Lia Kohl is a cellist, composer, and sound artist based in Chicago. Her latest record, Normal Sounds, is out now.
Lia Kohl is a cellist, composer, and sound artist based in Chicago; Tine Bek is a Danish multidisciplinary artist. Last month, Lia released her latest record, Normal Sounds, the cover of which features art by Tine. To celebrate, the two artists got on the phone to catch up about their practices, and more.
— Annie Fell, Editor-in-chief, Talkhouse Music
Lia Kohl: Are you in Copenhagen right now?
Tine Bek: No, I’m home — I live an hour north of Copenhagen. I’m just upstairs in my little studio.
Lia: For me, that’s the best version of a studio, something that’s separate but you don’t have to go anywhere.
Tine: Exactly.
Lia: I have friends who have studios super far away and they have to commute. Part of the thing about being an artist is you don’t have to commute to your job, you know?
Tine: Exactly. Even though it’s not that bad, like an hour or 45 minutes if there’s no traffic, to Copenhagen from here, I would never go to think.
Lia: You have to feel like it’s worth it.
Tine: Yeah. If I have a meeting or something, I’ll go. But I wouldn’t go for just me. Where are you? You’re not in Chicago right now?
Lia: No, I’m in Antwerp right now. I’m here playing a festival tomorrow and Saturday, but we had some rehearsals this week, so it’s kind of nice. I have a three week tour, and at the beginning I was moving around, and at the end, I’m moving around a lot, but in this middle time I can just be in Antwerp. I’m staying with some friends.
Tine: I’ve never been there, actually.
Lia: It’s charming. I like Belgium a lot. Of course, every place is affected by who you know there and what your experiences are. But the Belgian people that I’ve met have been really lovely and strange.
Tine: Well, that’s nice.
Lia: It’s funny, every time I talk to anyone about the album, the first thing they say is, “I love the album art!”
Tine: I was just listening to it before, just to remind me, and it’s so nice — I won’t say “to work to,” but it’s just nice to be around. Does that make sense?
Lia: Yeah.
Tine: And when it stopped — because I only have the teaser — I was like, “I want more!” When it stopped, I felt kind of lonely.
Lia: [Laughs.] Oh, that’s that’s wonderful. That’s my favorite way to listen to music. I’m not good at sitting and listening, at least to recorded music. I think for live music it’s different because then there’s people and bodies and things to look at. But yeah, I like music to be around, so I’m glad.
Tine: Yeah. If I was a painter, I feel like that would be such a great way to listen to lots of music.
Lia: Yeah. Although for me, it’s hard to really think and listen to music at the same time.
Tine: That’s true. It takes over in a way. So you need to do it purposefully. It sounds bad, but I don’t listen to music unless I really have the headspace for it. So if I’m working — that’s why I like putting on your work, because it didn’t take over what I’m doing. Or maybe it just made sense with what I was doing. But [usually] I would put on a podcast or something — voices, just to feel like someone’s chatting in the background.
Lia: Do you have a daily practice?
Tine: It’s very not normal right now. I don’t know if I told you, but I had a baby recently.
Lia: Yeah, you mentioned!
Tine: So far, it doesn’t feel like I’m back to a normal flow. But thinking about it, I don’t think my flow was ever really that normal. Or not normal, but I don’t think it was always the same. Because being a photographer, I always have freelance work as well, so when I’m thinking about my practice, it’s those little moments that I have. It could be 10 minutes or an hour. So I feel like my studio practice is when I go for a walk with the dog or drive or do something where I’m alone and I can actually concentrate and let my mind flow. That’s when I come up with ideas. And then I’ll come home and I have to write an email, or hurry up and write the thing down before it goes away.
Lia: Yeah, I can really relate to that — that need for almost boredom. My partner calls it “having a think.” I need to go somewhere and just kind of stare at the wall, and then something will float by me.
Tine: That’s so nice, “having a think.” I’m going to use that. When I was studying, that was the best time for having a think. I used to study history, and I would go to these lectures and I wouldn’t listen at all, but I would have these great ideas. And when I got a little older and I didn’t have school anymore, I remember always seeking these jobs that are a little boring, like invigilator at a gallery, where you would just sit and read a book. I really miss having those kind of jobs where you could just think a lot.
Lia: This is maybe terrible, but I feel that way sometimes with going to concerts. Especially if I don’t love the music, it’ll be my time to just think about something else.
Tine: Oh, that’s a good idea. I’ll go to concerts I don’t like. [Laughs.] I need to find ways of getting that back so I can think. That’s my biggest challenge right now, thinking. And finding time and the energy, and just maybe the confidence in doing new work. Because once you stop, even just for a little bit, it can be really hard to get back.
Lia: Yeah. It’s like a bicycle. How old is your little one?
Tine: Six months.
Lia: Oh, wow, so super new.
Tine: Yeah, so she’s small. But my partner just took over the parental leave. So in theory, I’m back at work full time. But it’s really hard to not go downstairs.
Lia: Life isn’t so cut and dry.
Tine: No. But I feel like everyone says, “When you have a kid, you get good at working when you have to work.” And I feel a little bit of that. I hope it’s going to come more, so I can actually produce when I have the time.
Lia: But it’s hard to have pressure on that. I mean, that’s the opposite of what we’re talking about — it’s the opposite of boredom, like, Oh, shit, I have one hour.
Tine: Yeah. I worked a little bit just commercially while I had her with me, and I remember thinking, Oh, it’s easy! I can work with a baby. But then the one thing I just couldn’t do was think and create something new. I need to get more bored again. What do your studio days look like? You’re touring a lot.
Lia: Yeah. When I’m touring, it’s easier to allow for that to just be the whole work. I’m still doing emails and stuff, but I don’t feel like I have to make something. And if I have ideas, that’s fine. I can have them, and then I’ll do something about them in two weeks when I’m home. But when I’m home, it just depends on if I have a project of my own. I’m classically trained, and so I feel like there’s part of my brain that really loves the practice, the sort of athletic… I like having a daily thing that I’m doing, so if I’m working on an album, I’m it’s harder for me to stop working than to start. But if I don’t have a project, the void is endless. It’s hard to get in the studio and know what even to do.
Tine: Yeah. Would you go in and practice ever?
Lia: No. I mean, not often. But I wish that I made more time for tinkering, just playing around and thinking with my materials. When I’m doing thinking, it’s just in a void, just staring at the wall. But I do think that I would like to build a practice that’s a little bit more like thinking with the instruments, thinking with the materials, and trying things out. But maybe that’s just a fantasy. Maybe I should just work how I work, you know?
Tine: Yeah. I guess there’s a reason why you do it the way you do. And it is working.
Lia: Yeah. But thinking about the everyday routine: one thing that I feel there’s a lot of resonance between us and our work is we both work with these kind of everyday materials. I love your butter sculptures that you’ve been showing.
Tine: Oh, thank you.
Lia: I’m curious — is that conscious on your part? Are you setting out to use those materials, or is it just what you’re drawn to?
Tine: So, I’ve used foam and then the butter, and then I did a little bit of plaster work but it didn’t become a bigger thing. I like these materials that are not supposed to be used for what I’m using them for. Often how I get ideas, I’ll be reading something and I’ll be like, Oh, that’s me! And I was reading a book about this sculptor — she died many years ago, but she’s really famous here. Her name is Anne Marie Carl-Nielsen — I’ll send you a link.
Lia: Oh, please do.
Tine: It said that she lived in the countryside, and she would look at all these animals — she loved animals. So she would always shape animals, and she would go out and dig for the clay to make it. But if it hadn’t been raining for a really long time and the earth was too dry, she would sneak into the pantry instead and take the butter, and just shape animals out of butter. I thought, Oh, that’s a good idea. It was COVID times, so I was like, “I can’t do what I’m normally doing — I’m going to just go buy some butter and then shape things out of that.” So it happened really organically. I think I did maybe 10 figures, and then I didn’t do it for a really long time. Now I’m trying to do it again, but it seems hard to do it when it was something that just happened spontaneously.
Lia: Yeah.
Tine: And it’s the same with the foam. I feel like I’m forcing it a little bit. Because my partner, Paul, is an artist too, and he was actually saying it’s stronger when it doesn’t seem so forced. Because I would do it, and I would actually do a really good one, but it would look like something more artistic. But it’s more funny when it’s just—
Lia: Just sort of slapped together.
Tine: Yeah. I did one the other day, which completely failed. I was trying to do Kim Kardashian — I don’t know why. Do you remember that photo?
Lia: [Laughs.] With the butt?
Tine: Yeah, with the butt and the champagne.
Lia: Oh, yeah. Which I think is from an old LP cover.
Tine: Really?
Lia: Yeah, I think there’s an old image that she’s [recreating]. [Jean-Paul Goude based the image off of his own 1976 portrait of Carolina Beaumont.]
Tine: It’s really hard to do that image in butter.
Lia: Were you trying to do the champagne too?
Tine: [Laughs.] It didn’t look good.
Lia: Another thing that’s really interesting to me about the butter and the foam: they’re so temporary. You’re not working with things that can can stay.
Tine: No. And that’s why I love it so much, because it can’t survive. I have one tiny foam sculpture in my studio in Copenhagen that had survived, but the thing is, in reality, it’s nothing. It’s just a little sad now. It’s almost yellow, and it was baby blue at the time. You wouldn’t notice it. I think that’s what I’m exploring a lot in my work, this relationship between the photograph and the world, the power of the photograph.
Lia: So you really think of yourself as a photographer and not a sculptor?
Tine: Definitely. I don’t know… titles are so tricky.
Lia: I almost hate that I asked that question, because that doesn’t matter.
Tine: It doesn’t. But in a way, I’m such a photographer. I love gear. But I am always trying to run away from it somehow. I feel like it’s so limiting. I don’t want to be just a photographer — I want to be able to do other things as well. But it feels almost forbidden, playing with other fields. Do you ever feel like that, being classically trained?
Lia: I mean… I feel like the question of whether you’re a photographer or a sculptor just means, at which point do you feel like the work is captured? Is it in the process of making a sculpture to photograph it, or is it the finished product? Where is the art? And we don’t really have names for that in music. You’re just a musician, and it’s all music. But I think in my own work, I do love recording because I love the ability to really shape something. I’m an improviser, so I improvise and then I make layers and layers and layers of something. And then I really carefully put things together. The work that’s mine the most mine is a recorded thing that I’ve made. So in a way, I feel really a lot of resonance with what you’re saying. It’s like I’m a photographer of music. I like the ability to make the thing and have the process be really important, but also private to me. And then be able to sort of offer it whole to people.
Tine: I like that. That’s a good way of putting it. When you’re performing like you’re doing this week, can you play the things that you’ve been recording again? Or would you do something new every time?
Lia: It depends. A lot of the times when I’m performing, I’m completely improvising. Like when I’m playing with other people, a lot of times that’s just free improvisation. But when I’m performing the work from the album, it is something that, after I made the album, I made a performance from that material. And I’m improvising a little bit — or even a lot — but it is from that material. So the steps are: make the improvisation, record it into an album, and then make that into a performance.
Tine: Would you ever feel like you weren’t allowed to use certain elements of sounds, or even just rhythms or beats? Is there something you wouldn’t feel like you could use, or you would feel shy using?
Lia: That’s an interesting question. So, cello is the instrument that I’m trained in, and everything else that I play — like synthesizers or field recordings or anything with technology — is pretty unknown to me. I feel kind of like a dilettante. But I like that tension. I like really knowing what I’m doing in one area and really not knowing what I’m doing in another area, and kind of letting those things hit against each other in the work. Because that, at least to me, feels obvious in the work that there’s something between those things that’s kind of fighting. I’m not a synthesizer player, I’m not a great keyboard harmony person. And I’m actually not really a gear head. Sometimes people are like, “What are you using?” And I’m like, “I don’t know, this thing. I can’t tell you about it. You should read about it online.” [Laughs.]
Tine: [Laughs.] I feel exactly like that. But I also think that’s the strength in it, when you merge two things the way we may be merging things. If I was trained as a sculptor, I don’t think it would be the same. I would never photograph it. That wouldn’t be the piece probably. I’ve done a couple of videos as well, where the video is the work but it’s a sculpture kind of falling apart — like an ice cream tower that I built. So that’s like sculpting and staging something, and rearranging it and then just letting time kind of… I wouldn’t want to become too good at it, anyway. I think if I was to train in it a couple of years and get really good at something technically, with either with sculpture or with another field, it would feel different. I think the kind of childish approach that I’m using makes it what it is.
Lia: Yeah, the sort of playfulness. I think there’s a curiosity that I can have with the things that I don’t technically know how to do, that then also seeps into my more sort of virtuosic training. Do you feel that way with photography?
Tine: Yeah, I think it definitely taught me to slow down with my photography. Because before I would always do more — I hate that word, “snapshots” — but quick. Before the foam work I did, I would never stage anything. And even that, I did one session in my studio many years ago in 2018, and I didn’t touch it for two or three years.
Lia: Oh, wow.
Tine: But the thing is, when I’m doing it, I have no clue if it’s going to work. I don’t know if you drew when you were a kid, but drawing or painting or as a child and being so annoyed at it because it’s not what you want it to be—
Lia: Oh, my gosh, yes.
Tine: I think that’s a constant feeling I’m having when I’m doing these things. Because I was just thinking of if I was actually enjoying it, and I am to a certain degree. But often I’m trying to be playful but in a very kind of annoyed way. And then it’s later on I’m like, “Oh, this looks good, this is OK!” But in the moment, I’m really trying to be good.
Lia: [Laughs.] I’ve never heard anyone else express that specific kind of childish feeling. I completely relate to that. It’s not childlike in the way where you’re totally carefree — it’s accessing that early feeling of intensity about how you want something to be. I remember being maybe three, and trying to draw a balloon and having my mom draw the balloon, and then I wanted to draw it too and I was so mad.
Tine: Yeah. It’s failure, right?
Lia: Yeah, absolutely.
Tine: The first encounter.
Lia: Literally with your hand, you can’t make the motion that you want to make. I figured it out eventually, though.
Tine: [Laughs.] That’s good. I started seeing it slightly with my child — she’s so little and she’s not drawing or anything, but she’s wanting to do things but she can’t.
Lia: Even to move around and stuff…
Tine: Yeah. She wants to reach things, she wants me to do things and she can’t talk. She doesn’t even probably know exactly what she wants. So it’s just this — [growls] — frustration. It’s really interesting.
Lia: It must be related to the will to just be alive.
Tine: Yeah. You want something so bad, but you’re not really sure what it is or how to get there.
Lia: That’s kind of what being an artist is, I think. [Laughs.]
Tine: [Laughs.] It does feel like that, doesn’t it?
(Photo Credit: left, Leah Wendzinski; right, Paula Duvå)
