reviews

IRENA TOMAŽIN: CAPRICE (RE)LAPSE
INSERTS FROM REVIEWS

In this performance, we can thus find the characteristics of the Dionysian as defined by Nietzsche in connection with the Greek tragedy. He finds typical expressions of the Dionysian in primary music and the lyrical artist who becomes one with the primordial oneness and produces a reflection of this oneness as music, surrendering his subjectivity in a Dionysian process. Thus, the performer creates a collective consciousness, produces a knowledge of the externalization of her inner monologue and creates a metaphysical cult in the middle of which there is her image instead of that of Dionysus.
For Nietzsche the essential tragical element is the chorus which he says served as a means of the identification of the Dionysian man-spectator . With the manifold of voices merging into one another and overlapping at the same time, Tomažin adds to her live voice an accompaniment of a chaotic chorus in whose multilayeredness the viewer’s attention could get lost especially if one wants to encompass all the reproduced individual parts of the uncontrolled sound. This is partly controlled only by the performer herself, specifically, the part coming directly from her.
Alja Bulič, A Tragic Metamorphosis of Caprice, Maska no. 103-104, winter 2007

/…/ In the last years the unconventional and self-made artist Irena Tomažin, who is originally coming from the dance and theatre artistic scene in Ljubljana, is definitely becoming one of the key players and is maturing into a completely idiosyncratic performer of the homegrown sound experimental exploration.
Her performance is multi-layered as Irena succeeds, through dramaturgically well-structured and spatially as well as scenography-wise positioned flow, to express and layer abundant voices, registers, identities, which her body generates and she then literally throws it at emotionally and intellectually excited audience.
And her genuine value and strength is hereby exposed mostly because of her complete honesty and spontaneity as well as her supreme sound and movement of ideas, which spring far from and beyond the usual musical, dance and theatre conventions. Her performance and her voice become, or better yet they remain and return (in)to (the) life itself.
David Verbuč: Ten Voices of Irena Tomažin, Mladina 7.10. 2006

/…/ The performer in the middle of white cubicles gradually vocalizes a very simple tune into a relationship between the body and this uncanny place of one’s own artistic articulation. She builds up this void, which she maintains until the end of performance, with a distance between her as a performer and the audience, and in the last part through a sort of ludistic form, she exposes the contradiction between herself as an artist and her own artistic work and whereby she uses the extremely sleazy terminology of “beauty” and “ugliness” in a very clever way.
With an exceptionally thought through and intensive performance, Irena Tomažin is becoming a part of Slovenian artistic scene as one of the most unique artists currently around.
Mojca Kumerdej: Public in Private, Delo 5. 10. 2006

First of all, the author has articulated the memory as an introspection in the synchronized existence of the body and the voice and the most persuasive moments of the performance are exactly those, in which the author succeeded to express the inaccessibility of identifying the voice as an autonomous entity, which shapes the body or rather dictates the movement and the voice as the secondary phenomenon, prone to manipulation.
And it is exactly the constant appearance of this unfamiliar voice, voice as the “other”, which represents the key impulse to release the revolt, which is the radical rejection on the part of the artist, when her voice and body didn’t follow the repetition anymore but instead took a unambiguous stand  - the rejection of socially dictated desires and constructs. Moreover, the most apparent element of the performance  was the (self-)criticism of the expected role of the artists and (her) understand of artistic endeavors.
Petra Kapš: Introspection of the Introspekcija of the synchronized existence of the body and the voice, Coweb, 4.10.2006

Totally charmed with the beauty of this unique voice, everyone in the audience is thrilled and appreciatively waits for the prophetic messages, ears wide open. At some point the dramaturgical flow makes a rapid switch and little Bjork disappears. On the stage we see a hysterical young artist who wholeheartedly spits on her own performance and starts to (physically) destroy everything on stage. The mysticism disappears and what comes to the fore is the unpleasant reality of the artist’s world in the backstage. One asks oneself, why does this happen on stage and if the audience really wants to see that./…/. Does something, which is almost too beautiful to be true, really have to be destroyed?
Ariana Ferfila: Here comes City of Women, for the 12th Time, Radio Študent 4.10. 2006
 
In the relationship between the player who doesn’t obey and allows herself practically everything, including restraining herself from everything, and the audience there is a gap. But themost provocative element of the performance, which is very strongly based on the energy and the presence of the author/performer herself, is there to provoke us, the audience who sits in the dark and watches. Do you dare to put down your own lines of defense, your own rebellion, do you dare to forget yourself? Caprice (Re)lapse shows that even in the most extreme moments of forgetting oneself and relaxation, one constantly repeats oneself but does that also when one is not relaxed. Are we all caught in repeating or do we only dare to repeat ourselves?
Samo Gosarič: My house is not my house anymore is not my house anymore not not not, Coweb, 5.10.2006