Leading up to Pique on June 12, 2021, we are asking questions to participating artists to find out more about what they are working on for Pique and how the pandemic has affected their practice.
Lauren Bousfield is a Los Angeles-based pianist and composer. Her music has been described as a hyperkinetic and symphonic take on experimental electronic music, juxtaposing sound design with traditional arrangements. She collaborated with Naomi Mitchell to create visuals for her media art piece for Pique.
1. Tell us a little bit about what your audio piece for Pique is going to be like?
I usually use live shows as a place to kind of elaborate on ideas that I wanted to work on with new music. Over the last year I got kind of obsessed with these youtube videos of macy’s thanksgiving day floats popping. I feel like it’s very similar to the aesthetic feeling that I’m trying to convey, especially through Covid, realizing how fragile everything is.how all it takes is a gust of wind and they drift up against a traffic light and they rip. How they wilt against the wind - It’s really beautiful to me. I am generally obsessed with the idea of “amusement” in North America, particularly parades and theme parks and I love it when the cracks show through and something breaks. So the video is largely Macy’s thanksgiving day floats popping or generally causing mayhem, I found a footage of the floats and Naomi ran that footage through a ton of different eurorack patches.
2. How has the pandemic affected your artistic process?
Making music is generally a pretty solitary activity to me, so mainly the pandemic has affected how I work psychologically, rather than logistically. There's a din of panic or fear that I kind of live in that feels externalized.
3. What are you listening to/watching/reading right now?
It’s pride month so I’ve been reading through Jasbir Puar’s “Terrorist Assemblages”, listening to Alfred Schnittke’s "Concerto Grosso n.1" and Woody’s newest album, "headbanging in the club". Playing Final Fantasy X-2.
4. If you could get one idea, feeling, or message across with your work, what would it be?
I mean, pretty much all my music is about hope. That’s the kind of one theme that comes across all the stuff i do and has since i was 18. When I started, I realized that I wanted to make music for alienated, maladjusted kids, people who slipped through the cracks, people who don’t fit in and who feel uncomfortable all the time because that was me growing up. I don’t really share things about my upbringing but my music isn’t for everyone and that’s on purpose. It’s intended to feel huge and to make the listener feel small, to kind of replicate how panic attacks feel but usually somewhere throughout it there’s this sense of resistance to that in the form of hope, empathy and just a sense of being heard..I’m not really the kind of musician who writes like a sick bassline or a hook, i’m much more interested in creating an overall intense feeling of power. I just want to make very specific people feel heard and to make people who feel powerless feel powerful. So...hope.
5. What are you looking forward to this summer?
Finishing my new album.
Visit thisispique.com to check out the program, buy a pay-what-you-can ticket, and learn more.
Listen to Lauren Bousfield’s latest album Palimpsest and more of her music on her Bandcamp, and follow her on Twitter.
Check out our blog and Instagram reels for more interviews with artists participating in Pique on June 12, 2021.