A new creative venture, Pi Soundworks, is launching on February 27th, 6–9 pm, coinciding with Fitzrovia Lates. Founded by renowned music producer Liam Howe and Jade Y. Turanlı, founder of Pi Artworks, Pi Soundworks is dedicated to fostering new connections between contemporary music and the fine arts.
Despite their shared creative foundations, these two disciplines are all too often annexed from each other and remain distinct. With Pi Soundworks, Howe—who will serve as Curatorial Director—seeks to challenge this separation, creating a space for experimentation, collaboration, and artistic dialogues. At the heart of Pi Soundworks is a dedicated recording studio in Fitzrovia, where new sound-based collaborations and mentorship programs for emerging experimental artists will take shape. Taking the lead from the likes of Laurie Anderson, Jeremy Deller, and Bill Drummond, this project aims to highlight and expand the possibilities and value of sound in contemporary art. A Posteriori At the Pi Soundworks launch, ‘A Posteriori’ (a sound work housed within a decommissioned studio sofa) will be installed in the gallery for all to sit on, listen to, talk over, and spill their drinks on. “I have had the same sofa in my recording studio for decades,” says Howe. “It’s rather threadbare; I have considered throwing it out. But it has stoically bestowed its comforts to so many artists, and it has endured, firsthand, the agonising highs and lows of music making; so I thought I’d make a work out of it as a fitting send-off. ‘If the walls had ears’—what if my sofa listened and could tell its tales? It has been sat on by hundreds of musicians, artists, thinkers, and friends—the likes of Jarvis Cocker, Lana Del Rey, Jeremy Deller, FKA Twigs, Adele, Sampha, and a whole host of other equally talented hopefuls. It’s the famous bottoms which have graced the sofa that amuse me the most. The human posterior is indisputably the funniest part of our anatomy—comedy gold, it would seem. Yet under objective scrutiny, the humble bum is somewhat mundane and distinctly unglamorous. However, it is part of my job description as a music producer to try and make those who sit on that couch as famous as possible. For better or for worse. Humour aside, this artwork addresses more harrowing themes of success, failure, and is a lament on the sad necrosis of kindness and altruism in the creative industries and humans in general.” The installation will feature speakers embedded in the sofa, playing fragments of the countless unreleased songs, performances, and conversations that it has borne witness to during its illustrious lifetime. Speaker A second work ‘Speaker’ by Liam Howe will be modestly hanging from the rafters in the entrance of the gallery. A microphone (which symbolises the recording, amplification or dissemination of ‘worthy’ performance or speech) is turned upside down, not only physically but functionally too. This device commonly known only to receive sound can, by the quirks of physics, emit sound too. If configured so, a speaker can be a microphone and a microphone a speaker. Howe says “I had a recording session with Alan Vega, the seminal post punk electronic pioneer and visual artist. He insisted that we record the bustle of the street to commemorate the collaboration. At the time I thought nothing of it. Since then, and now, alas he is no longer, I cherish this recording.We lowered a microphone out of the studio window some 40 floors up. It dangled above Houston swaying a little. And we captured the street noise. So I have recommissioned the very same SM58 mic to playback the street sounds that it once recorded. Almost like regurgitating the very information it once consumed.”