Tomas Schmit: Two New Ways to Draw a Circle

– Editors, Berit Schuck and Barbara Wien

In 1971, the artist Tomas Schmit was commissioned to design the cover for Instant Composers Pool 010, an experimental jazz album featuring performances by Han Bennink and Misha Mengelberg recorded live at the Stedelijk Museum. It was Schmit’s first album cover—he subsequently designed two others for the Berlin jazz label Free Music Production (FMP)—and represents a rare example in his oeuvre, which consists primarily of Fluxus scores, texts, books, editions, and hundreds of drawings.

A decade before designing the cover for ICP 010, Schmit composed and performed a fittingly circular work of his own: zyklus for water-pails (or bottles) (1962). The piece was an ironic interpretation of Karlheinz Stockhausen’s No. 9: ZYKLUS (Cycle) for solo percussionist (1959) in which a solo performer plays thirteen instruments arranged in a circle.

Schmit’s zyklus for water-pails (or bottles) is being performed to this day and has been exhibited as an artwork in its own right including most recently as part of Call It Something Else: Something Else Press, Inc. (1963–1974) at the Museum Reina Sofia in Madrid, 2023.

Drawing Matter would like to thank Barbara Wien and Berit Schuck from the tomas schmit archiv in Berlin for the notes above. More details about the archive, including an illustrated, digital version of Schmit’s four kataloge (catalogues), information on current projects, supported by the association schneckentrefffen e.V., can be found at www.tomasschmit.com. This year, the archive began compiling the catalogue raisonné of Schmit’s work.

Instant Composers 010 can be listened to at https://blacktube.jpn.org/base/ex/add0440.html

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More Fluxus in the Drawing Matter Collection