Gustaf Broms is a Swedish visual artist working in performance, video and photography. His performance work has presented work across Europe, Asia and North America. His practice is engaged with the exploration of the nature of consciousness, the dualistic concept of “I,” as the biological reality of being in the BODY, and being MIND, as the perceived experience of the flow of phenomena. He is a co-founding member of REVOLVE Performance Festival in Uppsala. He was the subject of 2016 film, The Mystery of Life â An Art Apart: Gustaf Broms by Carl Abrahamsson.
To use the time in this predicament as a way to explore the nature of consciousness. Trying to make a translation of the flow of life into a condensed symbol, as a tool for understanding. Spending the last few years looking into the dualistic concept of ‘i’, in terms of association with the idea of BEING NATURE, as the actual biological reality this body goes through, and BEING MIND as a very direct experience of REALITY. Since 2009 I live in the forest of Vendel and work on a series of ‘movements’ that explores why THE DANCING ATOMS OF THIS BODY are not merging with the dancing atoms surrounding it?
In 2014, Swedish performance and visual artist Gustaf Broms composed a list of nine questions that he started to circulate to fellow performance artistsâmany he had a personal connection with and many more he had never even met. The questions covered a range of paired conceptsâthe bricks and mortar of performance practice (material/object, audience/receiver, sound/silence, time/rhythm, space/emptiness)âand grounded by questions about personal experience, lineage and language.
The impulse to gather this collection arose from a conversation Broms had had with another artist; but what makes this volume first and foremost an artistâs project is that the questions are asked from the specific perspective of Bromsâ deep personal understanding that, as a practice, performance resides at the permeable borders between the conscious and subconscious, and the meeting of the concrete world of form and the spiritual realm. For Broms, these are the essential questions. The responses collected are as diverse and wide-ranging as the artists and their own approaches, from the practical, to the abstract to the simply far-flung, in addition to some reassuring and surprising overlapping ideas and connections.
The roster of participants in 9Questions is an impressive array of international performance artists whose work covers a range of performance and performative multi-disciplinary approaches.
Published by FADO Performance Art Centre and Centre for Orgchaosmik Studies Edited by Gustaf Broms and Shannon Cochrane Translations by Paula Alvarado, Robert Rowley, Nicolas Scrutton, Tomasz Szrama, Jie Wang Design: Lisa Kiss Design, Toronto
ISBN 978-0-9730883-4-2 (FADO Performance Art Centre, Canada) 978-91-639-8460-0 (Centre for Orgchaosmik Studies, Sweden)
This publication project is partially supported by Stiftelsen LĂ€ngmanska kulturfonden (Sweden).
As a proposition for a performance or the framework for an actual book club, FADO’s Performance Club series redefines the historical and contemporary performance art canon, one book club, and one book, article, essay, or anthology at a time. Invited artists perform the role of book club facilitators, leading the audience through a performance of a reading, a reading performance, a performance about a book, or a bookish performance. This series is on-going. Sometimes we pick the book and invite an artist; sometimes we invite an artist and they pick a book. Just like a real book club, we ask the audience to read the suggested material before coming to the performance. But don’t worry, just like a real book club, no one ever does.
Performance Club 1: Queer/Play The book is edited by Moynan King. The performance is by Moe Angelos. December 14â15, 2017
Performance Club 2: Valley of the Dolls by Keith Cole January 20âFebruary 20, 2018
Performance Club 3: 9Questions, an artist project by Gustaf Broms That time we made our own book (2018).
Performance Club 4: Book Club: snowflakes in the echo chamber by Moe Angelos September 10, 2019
Performance Club 5: The Talking Grave by Hope Thompson September 12, 2019
Performance Club 6: Art Immuno Deficiency Syndrome, subtitle; Does This Giacometti Make Me Look Fat? by David Bateman September 19, 2019
Series Purple
An ode to FADO's history, Series Purple is composed of a collection of purple fragrance materials dating back to the Roman Empire. Dense, intense, and meandering, this fragrance tells us non-linear stories.
