ICED BODIES // A Deconstruction
In preparation for Seth Parker Woods & Spencer Topel: ICED BODIES on Sat, Jan 28, we invited Laura Wertheim Joseph to have wide ranging conversation with the artists about their collaborative process, how the work relates to and references early Fluxus performance art, and how the meaning of the work has changed since it was first conceived of in 2017.
Laura Wertheim Joseph: Let’s enter into the conversation by talking about the fact that not everyone who sees your performances of ICED BODIES will be familiar with Charlotte Moorman's performances of Ice Music, which was written for her by Jim McWilliams in 1972. But for those who have this is a point of reference, you can't help but focus on some of the differences, which feel important and intentional.
When she played Ice Music, Moorman held different versions of an ice cello in a traditional seated pose, traditional except for the fact that she was naked, and played it using a Plexiglas bow. Her performances are about enduring the cold, about continuously playing the ice cello, while it melts. Although the ice cello in and of itself is striking, her body seems to be the focus in her performances. In the video I've seen of your performance of ICED BODIES the melting of the ice isn't something you wait for. It seems to be something that you exert force and clear effort to achieve.
The ice cello doesn't just read like something you are enduring or playing. It has a stronger relational presence. And there are a number of aesthetic and sonic factors that seem to contribute to this, which I hope we can draw out over the course of the conversation, but I wanted to start by asking you to speak to the significance of some of these differences.
Seth Parker Woods: So where do you start here with this? I'll start with the idea around the body or the nudeness. So going back and forth, whether to do this—and Spencer and I talked about this at probably ad nauseum early on—but the idea of not needing to expose yet another Black body. I'm already a body on display on top of a pedestal within a museum. So there's already this imagery that is there that could be taken in so many different directions, right? But the idea of shielding that, and then in consultation with Joan Jeanrenaud who was basically the second person to do this concept work in '99, she was like you should really try to protect your body. So [wear] some form of a wetsuit. Obviously, her arms were exposed. That was done at the Walker Art Center. But I chose to go with the full wetsuit for a few different reasons, because, at the end of the day, I'm still a concert cellist beyond this performance artwork. So it’s a way of protecting and shielding the body, and it can be seen as political. It's also an extremely cold structure. [laughter] So I'm also just trying to be able to last through the course of the work. Spencer, you go ahead and chime in.
Photo courtesy of On The Reel.
Spencer Topel: Well, I mean, I think it's interesting you raise all these... I would say, differences between our...we don't even call it a kind of interpretation of the concept. It's more, in the true spirit of Fluxus, a kind of reimagining of the work or remixing of the work. And I think that's such an important feature that's often missed with Fluxus—not to say that she [Moorman] was squarely in the Fluxus camp—but I would say there’s a very fluid understanding of creative ownership. And we've experienced an interesting conservative reaction to that in previous articles that either omitted Seth or myself, or made this attempt to pin ownership of the creative process on one person, which is for us, having co-created this so closely, ridiculous. And I think that that's something that we feel is imbued from the early Moorman work. We both really studied these original performances very closely. Seth had done a lot of background work prior to me getting involved, and I think each of the decisions to make the piece different were very much with having that work in our minds.
So I think one big differences is that our ice cello makes sound, and it's really embedded with electronics that are frozen in the ice. Moorman had attempted to do a kind of sonic cello as well as, Joan did later, right? She had attempted to try to sonify it, and it's just a really fussy material. So we spent a lot more upfront time researching this and developing both the artistic [object], the sculptural piece, but also the technology to make it work. And I think one of the breakthroughs on the sound side was we don't simply play the sound of the ice out into speakers because. Unless you're literally fracturing ice, it doesn't really generate a tone. I'm sure you've heard examples where people throw a rock on a frozen pond or a lake, and it makes these amazing kind of laser sounds. What's happening is the ice is really fracturing. If we were to just make a piece about that, it'd be over in like 10 minutes, because you are really just cleaving and splitting the ice. What ice does is create these really sharp impulse sounds, these almost percussive clicks.
And so we wanted to find a way to make that a musical thing, to draw out the impulse into a tone or into a sound and still preserve that iciness, or that ice quality. And that was actually kind of a process in itself. It wasn't until I talked to the sound artist Liz Phillips, who also harks from this time period, and told her we had been toying around with metal and some other material ceramics, and she said, “no, no, no, no. What you want is glass, glass is going to be the closest thing to ice, it's crystalline and it'll give you those really fast transients, which are like sound, basically how fast the sound generates at high frequencies that's going to give you a more ice like thing.” I was at Dartmouth at the time, and Seth came to Dartmouth for a residency with me, and we tried it out, and we were like, this is it. We heard really quickly that it was doing things musically and sonically that made sense to us, and as we continue to explore the glass and ice relationship, this ends up being a really interesting piece in the drama. So when you enter the space, you'll see all these hanging, or situated glass panels, around the space, and they almost become the way that Seth is able to play the glass through the ice. And so at certain times you'll hear it kind of bowed on the ice, and that's really generating kind of impulses and noise that then gets played, emitted through the glass’ tone almost like a string. But not a string. So that was a really important sonic piece of this [work].
Addressing the sculptural piece is also really important. All of Moorman's sculptures were very different looking. The original one was just like an ice, cello bag, and so it's just kind of this blob thing with amorphic features. There was later an ice carver she worked with, and it became a more ridiculous, cartoonish-looking cello, almost like if somebody never looked at a cello and you tried to describe it to them. That's one of the cellos she performed on, with a really exaggerated scroll and all this.
For us, we really wanted like a beautiful sculptural thing that wasn't trying to be a cello, but that evoked a cello. We spent a lot of time trying to generate facets because we knew it would be black. And so if it was just a solid mass, it would be opaque and blob like, and you wouldn't see it really. Having the facets on it causes it to be jewel like, and the light reflects at different angles. We spent quite a bit on the time on the dyes, and one of the goals was to create this moment of drama at the beginning, where this thing comes out and people are kind of upset that you're gonna break it. That was such an important part of the journey that Seth goes on—[as a viewer] you're kind of like, "Don't do that.” I think initially the audience is really upset when this happens. After a period of silence and then little bit of bowing, he jams the implement right into the cello, and it's just like, ugh. But that's such an important feeling that starts to open up the piece.
Another big difference is we have a speaker embedded in the ice. It's a kind of a transducer, but you can hear it through the pickups sometimes, and eventually Seth releases this object. And maybe Seth, you can talk about that gesture at the end, which is a pretty big departure from also the original concept.
SW: Of course, yes the long durational, original work is her [Moorman] waiting and kind of being impatience or in tandem with it, and that act of bravery and expression as pain. If she's not performing or she's not feeling pain, she's not really fully embodied or imbued inside of the work.
Some have said it [our performance] seems so physical and so violent, but that's not necessarily what we're going for. It's just because of the act that I have these ice carving tools. And so deconstruction is really what it is, a deconstruction, but also, a freeing, a freeing that is very much connected to schizophrenia, to the voice hearers, to dementia, and to the stigmas around this. So the work is in conversation with a bunch of different, sociopoetic topics that are very much of our present history. What was the question I'm supposed to be answering? [laughter]
Photo courtesy Mary Elspeth Moore.
ST: You were talking about the idea of the voices inside the ice.
SW: So as it's connected to mental illness, and the stigmas around that, we imbue part of the sound with recordings of poetry by Nayyirah Waheed. At least in my recollection, she came on the scene around 2014-15, and her work was being shared a lot on social media before I came back to the States. I was seeing it everywhere. It was part of a collection called Salt. So there are these two very striking poems, both obscured in some ways, especially at the very beginning. Only at the end do we have this deconstruction or freeing [of the sound/poems], and then also a resolution. It almost can be heard almost as a siren song, or as a chant or mantra, an atoning. I'm trying to think of the words off the top of my head… is it?: “you cannot remain at war between what you want to say (who you really are). and what you mean to say. your mouth was not meant to eat itself.”
ST: Yeah. That's right. Like Seth said, you don't hear that poetry until the very end, in any kind of intelligible way. Especially in our last iteration of this in Huddersfield [Contemporary Music Festival], I thought it came out really nicely that over time you could hear it through the piezos [contact microphones], and it gets distorted through the glass. It becomes very intuitive that you're hearing speech, but not understanding it. And over time these cycles start to unveil themselves as the thing, and you can really hear this voice clearly at the end.
LJ: There are so many layers here, so many different directions that you all are bringing up that I'm like, which direction to go. One thing is to establish the context you have been speaking to. I know you said it, but you're responding to injustices related to incarceration, police brutality, and the higher incidences of voice hearing and schizophrenia in Black communities—suggested by the blackness of the cello. There are histories and contemporary issues that you're responding to that are very different from Moorman’s references.
I don't know if this will be meaningful to you, but when I was watching your performance, it brought to mind Fred Moten's writings on sonic materiality and, specifically about how sound can disturb the boundary of the visual. I will not be able to convey the complexity of his thinking here. I probably shouldn't even try, but there's just so much resonance in what he was talking about in terms of describing the haunting echo of the scream of Frederick Douglas's enslaved aunt, and how he hears that in the free jazz of Albert Ayler and describes these screaming notes as carrying the defiant scream of the subject born into objecthood. And thinking about your cello, your obsidian cello as a sound making object with embodied force and electronic guts. There seems to be some connection there. I wonder if you could speak to it.
ST: Yeah.
SW: It's all those things. I will definitely never try to contextualize Fred Moten, we will all fall short, forever and ever, but I know this exact reference and I know what you mean. And there are so many, I guess, directions we can go related to this. As I mentioned before with the kind of the act of violence that is kind of seen there [in the performance].
When I came back to the States in 2016, if we rewind, we remember everything that was happening during that time, let alone all the cases of police brutality that were coming up, at least for me. It felt like week, after week, after week. After living in Europe all of those years, and things being more filtered or suppressed, it really felt like a major culture shock. I remember being on the phone with my mom, and feeling like, what can I say? What can I do in this moment as an artist, as a citizen artist in this time? Is there something to be said from artists that is in direct response to our present history?
For me, there is the unearthing. There is also the idea of an extrapolation of the identity of the cello, or the class and hierarchy that come with it, and also the person that is then on display. So a reclaiming of the body that aligns in many ways with Charlotte and her lean towards feminism, [resisting] the objectification of the body. We are owning that in wearing the wetsuit, which is a kind of claiming. I think early on—Spencer will probably remember this in a talk we gave in Chicago—coming under fire from an audience member that I wasn't nude, that I should have been nude. Which I think is funny that someone tells me when I need to be nude and when I don't need to be nude. But anyway, that's another conversation.
Within all of this, I think it's quite powerful to be able to give this symbolism of the body, of the cello, of this edifice that is an expressive agent all in one, and then to basically tear it down and fashion it as something very different, over the course of this long period in time. It is quite beautiful, working on, or with this material that is so ephemeral. And then in conjunction with Spencer, working together, [we] improvise through these kind of structural scores to create this landscape that at time ebbs... The whole thing very much ebbs and flows, and we kind of sculpt it over time, and with the voices that are very much so there, the cutting off of the cello's neck or its head.
Photo courtesy Mary Elspeth Moore.
And then this performative act of bringing the cello to be seen as this kind of headless body, but only then adding a human face or human head to that thing and then taking it away. That act that keeps happening quite a few times in the performance, of breaking the cello down over time. It rings out. I think I was so struck with a lot of anger and frustration when we were first performing, I think I carried that with me. I carried it into the performance, and I used the performance as a way for me to heal and for me to understand better what the hell I was doing in this country. Again, why I made the choice to come back to this country, just from a personal level, but also how to grapple with being in and of this country now, being a Black man in and of this country and being an artist in this country, in this moment in time where things felt like they were about to just burst.
But then [I’m] moving to a space now, where I don't carry so much of that anymore. Now, leaving it as a space that Spencer and I create for people to find themselves in, if they want to heal, or use it as a space of understanding, or just to come together as community anonymously, or to be present in their own way. So at least that's my perspective on it.
ST: You got me thinking a bit about Fred Moten's work... It sort of conjured up a ghost from grad school or something when we had to do critical theory in music, but one of the questions I had for you is, I think, are you trying to evoke phonic material, phonic materiality in that concept? What is that exactly? Because I think I understand how to answer that relative to what we were doing, but I'm not sure.
LJ: And then I fumble a little bit because when I read Fred Moten's work, it’s a struggle—and that feels intentional on his part... But this idea of sonic materiality, it kind of escapes my words, but I feel that in watching your performance, Seth, and the way that the touch and the sound are so connected. You have these different instruments; you're using metal rings and cuffs that make it so the touch of your hands and wrists creates sounds... You contact the cello in these multiple different ways, but the sonic materiality felt most visceral to me when you're using your hands. And that's so physical with the ice, which is kind of shattering off the cello. Sound and physicality are so closely connected in those moments—the sound feels like it has a kind of physical presence. That's not a very precise way of talking about this...
Photo courtesy On The Reel.
ST: At least my understanding, a little bit of that idea, is that he's interested in how when sound is recorded or captured, it kind of moves into this space where it's kind of separated from its meaning. And so his position is almost like an anti-Pierre Schaeffer position, that there isn't such a thing as a sound object, that that sound actually has to be this thing very closely connected to what it is. I think for us—and maybe just as a sound artist myself or somebody who puts sound or makes sound objects— the sound is the object, is the physicality, is the thing. That's very much in this piece that when he strikes the ice and the ice is changing its shape, the sound is changing and the voices trapped in the ice are literally trapped in the ice, the transducer can't move. It can't voice itself. So I think there's certainly a connection there that's interesting, or a dialogue there with Frank Moten's work, and it's the first time ever anybody raised it with respect to this piece, but to me, it's exciting because so much of what we think about with sound...
Recorded sound is appropriation, stealing, taking, borrowing. Seth and I have grown up—from being children and musicians who were told that we could make money with our recordings—becoming artists that can never make a dime with the recordings because it's all fractions of cents on the play. So to us, this is an interesting kind of aspect here. And that's one of the reasons I moved to physical sculptural sound object is that you can't copy that and paste it and play it on Spotify, and I think with this piece especially, all the glass is spatialized … I can't really separate the sound Seth makes physically with the body and touching the ice from every other sound we make. They're all together, and having those things means you have to be there to experience it.
LJ: I wanted to ask about your gestures, going back to what you were describing as your initial relationship with the piece, Seth. There was so much wide-ranging emotion that I saw on the recording. Some gestures suggest tenderness through caress of the instrument, and then there were other gestures that you mentioned people have read or projected violence onto. These gestures read to me as extraction or labor—especially when the cello was recumbent or on its back and you were leaning over it. They're just emotionally complex. I noted imperceptible moments where you would seemingly shift from one emotional register to another. I also recognize that you've done this many times and wondering if your gestures are different each time. Are they instinctual or is there's some choreography to them?
Photo courtesy Mary Elspeth Moore.
SW: Yeah, so there's kind of two scores, right. So one is a choreographic score, so it's just a series of gestures that I came up with over a year [working] with Spencer, workshopping and prototyping, figuring out what actually reads well, what can be used as a primary gesture. Obviously, when you're dealing with the large sculpture, things changed a lot, especially in how the sound is being diffused in space, and what can actually be picked up based on the locality of the piezos as they freeze in times we put them in, but then the ice and the water as they freeze basically give it its final location. Over time, I use that as a vehicle for looking at our larger timeline score, which really looks at the pulsing or pacing of the larger choreography, the larger... I don't wanna call it sonography, but in my head that is kind of what it is, what tools are being used at what time, where the apexes are larger, pillars of the work over the course of this long durational period.
So all those gestures came through workshopping and figuring out what really worked and what felt good. As we worked into the Huddersfield performance, I saw an opportunity to use one of the pick-ups that came out of the ice that had not been spliced, because this has happened a few times. Eventually, I get into this state of entrainment as I'm playing through a specific gesture to use it as an expressive cell, and then I start to pull in other areas, which is why there are the rings, which is why there is the wrist band, the different types of rods that have different kind of rhythmic cells that have been etched into them, or smoothed down to replicate the granular nature of bow to string.
I was able to put one of the piezos in my mouth and then use my voice as another layer, while I'm also doing the other things, so it's a lot going on at the same time. As a way of being aware that there can be visual fatigue, and also auditory fatigue as one is listening, but also for Spencer and I—as we are riffing over the course of this entire performance—to find ways for the material to constantly be in flow but also evolving over time. Adding that voice in was quite amazing, and then what it could eventually be in this space was very much so in that moment in time. And trying to replicate that which is so physicalized for me via the tools in my body, trying to retrace that vocally.
So that's what the gestures are. There's eight gestures that I use over the course of it, some of them are that the main cell, other parts are parsings of that, or bringing together two parts of gestures at the same time, which allows me to then be able to move seamlessly, as you said, or observed, through one kind of emotion or a gesture to the other, while recalling another—this idea of self-referencing and feedback loops.
LJ: There's a lot of complexity to what you are describing, Seth. There's clearly deep conversations and thinking that has happened behind the scenes—workshopping and these kinds of thing—that have resulted in the performance that other people have experienced. Your collaborative relationship is generally something that I'm interested in. Also your role during the performances, Spencer, and the way you are responsive to one another in real time. How do you communicate while performing?
ST: So I think one way to address it is that we create this kind of pop-up installation, this temporary installation has a pedestal and a collection pool. We experimented with different patterns from mortuary tables, and we ended up with a very ornate pattern from a Soviet-era mortuary table, and it's almost like antlers. So very decorative, adorned, it's kind of ritualistic in nature, and that idea is to let the water flow into the pool. Seth often symbolically pushes pieces of ice into the pool.
It sort of contrasts the very beginning of the experience—where everything is very clean, very still, very minimalist. There's just black, white, pedestal. The pool is black, basically, with light reflecting off of it. The black ice contrasts with the whiteness of the pedestal, and then around the room are all these glass panels, and so it's very still. Over the course of the several hours that Seth and I are engaged in this, we are together playing this massive instrument together. The instrument is the ice, it's the glass, it's all of these things together, and Seth is the one really responsible for activating the system by providing energy into the ice and creating that visual thing.
It's my job and my role to mix those sounds into different kind of [sonic] timbres and colors, and so it's almost like I'm selecting different pools of paint, some of them are calming colors, and some of them are unsettling colors, and some of them are somewhere between, and those are what he means about the sound fatigue. It's a big work; it's over several hours. And so we incorporate things like silence. The piece really begins in silence because we need it to... Because there's so much sound to happen after that. And that's also our big homage to Charlotte, in a way, at the beginning, that kind of moment of repose where all you can really hear is Seth touching the ice. It's very quiet sounds of him dragging a Plexiglas bow across the object. You can hear it very subtly. Over the course of the last four or five performances we increasingly expand that time period, and what happens is over that period, you very gradually hear the sound of the glass wake up.
And so we're evoking that kind of synesthesia with seeing somebody playing an ice cello and imagining sound. Because I think people do that when we see somebody bowing something. But then replacing that with a hallucination. The sound coming from the glass is very faint, and it really works well when it's incredibly subtle, and it's like people think, is that in my head? Or is it in the environment? They're now inside this theater that we've created, and then it's just really these cycles. Like he said, we created these structural scores where we move through different…regions. One is silence, one is caress and comfort and holding and kind of healing, another one is violence and anger and frustration, and another one is voice, and then eventually these kind of convolve... And that's how Seth and I are really symbiotically linked here. He can't do the piece without me, I can't do the piece without him. And I'm fully concentrated. I have to be... If I lose my attention for a second, he... First of all, he knows it, and he's like, wake up, he kind of gives me the signal, but the other thing is that you feel it in the room, you know when we're totally on and it's connecting.
Photo courtesy Mary Elspeth Moore.
And in a way, those two hours are both the longest two hours and the shortest two hours that I've ever experienced. We're both incredibly mentally exhausted. Seth is physically exhausted. I'll have weird kinks in my back from not moving for two hours, but I think it requires that level of commitment to the experience and eventually audience members get pulled in. And one thing that's really amazed me and Seth over and over again, is that people don't leave. We always expect people to get up and kind of fuss around and move around it. It happened a little bit in Chicago, but Huddersfield, it didn't... I think we were both surprised the audience didn't move. So maybe some people milling around in the back, because there was like a bar there and it was a bit casual there, but for the most part, I didn't see a single person move from my viewpoint the whole time, and in the video, nobody's getting up. So, there's this way that I think we create that ritual, that experience and environment, that moment, and people kind of buy into it.
LJ: I'd read in one of your descriptions of the piece that you imagine it to be interactive and for the audience to play a role. The way you're describing the sound, as you say, is so much different than Moorman's performance. It gets distributed across space and is layered, and audience members are differently positioned in this complex sonic physical landscape. You spoke it at the beginning of this, Seth, about the vulnerability. You don't get to pick who's in the audience and in not being able to predict all of that, there's vulnerability, there's intensity, as well as an invitation for people to participate in all this... How are you imagining people as participants and how has that worked in some of the past performances?
ST: I don't know. Seth, do you want to take a stab at that one? Because you're kind of looking at people... You're kind of not necessarily looking at them, but you're facing the audience to a large extent. I have a different reaction because I'm kind of in the audience.
Photo courtesy Mary Elspeth Moore.
SW: Well, I think when we first started this I was... To be very frank, I was scared shitless.
[laughter]
ST: Yeah. It was...
SW: For a variety of reasons, but also because this is my first sojourn into doing something like this, right. And it already carries in some ways a cult following, as this idea that hadn't been done, of course, in all these years. And here we are, another collective tackling this concept that people are gonna go crazy for. I mean I remember when we were doing this at Dartmouth and all these football players showed up.
[laughter]
ST: That's so weird. Yeah. Actually that was the weirdest performance we've done. Yeah. That was strange.
SW: To see this thing, to see someone smash the ice cello.
ST: It was very voyeuristic at Dartmouth. The students were just really just curious, but there was like no context.
SW: Yeah. So it’s interesting. I'm up there and what went through my head, especially in the first performance, was that I had to figure out a way channel this and not feel like I'm on display, knowing I’m on display—trying to just be as part of the installation. Which is why I always call this a performance installation. And just be there and be present for the act and the idea of what's going to come, and what is going to move us, move me, and then move Spencer and I collectively. And not worry about what's happening.
But of course, I am seeing people. As I'm in these states of entrainment, I am seeing people move past me, and stand to the side, or try to dodge the shards of ice as they fly out, off the pedestal, or into the audience. So these things are... I'm aware of them, but at the same time, as the performer trying to just be in the moment for the thing and not necessarily be too present for what the audience is, how they're responding to it or feeding off of it.
And so I'm not really pulling directly energy from the audience in that way. I'm just trying to be locked into what I'm doing, and then what Spencer and I are doing collectively. Because it's a very slow burn. There’s hand signal keys we've created for looping, or going back, or moving forward or whatever it is based on kind of what we're hearing and what's actually happening. "Oh, this is really working, this is really nice.”
But I like that people do stay although I never... We never expect them to...all to stay. There are some diehards who just want to see this thing more from beginning to end. Others come, they go away and get a coffee or drink or whatever, or go shop shopping and then they come back and see it in a very different state. And I think all of those things are valid, and frankly quite exciting, because there are so many ebbs and flows and moments of stillness that are orchestrated into the project.
ST: Well first of all, I think talking about the first performance is great because one of the things Seth did, which I was completely scared and on edge about was that he got the museum to fly Jim McWilliams up there to see the performance and to be there and to be interviewed. And I was like, oh God, this is our first time trying this thing. Jim was a wonderful guy, but, I mean he's an intense fellow, I don't know if you've talked to him, but, it was all that Jim McWilliams energy, and we were just like... I was just like, this is one more thing... It was like throwing a hand grenade in the audience; it felt like that. But it turned out to be the complete opposite. He was very cool, very respectful, at the end he was just wonderful about it.
I'm actually reading the audience a lot, in terms of feeling where we go with the work. I don't play jazz, but I've heard jazz musicians talk about this, that they feed off the energy in the room with and they're kind of playing the audience. I think that's the kind of thing that I'm probably really sensitive to, because I'm just like, in their... They're like surrounding me, and I can't get away from them. If there's moments when I feel like people are kind of getting restless, I just try to move it forward a little bit. Or if we get to a really good place where everybody's concentrating, I'm not going to suddenly switch the game up. And that's something I think is reflective of the process that I feel with Seth, we get to that. So that's kind of, I think, where it's at. Now in terms of interaction, I think, at least in the Chicago performance, I felt this very intensely, which is that there were very strong contrasts between different members of the audience given their personal backgrounds, like where they came from, where they grew up, their race. And this was exciting because that starts to get at the heart of having experiences with different people together.
You can see that in some of the video footage from the Chicago performance that, I almost want to say that as a white person getting confronted with this, myself included, the guilt sets in. You’re kind of being forced to reconcile some of these feelings or ideas that you don't normally have to... You can look away. But now you're kind of stuck and you gotta just deal with it. People are crying, people are wrapped up in these emotions. And then I think in contrast, there's a great scene where it cuts to a friend of Seth’s—a French horn player who brought his daughter, his Black daughter, and they're just beaming. They were so happy. It was a very different experience for them. They're like, “here's this experimental Black artist, he's kicking ass, expressing ideas, which are tracking.” There's ways in which this piece has very different modalities of experience [depending on the individual] that makes it interesting to do.
Seth and I are, again, very much linked on this, so his priority of where he wants to go, it takes priority to anything else. If people are really grooving on something and then Seth looks at me like, it is time to move on, we do it, I'm not going to hold that back. So I think it's that that kind of relationship is paramount and really just the kind of vibe in the room, for lack of a better description is kind of something that kind of seeps in.
LJ: You mentioned this platform and this drainage system, which is distinctive to your version of the performance, and really struck me. Watching the recording you see black water pool on the top of the platform and then come down the side through this drainage system. And, I guess maybe because I'm imagining when you'll perform this work in the Twin Cities, alongside the upper Mississippi River, and thinking about the histories that the upper Mississippi River carries, these visuals made think about Toni Morrison's words about, how “all water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was.” The dripping of the water and the way you're freeing it from the sculpture and the way it's flowing down, suggested this idea. What are your thoughts about this connection to Morrison’s words generally, and then also about performing this in the Twin Cities, alongside the upper Mississippi River and all the histories it carries—expanding the transatlantic slave trade, historically, George Floyd's murder recently? There's a lot of history.
Photo courtesy On The Reel.
SW: I think it's a lot. I mean, we are all dealing with injustices and human rights on so many different levels, and I don't think the things disappear. The masks just change a little bit. And so as I had said before, I don't put myself in a position of trying to hold the emotions of everybody else anymore. It's too heavy. So instead it leaves me space to be even more present, to be there for the craft and to be able to cultivate space for people to actually come into. 'Cause I think it's already charged, it's charged. The space is charged from the moment a single audience member comes in, because they've already prescribed what they think this is going to be.
SW: And I think the magical moment is when people find themselves anonymous in a space full of people they know or they don't know, and collectively can be moved and can find themselves inside of it or find a sense of peace inside of it.
Of course the Twin Cities has major issues…George Floyd was basically the match that really lit the fire. Every American city, small or big has dark histories to come to terms with and figure out what are the ways forward.
The body does remember. Just looking at this amazing pedestal we have, but also the cavern that then leads and flows all of the ice, and the shards, and the water down into the pool. This idea of coming to the river truly resonates for me.
Every single time we do this I prepare myself mentally... Okay, we're going in to do this again. Okay where do I need to be psychologically, and there is imagery... imagery of us doing it for the very first time when the net comes off and it flows directly, I push it off and it goes directly into the cavern. Not necessarily aiming for that. That's just... That's the way the cookie crumbles. But there is something very strong and striking about that moment. So every time I see the pedestal and I see this cavern, I see that image. So it's almost like the memory is embedded in there. And that feeling of what that was the very first time to release, where the cello is no longer the cello anymore, and it has now been morphed into something very different.
So doing it in these places and bringing it into a place such as this, I think it is important. It was important for us to have conversations with the Weisman and Great Northern and the University about making sure as many communities as possible know about this work, and that they can see that there is even further commentary around it. And, maybe, maybe... If they can also be in the audience and present for this, because let's be honest, most of the time these works are presented at primarily white institutions and with primarily white audience-goers.
So to make sure that a space is being held and hand is being offered to make sure people know about this work. And some can say, but why would you put people through this? We're not necessarily prescribing violence, but prescribing a space to come as you are, and maybe just maybe reflection and healing can come out of it.
ST: Yeah. I think that last point you made Seth, about reflection and healing is something that you mentioned earlier when we looked at doing it in the Twin Cities, as being a kind of shift in the work. I would say the way this piece could be interpreted or experienced can really bring people together to talk to each other. And you can almost say the post-event reception is as important as anything else. Like how people interact with each other when they do think about these things. I think for me and Seth, the transformation of American culture, reforms, changes to police, a kind of awareness shift following George Floyd, felt really delayed. We’ve been working on these ideas since 2016 when you were going to come back to the States. It felt like it just doesn't stop.
But, yeah, I think everything Seth says is right; we don't look at this as a prescriptive thing. We look at this as a way to bring people together to heal and to share company with people who you would not normally share company with, which I think is such an important thematic area for us, at least when we think about this work in its best form.
SW: Personally, it's also important [for me to add that] I didn't know Floyd, my brother knew Floyd because Floyd spent a lot of time in Houston. And I came to know that he and my brother were friends. So that's actually how I found out about what happened was through my brother first, and then I opened the phone and... And then everything... Well, we all saw it. So in a way it was also important from a personal side to bring this work there, and to be there, and to be in this space. And I think it was important for us, last year when we had the cancellation or the postponement, whatever you want to call it, it was actually great in some ways because it gave us a chance to really be in the space, to be in the city, to be able to talk with a lot of different people...
And get perspectives outside of what it's normally like as artists of whatever style: you fly in, you get ready, you do the thing, and then you're out. Sometimes you're not allotted the time to really be there and have meaningful conversations on topics or tangent lines because of scheduling. So it was nice that we were able to last year... Was it last year? Oh my God. To come and to be there. So it's actually quite nice to then loop back once more—through all of this work, after three years in the making—to finally present this work. And I think it means a little more to finally be able to bring it there. We've cultivated partnerships and friendships that are a bit deeper than the normal fly-in fly-out situation.
LJ: That's exciting to hear that that's happened as a result of postponement and deferral. Those things often have some reason, but, yeah, glad that it could create depth and connection. And you’ll be back soon.
ST: Yeah.
LJ: And in the meantime, you're going somewhere else to perform, Seth?
SW: I'm just in a studio working on my album.
[laughter]
LJ: Okay. Well, just that. Just working on your album.
[laughter]
SW: And not playing. Just listening and editing and mixing and mastering, yeah. So a little different, but yeah.
LJ: You're classically trained like Moorman, right? You're pushing cello in experimental directions, but you still maintain a classical practice as well.
SW: Yeah. I still do the recitals and all the sonatas. I'm still doing it all, trying.
LJ: Yeah, yeah. Well, it seems like you're flourishing in that regard. There must be some interplay between your experimental, more performative, installation-based work and your more classical performances. Has there been some evolution there as a result?
SW: I came up, like Spencer, in a space where the musician was at the service of the composer score. We were just vehicles for someone else's expression. And I prescribed to it because I didn't know anything else. But over the years, and I think this piece, and others, have given me the strength to strike out and become more of the citizen artists I didn't know I needed or wanted to be, and to be able to tell as many possible stories in collaboration with another creator. And our shared journeys kind of fueled and [continue to] fuel the stories we tell to audience members. So the programming and the curation, at this point, very much so reflect me trying to find ways for them all to be in conversation with each other.
I think in another interview, I would say, "I was thinking about what can one say in the midst of 2016 and everything going on, and I definitely didn't think Bach suites were going to be the answer to heal people." I just didn't think that was going to be the thing of our present history. Maybe on a topical level, I don't know. But I wasn't running to the Bach suites. I think there are other stories, other sonic stories that fit the moment better. So that's why at this point, I'm still so staunchly an advocate of telling the stories and being in partnership with composers of now, to be able to tell those stories, and tell my side of it as well, through the works.
LJ: As you were saying, Spencer, about the Fluxus score... One of the things I find so interesting about Moorman is that she exemplifies the subversive potential of virtuosity, of performing a score written by someone else. There’s a tension between the kind of classical and more avant-garde understandings of the score and the role of the performer or the interpreter. It’s so interesting to hear your words about how you're keeping both in play and having them inform one another.
LJ: Spencer, is there anything else that you want to share as a final thought?
ST: No, I think we've covered a lot of territory. This has been a really interesting interview because we've talked to a lot of people who come in with a particular angle on things. Part of our idea is just to create this, immersive is a totally over-used these today, but, for lack of a better word, create this immersive experience is really important and has echoes in other ritualistic sound practices. And that's the crux of it is, can we create this amazing experience for people and something that really they can't just simply go on the internet to experience or something? They've got to show up. I think that idea of showing up is so important.
LJ: You've used the word, 'ritual' a couple of times. I like that word, and I don't have more to say about it than that, but just the attention that a ritual can bring, that you have to bring a certain mindset and that it takes things out of the everyday, helps activate your mind.
ST: I think it's noted that Seth brought a choreography, but it's important to note that he studied and trained in dance and has worked with choreographers and dancers. And I think this is a key part of why this piece works, why this experience works, because he brings a kind of pose...a form to the human body that I think helps focus the audience as well.
If I got up there, it would just be a disaster. I don't have the... I wouldn't be holding my body in a way that anybody would want to look at for a period of time. I'm just being honest. So that's just how I feel about it. I love working with the dancers. I did a recent installation opening of Ensemble created with Hana Kassem for Art Omi up in Ghent, New York. To make it special, we brought up Dual Rivet, which is a dance company in New York. And that was lovely because [the way] the dancers interacted with the sound sculpture was really special. If you just had some random people moving through it, it's kind of cute, but not necessarily profound or meaningful.
The way Seth is... the way he exists in the space for two hours is really, really arresting. It's engaging, that's an important detail.
LJ: I wondered if you were pulling that from your experience as a classical cellist and a performer, but that makes so much sense that you have a dance background. There's a power and an intention there that, yeah, [laughter] doesn't come naturally to all of us, as you say, Spencer.
[laughter]
ST: Seth knows exactly what I'm talking about. [laughter] That's why he's laughing.
[laughter]
SW: The next one will be him up there.
ST: No, that thing weighs so much too. It's a 120-plus pounds of ice. I don't know how he does it.
LJ: Yeah, the density. I think you described it as asteroid-like in an interview I read Spencer, and it does look like a super human feet of strength that you're performing, Seth.
[laughter]
ST: Yeah. It takes three people to get it on the pedestal. [laughter] And then as Seth is holding it, he looks so effortless, but he's propping up over 100 pounds of ice on his shoulder, [laughter] so.
Photo courtesy Mary Elspeth Moore.
LJ: And changing the position of it from being on its back to being upright... Yeah, that's a lot. [laughter]
ST: It's got to lean on something. [laughter] So anyway, I don't know, that's the only other thing I wanted to add is just that I think that dance background and bringing that to it is really important. It's a very holistic thing happening artistically. That’s been my frustration with some of the reviews of the work is that people want to compartmentalize our roles and our parts of this, and it drives us nuts... [laughter] It's really a thing that has been closely co-created. A lot of people say they do that, but we've really did it. [laughter] Like every decision we made was very much like, "Hey Seth, what do you think of this? Hey Spencer, what do you think of this?"
LJ: Yeah. So one of you isn't Jim McWilliams. Well, that is underestimating Charlotte's role. She, of course...
ST: Well, exactly.
See Seth Parker Woods & Spencer Topel: ICED BODIES
Copresented with Weisman Art Museum
Sat, Jan 28, 2:30-4:30 pm
Weisman Art Museum
Topel | Woods is an artist collective creating visual art, music, installation and experimental media. Their work prompts audiences and visitors to consider the role of art in relation to society, technology, and identity. Formed in 2017 by Spencer Topel and Seth Parker Woods, Topel & Woods' first major project was ICED BODIES: Ice Music for Chicago at The Arts Club of Chicago. Subsequently, they presented ICED BODIES at the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival in 2019. They continue to develop new work addressing society, culture, and race in performance and installation projects.
Laura Wertheim Joseph (she/her/hers) is Curator of Exhibitions at the Minnesota Museum of American Art (the M). Becoming a mother in 2020 has deepened her longstanding interests in the wisdom, history, and multiplicities of time held within and imprinted on bodies, emotions, and material culture. She has a deep investment in working collaboratively to reflect her belief in the importance of recognizing and valuing interconnection and interdependence in creative work, by extension of the interconnection and interdependence between people and the natural world we share.
This way of seeing the world has often drawn Laura to the margins and the shadows to celebrate undervalued sources of wisdom, unrecognized creative practices, and less common perspectives on cultural production. She has advanced this ongoing work—gaining insights from many different kinds of collaborators along the way—through more than a decade of researching, writing, teaching, and producing cultural programming and exhibitions. Before joining the Minnesota Museum of American Art’s team, she completed curatorial, research, and book projects that include Harriet Bart: Abracadabra and Other Forms of Protection (Weisman Art Museum/University of Minnesota Press), Testify: Americana from Slavery to the Present (Hennepin County Library), Covered in Time and History: The Films of Ana Mendieta (University of California Press), and A Feast of Astonishments: Charlotte Moorman and the Avant-Garde (Mary and Leigh Block Museum/Northwestern University Press). Laura brings these commitments and histories to her work leading a collaborative, relationship-centered exhibition program at the M.
Laura holds a PhD in Art History from the University of Minnesota and an MA in Arts and Cultural Management from Saint Mary’s University. She specializes in contemporary art and critical theory with a focus on embodiment, affect, and materiality, as well as intersectional feminisms, and gender and performance studies. Before coming to the M, Laura also worked alongside artists with disabilities at Interact Center for the Visual and Performing Arts to challenge perceptions of disability.