thom sokoloski
CREATE - DEPLOY - ENGAGE
Thom Sokoloski brings over 50 years of experience as a theatre, music, and visual artist. His focus has been and continues to be through the lens of an interdisciplinarity creator, director, producer, curator, programmer, arts educator, and consultant.
His training and performance from 1970-76 in theatre and dance began in New York City (The NOW Theatre, LaMama ETC, Open Theatre & Eric Hawkins Dance) and in Paris, France (L'Ecole Jacques Lecoq, Jerzy Grotowski's Polish Lab Theatre and LaMama De Paris), as well as his own Paris Theatre Projects which developed and toured original minimalistic performance works.
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Returning to Canada in 1976, he startedh-up up the first Canadian Experimental Performance Season in an abandoned warehouse of the Pillar & Post until he moved to Toronto in 1979 to further the work of his company Autumn Leaf. There, he met new and innovative theatre companies and with them co-founded The Theatre Centre.
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Meeting Jim Buller from ANDVPA (the Association for Native Development in the Visual and Performing Arts), Thom was invited to help develop the Native Theatre School in northern Ontario.
He then heard of R. Murray Schafer and after their first meeting at Tapestry Opera, he directed five of R. Murray Schafer’s operatic works, including RA inside and outside of the Ontario Science Centre (1983) and at the 1985 Holland Festival, in a Viking castle, church, museum and canals of Leyden. He then staged Hermes Trismegistos in Liège's Cirque d'hiver for 1989 Ars Musica Festival in Belgium and for Toronto’s World Stage Festival 1992 then inside Union Station at midnight.
He also produced music & film concerts with Michael Nyman, John Oswald, Gavin Bryars, The Master Musicians of Jajouka, Atom Egoyan with Nexus, Peter Mettler with Evergreen Gamelan, and an international tour of Claude Vivier's opera Kopernikus in partnership with the Banff Centre, Musica Festival in Strasbourg, Huddersfield Contemporary and Opéra de Montréal.
“Any revolutionary project today, whether utopian or realistic, must if it is to avoid banality, make the re-appropriation of the body, in association with the re-appropriation of space into a negotiable part of its agenda.”
The Production of Space, Henri Lefebvre, 1974
Thom continued creating original works during this period exploring legend, symbology, and history and their interstice with site and behaviour. These works were presented at the Canadian Cultural Centre in Paris, Café de la Danse, LaMama NYC, Opéra de Lyon, the Canadian Opera Company, the Royal Ontario Museum, Hart House Swimming Pool, etc. By 2004, at a time when Thom’s interest turned to applying his sense of theatrical creation to installation art and curatorial concepts around space, he had created, directed, and produced over 75 works in the performing arts.
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His curatorial work began with the McLuhan International Festival of the Future 2004, followed by Interactive 2005 for Art Toronto (interactive media art in public spaces), Labo des Arts/Contact 2007 in the Historic Distillery District (photographic installation), Toronto’s Scotiabanks's Nuit Blanche 2009 (Zone A), Futurism Today or NOT! and Dada Reboot! (independent curatorial projects for Scotiabank Nuit Blanche 2011 & 201212 throughout the Historic Distillery District, Darkness at the Edge for the Propeller Centre of the Visual Arts 2013 and part of the international jury for Apexart in New York City to adjudicate curatorial projects worldwide.
During this time, Thom received public art commissions; starting in 2006 with The Balloons for the National Capital Commission in Ottawa along the Rideau Canal, The Royal Flush for Fallsview Casino, Confinement of the Intellect for Scotiabank’s Nuit Blanche 06 in Trinity Bellwoods Park (later re-titled as The Encampment with versions presented on Roosevelt Island in New York City 2007, Major's Hill Park in Ottawa 2008 and the Luminato Festival 2012 inside Fort York), Funhouse for Scotiabank Nuit Blanche 2012 and Chevrolet installed on Bay Street, The Scarecrows, a river installation on the Muskoka River for Nuit Blanche North in Huntsville, Ontario, All the Artists are Here, a large-scale suspended portrait wall at Art Toronto, 2013, and Colour of the River Running Through Us in 2015, a kinetic sculptural installation in the ravine of the McMichael Canadian Art Collection in Kleinberg, ON. In 2016, he created 'The Red Giant' for the Fair of Alternative Art of Sudbury (commissioned by la Galerie du Nouvel Ontario, Sudbury); in 2017, 'Incantation' a commission from Art Spin under the Lakeshore Blvd West bridge crossing over the Humber River, Toronto and in 2018, he was invited to participate in the Feverish World Symposium (EcoCulture Lab – University of Vermont) and how his new work has become more eco-oriented. 2019, saw him become curator for Art in the Dark for Festival Inspire in Moncton New Brunswick.
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His international residencies have taken him to New York City (Socrates Sculpture Park), Mapoon, Queensland in an art collaboration with the Aboriginals of Australia and Brazil where he has had the opportunity to conceive and develop Ghost Net with the community. He has participated in the critical review of 4th-year student designs at Ryerson University’s Department of Architectural Science focusing on the role of architecture and the renegotiation of public space and invited to speak at Applied Brilliance, an annual conference whose theme in 2013 was 'Being Human in a Digital Age'.
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If living art is to further its presence in developing a sense of global theatre I believe performative arts should then engage in all aspects of what it means to train and skillfully express a 'living performative presence' with and for a public, be it actor, dancer, and/or singer in the digital and AI opportunities and challenges awaiting them.
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