interview with lola de la mata!

Your work challenges the body and human experience, taking intangible motions and channeling them into forms of sensory experience through sound/visuals. What is it about the body that draws you to produce work in this way?

Lola: Each body is unique – by body I mean our own, those of instruments, and that of the space found within architectural form. The bodily themes came about while I conducted research, asking performers, dancers and choreographers questions about their experiences and emotions surrounding their body being curated and composed. What was it like being a living sculpture?

Borrowing this model, I applied it to the academic ‘human experience’ of being a musician, thinking of it as the years of study to impose one’s will on the instrument, to reach and surpass a technical standard. But this is not my experience as a musician, I view it as a collaboration between myself and my instrument. A place where my instrument resonates with my own body, or my body resonates with that of the instrument’s. My scores reflect this desire to unshackle a stiff approach to playing, holding and being with an instrument. I write in order to bring out the voice of the instrument, in a way that isn’t being forced out, and where listening becomes a shared experience of resonating bodies.

read the whole thing here!