana Jevtović, Yvonna Kreuzmannova)
PHOTO
