Diego Tonus (Pordenone, 1984)
Among the most recent group exhibitions The Disappearance, CCA Singapore, 2014; We Have Never Been Modern, Song Eun Art Space, Seoul (South Korea), 2014; The Real Thing?, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France, 2013 and Add Fire, Furla Art Award, Ex-Ospedale degli Innocenti, Bologna, Italy, 2013. Selected solo exhibitions: Processing Authorities - Act I, Stedelijk Museum Bureau, Amsterdam, the Netherlands, 2013; Residenti, FAI - Villa e Collezione Panza, Varese, Italy, 2013; Hour of the Wolf, Danish Pavilion, Giardini Biennale, Venice, Italy, 2011. The artist took part in collective events and exhibitions such as Rehearsal of the Real, Kunstverein Nürnberg, Germany, 2013; 5x5Castellò2013, EACC, Castellò, Spain, 2013; The 338 Hour Cineclub, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin, Italy.
Special screenings include Nounou; cage aux lions /deuxième partie, Erg Galerie, Brussels, 2012; Global House Video Screenings for the Third Gwangju Biennale International Curator Course, Kunsthalle Gwangju, South Korea, 2011; Effetto Venturi, Peep Hole, Oberdan Theater, Milan, Italy, 2011. Diego Tonus took part in residency programs such as WIELS, Brussels, 2014; Spinola Banna Foundation, Poirino, 2010; Bevilacqua La Masa Foundation, Venice, 2007 and Real Presence, Belgrade, 2006. In 2014 the artist received the Werkbijdrage Jong Talent stipend from Mondriaan Fonds, Amsterdam and presented his first artist book titled Five Cases of Intrusion published by Archive Books, Berlin.
Lives and works in Amsterdam.
Speculative Speeches (2012) (Workers of the World – Relax) is a film based on dialogues pronounced by the artist as voice training exercises. During the film, Diego Tonus uses his voice to exploit different tonalities, rhythms, timbres and modalities, investigating the potential of the voice in order to understand how it can affect and influence an audience in contexts such as presentations, lessons, public speeches or conferences etc. The work features studio recordings during which Tonus trained his voice through error, repetition and correction, using this structure as a tool to reveal and dissect a situation of speculation that he personally experienced. Throught this video we would like to consider the topic of conflict as something ephemeral like the voice, but able to influence the audience. This film considers the speech as act of negotation, a field of a diplomatic war where different strategies has been developed to achieve the result. Speculative Speeches (Workers of the World – Relax) is a film based on actual phone calls recorded by the artist over the course of 2011.