THE CLOUDS SING THIS SONG... - A Photographic-Poetic Collaboration by Uroš Smasek and Gorazd Šifrer

It all began with the duo of Uroš Smasek and Gorazd (Gogo) Šifrer. Their Maribor-based artistic, multimedia, poetic, painterly, and above all, cinematic group W.O.R.M.S. was founded in 1983. However, prior to that, they were part of a group of like-minded high school friends, connected by a shared love of surprisingly diverse progressive rock and jazz music. Alongside the music, they exchanged thoughts and ideas, and watched an equally surprising number of high-quality films together.  

 

Gorazd Šifrer has previously combined his poetry on several occasions with the work of at least two other members of W.O.R.M.S.—academic painter Dominik Olmiah Križan and composer Dr Mitja Reichenberg. This photographic-poetic collaboration with Smasek, however—perhaps surprisingly—is their first of its kind. It did not emerge from a precisely defined conceptual plan; instead, Šifrer's poem and several of Smasek’s photographs of unusual clouds were each created independently—some even earlier. Yet, in the interplay between the poetic words and the cloud motifs, they evolved into a new, organic whole.