Lia Mazzari

Profession

BA (Hons) Sound Arts Alumni

College

London College of Communication

Person Type

Alumni

Biography

Interview

Which course did you graduate from?

BA (Hons) Sound Arts and Design.

Where are you from in the world?

I’m from Merano in North Italy.

What have you been up to since you graduated? How has your work evolved since you left LCC?

I build and produced an interdisciplinary art space ‘Silver Road’ in an abandoned water tank in South East London.

Besides producing projects for Silver Road, I’m also an artist working predominantly with sound.

How has your work evolved since you left LCC?

Facing everyday life after academia can be scary. I still use similar instruments, objects and tools, but I also work hard on creating networks of similarly-minded artists. This allows me to experiment within my practice and adopt new ways of working with and without sound.

The course I studied was very ‘sound’ focused, obviously. Nowadays I don’t feel the pressure to relate every project entirely to sound, and I do enjoy immersing myself in different roles, subject matters and media.

Nevertheless, I still end up expressing myself mainly through the means of sound in one way or other.

How would you describe your practice?

I’m an artist and musician working with the cello, whips and prepared objects.

My work as a performer is often collaborative, combining diverse instruments and sound objects, and engaging new audiences through encounters with art in non-conventional spaces.

I aim to create live and recorded events that embrace the broader sense of sound in space and the relationship with its environment.

The importance of location and of developing techniques with instruments and objects form the crux of my creative practice.

What do you find most challenging/rewarding about making work?

A lack of affordable work and living spaces, particularly in London, can sometimes kick off vicious cycles of unproductivity in an artist’s work life.

The more that time passes and the more my work evolves as a musician and curator/art worker/programmer, I feel the need for space and to react to this issue.

It is on us to solve and find ways around this dilemma without having to give up our practice or without having to leave the city.

Silver Road is all about facilitating and creatively using space in an urban setting, which is one of the bigger goals I’ll be working on during this residency.

As already mentioned, my practice as a musician is about experimenting with sites. I find myself increasingly using the city as my studio and confronting the general public with my artistic and domestic needs.

I’m at the early stages of this idea but it has already been a rewarding tool to experiment with acoustics and characters in a public setting.

What do you listen to when you’re making work?

Way too big of a question, but I’m currently enjoying Sarah Davachi’s radio show ‘Le Jardin’ on NTS a lot.

What’s your favourite place in Elephant and Castle?

I’m not sure as the whole area is undergoing such big changes. I’d definitely recommend to check out PEAK Gallery in the ground floor of the shopping centre. Marilyn Thompson, the curator, has created a wonderful project.

What does your workspace look like? Do you have a studio?

I don’t have a studio mainly due to financial reasons. I increasingly use the city as a workspace which allows me to reflect on my own practice.

What’s the best show you saw in the last 12 months?

Mika Rottenberg’s solo show at the Centre for Contemporary Art (CCA) at Goldsmiths University in New Cross is by far one of the best shows I’ve ever seen.

Why did you apply for the LCC Graduate Residency programme?

This residency will finally give me the means to allocate time to my practice and projects for an entire year. This is a privilege I was not able to enjoy before.

The idea of creating work without the financial anxiety in the back of my head presents an incredible pool of opportunities to me.

Furthermore, being able to experiment and discuss my ideas with a network of professionals and students is very exciting.

What does the 2019 theme of Space Between mean to you?

How is music and artistic practice shaped by the architecture and geographies we hear and place within them? What are the resonances between politics, acoustics, memories and publics that constitute spaces?

Music and time-based artistic practice have co-evolved with the infrastructures of their dissemination - the concert hall, the jazz bar, the church hall, radio, the streaming service, the gallery.

Now, in the search for new audiences and new ways of listening, the so-called ‘gig’ is increasingly being taken beyond the usual music spaces into new places not necessarily designed for those purposes, as well as parts of the city landscape from which they were previously absent.

Finding new connections in this day and age, rediscovering heritage and traditional skills and promoting innovation and sustainability are some of my key strategies for this theme in 2019.

What are the ideas that you’d like to develop whilst on the Graduate Residency?

I aim for Silver Road to become a non-profit organisation dedicated to supporting emerging and underrepresented artists working across a range of time-based art practices, including experimental music, performance, dance, poetry, film, theatre and sound art.

I hope to establish new and radical frameworks to preserve, nurture and present to broad audiences the work of historic and emerging artists by providing curatorial support, documentation and publication to help disseminate and advance their practices.

How would you like to involve the LCC students in your project?

I think there is a huge potential for the students to get involved on many different levels.

Whereas they can help me run a variety of projects and learn what it entails to produce an idea from start to finish, I’d also like to push them to share and present some of their work.

It would be fantastic to offer a platform to students where they can mingle and share with more established artists and musicians.

I’m also planning some more interventionist performances around the city over the course of 2019, and I’d love for students to get involved.

What are the main benefits you think you would get out of the residency?

This residency will allow time for experimentation, which is something I immensely cherish.

I hope to spread the word about Silver Road and expand the network of artists working with this platform.

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