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<\/p>\nI chanced upon a former refugee shelter in the neighbourhood of Neuk\u00f6lln during Berlin Art Week 2024. There, I was swallowed into the Brutalist concrete building and into the artist Livia Rita\u2019s commingling worlds of radical fantasies, mystical creatures and music.<\/p>\n
Several worlds took up the repurposed space, including a pool of misty blue water with shiny trees, and sparkling webs. Nearby, stood a huge spiky tree deity in burnt orange, with twiggy creatures scuttling around them. In yet another part of the room, a cohort of creatures, wearing holographic skirts and translucent antenna, swayed, floated and writhed to the melodies.<\/p>\n
Livia\u2019s artistry spans music and ArtFashion, a term she uses to encapsulate wearable art and accessories. Her debut album, Fuga Futura, released in 2022, was a blend of dreamscapes and eco-pop that billowed into worlds through her performances with \u201ccreatures\u201d of the forest, of fire, of water. These fashion pieces, sewn from moss, CD shards, flower petals and latex, evoke an ecological consciousness that nestles alongside her ethereal, metamorphosing music, and often are made from what she finds while foraging on the mountain.<\/p>\n
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We met for a spontaneous coffee at She Said Books in Berlin later, where I learned about B\u00fcndner Rigi, the guesthouse she ran in Switzerland. This January I was lucky enough to spend three weeks there as a self-directed writing residency. The house is big and rambling, and the atelier catches the morning light as it peeks over the forest climbing up the mountain behind the house. I woke early, wrote furiously and, as the sun set over the mountain, went for long walks in the snow. I\u2019d chat with the costume designers while they worked, or eat dinner with the musicians staying there.<\/p>\n
\u201cB\u00fcndner Rigi is nothing that we really planned or predicted. People started coming, and it was fun. It\u2019s grown with its own will, and it became a nice nest for me,\u201d Rita tells me. A few years ago, a ski lift closure nearby led to many businesses on that mountain slope losing customers overnight. Rita came across the guesthouse while searching for places to live in Switzerland that would enable her to live as an artist. It became a catalyst for a small creative community of artists and musicians.<\/p>\n
Spending time in the organic and glittery worlds conjured by Livia was very inspiring. And this kind of spontaneous meetings and unpredictable connection is what she\u2019s always trying to work towards. \u201cBeing able to invite people and offer something when usually I was on the other side, an artist trying to find opportunities, was great,\u201d Livia says. \u201cIt gives me the feeling of freedom and genuineness. The score isn\u2019t written there.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Rita left London due to limited space. She also \u201cnever had the impulse to try to have to convince people or be loud. As a female person being socialized to fit in and please and smile and not create conflict, now I\u2019m creating from another corner.\u201d And in this corner, there\u2019s plenty of opportunity for collaborations with others. Livia still loves travelling through Europe and to London. \u201cThere\u2019s this strange feeling that I\u2019m trying to create, where the mountain is connected to everywhere, to the places that have communities, and where I feel at home, or where I want to keep a relationship. I want to keep London feeling like home, so we\u2019ll see how that works. I like making the travelling an inspiring thing in itself.\u201d<\/p>\n Yet for all her love of movement, B\u00fcndner Rigi is also a kind of refuge away from the pressure of cities. She adds, \u201cI charge my batteries on the mountain, which takes pressure from my own expectations. I really enjoy feeling social hunger, it means that I care about encounters, and I don\u2019t look at those moments as habitual.\u201d<\/p>\n She\u2019s discovered more about herself, too. \u201cI\u2019m a way more sensitive being than I thought I was, because I was good at compensating and overriding what I sensed. It\u2019s interesting, but also scary, because you kind of get used to an environment that is quite radical. And then you kind of lose a bit of the common ground with society as well,\u201d she muses.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/image-12.jpeg\")
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