This Saturday we were supposed to hear a world premiere from Associate Composer Lola de la Mata, performed by Southbank Sinfonia and conducted by Jessica Cottis. With the concert postponed like many others, we caught up with Lola about her experience of lockdown.
from Lola’s photographic series The Covid Self Portraits
What has been your experience of lockdown life?
Being mostly house-bound since my early twenties I have had a lot of practice staying at home! So in a way I just had a massive drop in FOMO and have been enjoying long breakfasts with my husband. We had some pretty turbulent weeks with a lot of illness and sadly some deaths in our family, but we have both enjoyed working from home so much we are making it permanent and moving to Liverpool where we feel we can better engage with the arts and music communities. Also I hear the music community there is in need of more women with loud voices!
Is there anything in particular helping you get through the week at the moment?
I immediately signed up to the ICA newsletter, and hit refresh a million times on the White Pube’s twitter account – both have been instrumental sources for my education during the lockdown. I also invited artists from the cross-disciplinary group I run to have weekly meetings to check in, support, and continue exchanging resources. Top of the reading list was Maggie Nelson’s Bluets, which I saw Jessica Cottis also mentioned! My reading: I have been ordering everything I can from PSS Publishing after reading Victoria Sin’s A View From Elsewhere’, along with Females by Andrea Long Chu who reframed everything I thought I understood about gender. I’ve also been hurtling through the brutal and eye opening Sex and Lies by Leïla Slimani who recounts stories confided to her by women living under the oppressive system in Morocco. And lastly, revisiting Audre Lorde’s life-changing collection of poetry and essays Sister Outside, published in the UK in 2017 as Your Silence will not Protect You.
How has social distancing and lock down affected your ways of listening? Are there sounds you're missing, or are you hearing things you wouldn’t otherwise?
If I am being honest, I have often wanted to shut my ears as there is incessant construction in my area. I crave stillness when I work which of course is a fantasy as there is always some movement somewhere making sound (including my cats’ snoring), but it is more visible to me now that all the flats around me are swollen with activities. That being said – I have enjoyed being ‘voyeuristic’ in my listening, and hearing the many accents and languages present in just two rows of houses. I will miss this about north west London.
What are three of your essential isolation items?
Silent button on my phone, tequila, massage gun.
What’s been the best meal you’ve cooked in self-isolation, and the worst?
I love food but I can never be bothered to cook. It’s always: “What’s the easiest thing I can make to eat right this minute?” – which often results in steamed salmon with steamed veg and soya sauce. Done. Cooking over the lockdown has been a couple’s project (yes this is a thing). Best meal: pork belly with fennel seeds and braised fennel (recipe below). Worst meal: we attempted a slow cooked lamb shank which the butcher and all the recipes assured us we couldn’t fuck up. We fucked it up. What we learned: For crispy pork belly, score the skin WITHOUT cutting yourself using a DIY knife (for real), thinly coat with olive oil and cover with chopped rosemary, fennel seeds, and 10 times more salt than you feel comfortable with, then add another handful. Seriously - you won’t regret it.
Recipe: Braised Fennel
Ingredients
- 2 large fennel bulbs
- 2 Tbsp butter
- Large pinch of salt
- 2 teaspoons of coconut sugar
- 2 Tbsp of white wine
- 1/2 cup of veg stock or water
- Chopped fennel fronds
Method
- Rinse your fennel well without separating and cut the tops off setting the fronds aside. Leaving the core attached, slice the bulbs in half lengthwise, and repeat until you have 8 pieces.
- Melt the butter in a large frying pan, medium/high heat, and place the fennel pieces in a single layer. Reduce the heat to medium and cook for 2mins, sprinkle the salt and sugar over the fennel, cook for another minute. Check they have browned before turning the pieces over and leave for 3mins to brown.
- Increase the heat to add the wine which will burn off quickly, when it’s almost gone add the stock/water and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat and cover for 15minutes.
- After 15 mins, uncover the pan and increase the heat once more to cook down the liquid until it’s more of a glaze adding the fronds.
My husband likes this dish so much we have made it once a week. This recipe is where I have ended up after trying variations. Other recipes suggest you can add orange or lemon zest but we find this plenty flavourful.
More from Lola
The Covid Self Portraits
A photographic series by Lola during lockdown, made as a commentary on touch, isolation and PPE.
Lola’s work The Embalmer features on our most recent compilation of Outside the Lines.
Lola is working on a commission for Spitalfields Music to develop a sound installation which explores voices and AI. The new work will seek to raise awareness on the diversity of voices who are often labelled as ‘other’ and silenced, to make audible and visible women (cis/trans) and non-binary voices. If you are interested in contributing to her project by filling in a quick form, have a look below.
On 21 November 2019 Lola curated The Gaze, an event celebrating women, non-binary and queer artists, bringing together a diverse programme exploring themes surrounding identity, gender and ‘the gaze’.
Looking back over our recent sell out event at Iklectik.