a project by Gustaf Broms
9 questions asked of 49 artists
In 2014, Swedish performance and visual artist Gustaf Broms composed a list of nine questions
that he started to circulate to fellow performance artists—
many he had a personal connection with and many more he had never even met.
The questions covered a range of paired concepts—the bricks and mortar of performance practice
(material/object, audience/receiver, sound/silence, time/rhythm, space/emptiness)—
and 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 artist’s project is that the questions are asked
from the specific perspective of Broms’ 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 the 9Questions collection is an impressive array of international performance artists
whose work covers a range of performance and performative multi-disciplinary approaches.
CONTRIBUTORS
Adina Bar-On, Alastair MacLennan, Andrea Saemann, Antoni Karwowski, Arahmaiani, Artur Tajber,
Barbara T. Smith, Bartolomé Ferrando, Boris Nieslony, Brian Connolly, Dorothea Rust, Elvira Santamaria-Torres,
Esther Ferrer, Fausto Grossi, Guadalupe Neves, Guillermo Gómez-Peña, Gustaf Broms, He Yunchang, hermann nitsch
Irma Optimist, Jamie McMurry, Jill Orr, Johanna Householder, John Duncan, Kurt Johannessen, Leif Elggren,
Linda Mary Montano, Macarena Perich Rosas, Margaret Dragu, Mariel Carranza, Marilyn Arsem, Martha Wilson,
Monika Günther & Ruedi Schill, Myriam Laplante, Nigel Rolfe, Nobuo Kubota, Paul Couillard,
Pekka Kainulainen, Rocio Boliver, Roi Vaara, Ron Athey, Serge Olivier Fokoua, Shannon Cochrane,
Stelarc, Tanya Mars, Tehching Hsieh, Tomas Ruller, Ulay, Valentín Torrens, Zbigniew Warpechowski, Zhu Ming
9Questions
an artists book project by Gustaf Broms
9 questions asked of 49 artists
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)
Cost: $20.00 (Canadian) or 150 sek+shipping
This publication project is supported by Stiftelsen Längmanska kulturfonden.
FADO Performance Art Centre acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts,
Toronto Arts Council, Ontario Arts Council, and the Department of Canadian Heritage.
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