Nikki Buzzi is an artist from Zurich, Switzerland. Their work spans various fields including music, installation art, media art, performing arts, film, and education. They hold an MA in Electroacoustic Composition from their studies with Germán Toro Perez at the ZHdK. Buzzi focuses on the potential of appropriation and the use of technologies to negotiate cultural prepositions, artistic practices, skill, aesthetics, perception, environment, identity, with an emphasis on practices that are rooted in the timelines of European art music. Their solo and collaborative practice is predominantly site-specific, performance-oriented, and often closely related to acoustic phenomena and perception mechanisms.
Buzzi was a faculty member at the Zurich University of the Arts and of the Frankfurt University of Music and Performing Arts, where they taught courses in art education, fine arts, media arts, sound & music technology, electronic performance and instrument building. From 2021 - 2024 they co-directed the Studio for Electronic Music and Acoustics at the HfMDK Frankfurt, teaching classes and individual students of the composition class and the International Ensemble Modern Academy IEMA. They have been engaged in educational projects with RIBOCA, the Basel Academy of Art and Design FHNW, Srishti Manipal Institute of Art, Design & Technology in Bangalore, at the INMM Darmstadt Spring Conference, as well as in artist run contexts independent of academia.
Buzzi has received a number of grants and fellowships, including from the Landis & Gyr Foundation, Siemens Kulturstiftung, Pro Helvetia Swiss Arts Council, the City of Zurich; has been invited to residency programmes at NAC Lithuania, The ISRO Bangalore, Los Angeles DE; and participated in award-winning works and exhibitions, including Svizzera 240 (winner of the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale 2018), Dene wos guet geit (Zurich Film Award - winner Best Feature Film, Edinburgh International Film Festival - winner Best International Feature Film, Murcia International Film Festival - winner Special Prize of the Jury, Locarno Festival - winner Special Mention of the Jury), Wind of Change (jury prize winner at the Weiertal Biennale 2023) Baisiez Moy by Thélème (Gramophone Early Music Award 2022).
Their work has been shown at HKW Berlin, Istituto Svizzero Milano, NUP Tallinn, Kromer Festival Biecz, Kunstmuseum Basel, Musikfestival Bern, São Paulo Architecture Biennial, Schauspielhaus Zürich, Science Gallery Bengaluru, Theater Basel, Württ. Kunstverein Stuttgart, ZKM Karlsruhe, and was released by Valiz Books and Projects, Aparté Music, OOR Records.
