Conversation and process as working principles and the importance of visions and waking dreams. An Interview with Michael Horsham of tomato.
When looking for pioneers of the TAKEOVER phenomenon, one cannot help coming across the work of tomato, who in the last ten years have reached cult status in the design world and far beyond. The variety of their work, their approach to it and their way of organising themselves shows numerous resemblances to the TAKEOVER artists that emerged in the last few years.
In an attempt to define what tomato actually is, it might seem best do describe them by the ongoing conversation among the nine individuals that form the group – currently it is Steve Baker, Michael Horsham, Karl Hyde, Jason Kedgley, Rick Smith, Simon Taylor, Dirk van Dooren, John Warwicker, Graham Wood – and a conversational way of communicating with their collaborators and clients. Born out of the desire of the early members to avoid becoming fixed in predictable carreers and to create a vehicle that would enable them to make interesting work, the group of designers, musicians, writers and filmmakers was formed in London in 1991 rather as a catalyst for the connections between certain individuals than as a company in the regular sense.
Even after ten years that brought them commercial success and an international reputation for creative excellence in various media, the group cultivate the loose style of their association. They created a “culture of ideas” that seems to work like a mental biosphere for them, a culture that also reflects in the old umbrella factory in Soho they inhabit with offices, studios and gallery space, a space and the people crowding it, that appears very far from the usual agency-style corporate loft space. They have not only been successful with their high profile commercials for clients like Levis, Nike or Sony or their main titles for films like Trainspotting, The Jackal or The Beach, they also succeeded in rejecting their work being categorized and in being reduced simply to a “design firm”.
The basic setup of their collective seems to contain the genetic element necessary for a structure – since even a loosely tied group without hierarchies, account managers, etc. is still a structure that might run into a stalemate – to maintain the ability to continuously change, and to allow for new and unconventional approaches. One of the keys to their ongoing success lies in their setting no borders between different disciplines like design, music, writing and filmmaking and the mixing of commissioned and free work that they cultivate. They also present their oftentimes experimental work in books – like “process” or “bareback” – and in exhibitions around the world, like “real and imaginary flowers” that was recently shown in Tokyo. In the course of their development they attracted former core people from Antirom and formed “tomato interactive” with them in 1998 and in 2000 opened “tomato new york”, which mainly focuses on film.
While for the Museum of Modern Art in Stockholm, Sweden, Michael Horsham developed a multimedia identity with the ability to develop and change over time, they also work on communication, corporate identity and signage for Federation Square, a new civic and cultural center in Melbourne, Australia. For Sony they developed – instead of the initial TV ad they were asked for – the “connected_identity (CI)” [www.sony.co.jp/en/SonyInfo/dream/ci/en/], a living algorithm residing on the net, that creates graphic identity and will listen to the world and change through feedback.
As an almost consequential outcome of the importance of conversation for tomato, a series of workshops and seminars they organised around the world is now formed into the “tomato school” in Japan, that aims “to develop, exchange and explore creative principles within intimate groups of students and attendees”. As tomato founding member John Warwicker commented in a contribution at shift: “The reason we do the workshops is to learn, and we do that through conversation.”
While part of the power of the collective resides in the multitude of possible constellations between those individuals, there is also space for individual work outside the group, like Graham Wood’s recently published book tycho’s nova or the work of Karl Hyde and Richard Smith as part of the band Underworld [www.dirty.org/].
The name of the group has the appeal of a dadaist creation and still carries a certain message as is explained in their book “process”: “The name tomato comes from a family of (sub)beta hormones T/O.m/TO. This hormone grouping is found within the cerebral cortex of people who are susceptible to visions, waking dreams, sensations and feelings of weightlessness.”
Konversation und Prozessorientierung als Arbeitsprinzipien und die Wichtigkeit von Visionen und Wachträumen. Ein Interview mit Michael Horsham von tomato.
Die lose Assoziation von neun Individuen und das Arbeitsprinzip der Konversation lassen das Londoner Kollektiv tomato auch zehn Jahre nach seiner Gründung mit kommerziellen und freien Arbeiten gleichermaßen erfolgreich agieren und machen sie zu Pionieren des TAKEOVER-Phänomens. Im Interview spricht das tomato-Mitglied Michael Horsham über die Arbeitsweise und das Selbstverständnis von tomato.
