Iced Bodies, Phantom Memory: An Interview with Seth Parker Woods and Spencer Topel
By deVon Russell Gray
Photos by Elspeth Mary Moore
Iced Bodies by cellist Seth Parker Woods and artist Spencer Topel is a project The Great Northern hoped to present in 2021 but were unable to carry out due to COVID-19 restrictions. In anticipation of realizing it in a future festival year, we check in with the project’s creators through an interview led by Saint Paul-based multi-instrumentalist/composer deVon Russell Gray.
deVon Russell Gray: Fluxus was a moment and a movement. Iced Bodies was born from a collaborative work that originated in the Seventies. We don’t have anything quite like that. Our time has Black Lives Matter. And we have our individual art-making in which we can choose to speak to relevant current events or not. Have you felt nurtured by your environment/community in your civic-mindedness and/or social activism? Or have you had some reconciliation to consider?
Seth Parker Woods: Yes, definitely. Well, I come from many communities and in thinking back to childhood, my elders, and mentors definitely instilled the power of activism and speaking up for justice and inclusive storytelling, even though I was an extremely shy kid with a speech impediment. In my adult life, artist citizenship is an area I heavily align with my ideals. In looking at the Fluxus period and present day, there is a commonality of system reform and disenfranchisement; cultural, environmental, humanitarian and social, and we see many of the same issues are still prevalent today. When we look deeper, there are conflicts based on individual interest. I have learned to listen deeper and farther and realize that people are complex and we have to find ways to choose us instead of I if we are ever able to grow and have a more equal representation of all.
Spencer Topel: I’ve always had a complicated relationship with culture and society. Growing up in a mostly white and Asian suburbia in Portland, Oregon, I felt—like most people raised in this way—pressure to eschew aspects of personality, race, ethnicity, and interests that didn’t fit the conformist standards suburban culture promotes, a topic my wife Maria and I frequently discuss. To this end, I did not in any way feel nurtured by my environment as a young person, and as a result I developed an anti-establishment attitude that I suppose drew me to movements later in life like FLUXUS: It is chaotic and unruly, rebellious and different. When you look carefully at artwork from this time period and practitioners, you see how fresh and contemporary the ideas still are, since in many ways we’re still simultaneously benefiting from and battling with the same old establishment.
At the same time, Iced Bodies interests me precisely because it is a significant departure from the original work by Jim McWilliams and Charlotte Moorman, namely that we develop a psychological narrative around the ice cello that connects with the representation of the black body on display. It is no longer a whimsical play on our perception of what a musical instrument is, but instead is about ourselves and our struggles with race and identity. That isn’t to say the original work was without power and wonder, far from it. Moorman defied labels and categories, and I think in that same spirit, what Seth and I create with Iced Bodies is something that spills outside the container from which it was created.
“I have learned to listen deeper and farther and realize that people are complex and we have to find ways to choose us instead of I if we are ever able to grow and have a more equal representation of all.”
This country is and always has been a mess. You are addressing this in your work. It’s not necessarily a choice, what’s behind that choice? What work had you two done together preceding this piece, and what if any has followed Iced Bodies?
Seth and Spencer: It was definitely purposeful to address the messiness of this country and its struggles with race, culture and identity, so much of which is tied to the history of experimental art and music both domestically and internationally. At the time (and sadly after) devising this work, both of us were/are incredibly frustrated with the constant and unchecked police violence against Black citizens.
Particularly brazen is/was violence by police toward homeless and individuals struggling with mental illness. In developing the narrative around Iced Bodies, we chose to highlight schizophrenia since it is a prevalent illness in homeless populations and is also characterized by voice hearing and auditory hallucinations. To this end it made sense to evoke this sense of voice hearing on the audience, which is unsettling and tense.
Iced Bodies is both structured and messy at the same time, composed and improvisational… and in many ways, it’s about finding your way through. The trajectory and narrative of the work evolves every time we do it, yet there’s a core, an orderly mess which persists and stays in tact. If anything, it’s further informed by each subsequent performance, giving it further weight and meaning.
This was our first work, if you can believe it. Since then, we’ve been developing ideas but nothing ready to show yet.
How has this work changed for you internally in this post-George Floyd murder and uprisings world? Especially with a planned presentation here in the Twin Cities.
Seth and Spencer: We felt incredible sadness when we heard about George Floyd. We really tried to create a work that would get people’s attention, and while it felt inevitable that the problem of police brutality in Black and brown communities would persist like a malignant cancer, we hoped, as all artists hope, that our efforts would have some impact, some effect. When the details of this story broke, it all felt wasted... silly as that might sound. Then, following the rise up in protests around the world we felt vindicated that there might be meaningful change to come.
We connected shortly after the murder of George Floyd, and upon reflecting on Iced Bodies we thought: “How can we bring this piece to the Twin Cities?” It seemed important to add our voice to the choir of voices protesting, but also provide a space for healing stateside and globally. In our early conversations, Seth mentioned the corruption of the justice system is not just an American problem, but a global one. In the wake of the death of Floyd, Iced Bodies needed to continue to be a space for healing, drawing awareness and citizen activation. As disturbing as Iced Bodies is to experience, it has the potential to bring different kinds of people together to reconcile their feelings together, without words. This is an important kind of healing that’s altogether missing in contemporary society.
“As disturbing as Iced Bodies is to experience, it has the potential to bring different kinds of people together to reconcile their feelings together, without words. This is an important kind of healing that’s altogether missing in contemporary society.”
W.E.B. wrote on duality, and more closely related to our work, Olly Wilson wrote on it in the context of being a classical music creator existing in a Black American body and an American body. Can you speak to the duality you experience and deal with in your body and in your musical worlds?
Seth: That state of constantly living in dual worlds has been the story of my life. The code switching not just in language, but movement as well is something I’ve had to find a way to reconcile and find a way to conjoin them so that I feel like more of myself all the time. In short, I have grown to find ways to be authentically more of myself even when I am performing the music of the classical canon, walking down the street or traveling, and not let there be the layer of my skin color layered on top. Easier on some days, harder on others. When I am performing, I don’t think “I am Seth, the Black cellist performing this music, but rather I am Seth performing and creating as an artist.” The former is a societal affliction and something I have had to find a way to contend with regardless of situations. People want to put you in boxes and I am beyond boxes and I wholly embrace my beautiful complexity. I have made it my life's mission to continue to transform at the slightest whiff of people trying to box me in, and find ways to showcase all of those different sides of myself.
Who are you when performing this work? Are you engaging with that Black iced body as yourself or are you imagining those actions from someone else’s perspective? Who are you from your position, Spencer?
Seth: In the early years of performing Iced Bodies, especially the premiere, I really saw myself as a body on display. One of power and vulnerability, and also being dissected. During that premiere, emotions and history were running rampant, especially since the conceptual artist, Jim McWilliams, who conceived the original work Ice Music for…, was in attendance. There are moments where I feel as if I am looking in from the outside and experiencing the installation performance as both spectator and performer. In other ways, I am paying homage to all the lives lost to injustice. At present, I embody much of that still, but have found new ways to be a conduit and facilitator for the charged space that Spencer and I have created. I see myself visually and sonically guiding, taking space, and releasing energy/space for the audience to reflect and meditate one the ephemeral and fragility of life and our environment. Also, the collaborative nature of how I interact and play off of Spencer’s sonic sculpting and diffusion has greatly evolved and become so much stronger than the early years of Iced Bodies.
Spencer: I think there are so many layers going on when Seth and I present Iced Bodies. On one level it’s a kind of rich, tense, guided musical improvisation between us and the audience. At a high level, I’m reminded of a term I learned recently: parasocial, which describes an indirect social experience such as the closeness some people feel towards content creators on the internet doing tutorials or playing video games. I think for me there’s a kind of paraperformative aspect of this piece, where I find myself in synchronicity with the actions, gestures, and decisions Seth makes on the spot. We purposefully made my role a bit hidden or obscured within the audience, since it doesn’t add anything visually or conceptually to the work, and as a byproduct of this decision, I discovered that I play the part of the witness, and my concentration is as important a signal as the sounds we make.
Then there are practical things like shaping the experience, the flow. In the way that Seth bows, strikes, touches, and breaks the ice, I too strike, “bow”, touch, resonant glass panels distributed around the performance space. As much as possible I try and let what Seth is doing physically be heard through hydrophones embedded in the ice. This reflexive process of listening, playing, and amplifying what’s happening with Seth has become what I love most about the work. It requires immense concentration, but is deeply rewarding.
My partner, upon me showing them this piece of yours, immediately connected some dots and formed a notion about the degradation of a body, specifically we thought of Kara Walker’s Domino Sugar Woman, the degradation of an object/body as perceived by an audience. Not a question so much but ah, any thoughts?
Seth and Spencer: Both works definitely share this element of ephemeral beauty. The spectacle of the beauty and its power is on display, but quickly those layers are obscured, destroyed, and marred. In these shifting states, based on viewings, the image and emotions tied to it evolve as the objectification continues, but there is also a reclaiming of that power, of that objectification.
These are both causality based, even Charlotte Moorman in Ice Music, willingly put herself in danger and pain for the art. It wasn’t about the pain, but facilitating the slow shift of mindset of the audience. There are also feelings of sadness and resignation born from the persistent toiling with something that is deconstructed and broken. More than two hours into the installation, the original ice cello sculpture transforms into a phantom memory. What we are left with, both as performers and spectators is an emancipated sonic release.
deVon Russell Gray is a musical artist and creator at odds with the cosmos. Born and raised in St. Paul, MN. Presently residing in St. Paul trying to work it all out. All of it.