{"id":61439,"date":"2022-01-17T09:51:09","date_gmt":"2022-01-17T15:51:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=61439"},"modified":"2023-11-13T13:51:45","modified_gmt":"2023-11-13T19:51:45","slug":"lovedancemores-january-digest-a-conversation-with-indigo-cook","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/lovedancemores-january-digest-a-conversation-with-indigo-cook\/","title":{"rendered":"loveDANCEmore’s January Digest: A Conversation with Indigo Cook"},"content":{"rendered":"

The below interview was conducted by Samuel Hanson, loveDANCEmore editor and executive director. It has been edited for clarity.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Indigo Cook performs the score for March 2020 as part of the ongoing Performance Calendar project discussed below: \u201cMake a ballgown out of found materials in any place(s) of your choosing and wear it in a public place while you waltz to Shostakovich’s Waltz no. 2.\u201d<\/p><\/div>\n

SH: Welcome to 2022. I am sitting with Indigo Cook, who I know as an organizer of performances that include dance, music and visual art through Interdisciplinary Arts Collective. I guess I think of Indigo as a choreographer. But maybe that\u2019s a good place to start. Indigo, do you think of yourself as a choreographer?<\/strong><\/h4>\n

IC: The term I usually use is interdisciplinary artist, or if I\u2019m feeling long-winded I\u2019ll say \u201cmusician-slash-dancer-slash-interdisciplinary-artist.\u201d I grew up dancing and studied percussion in college, and most of the work I do is centered around those two worlds. But I feel really passionately about the collaborative potential of the arts, and I make it a point to work with as many different kinds of artists as I can.<\/h4>\n

SH: <\/strong>Tell us a little about Interdisciplinary Arts Collective (IAC). That\u2019s how I know you, at least artistically. We also taught for a while together for Tanner Dance\u2019s Artist-in-Education Program.<\/strong><\/h4>\n

IC: I started IAC when I was in college. I was the only percussionist at Westminster at the time, and I was desperate to find other artists to talk to and work with. I had somehow weaseled my way into the dance department and they were letting me do all the things majors did while I was still officially a music major. So I was collaborating with the dancers and doing the music thing, and it felt like there was a lot of potential in the arts programs for people to band together and make some interesting things, but the departments didn\u2019t seem to really be talking to each other.<\/h4>\n

In my junior year I started making people come and meet me on Saturday mornings. It was a fun ragtag group of musicians, dancers, visual artists, and poets. I\u2019d bring bagels and coffee, and we would do some free musical improvisation, contact improv, Deep Listening, and lots of Fluxus scores. It started very much as an underground experimentation group. We worked on some Fluxconcerts around the city, and that\u2019s mostly what we did for the first couple years. It\u2019s really only in the last few years that we\u2019ve done what you might call \u201cofficial shows\u201d where people can come and watch and buy tickets\u2026<\/h4>\n

SH: <\/strong>Official shows!<\/strong><\/h4>\n

IC: Instead of us just making salads in a room as art, if you know what I mean.<\/h4>\n

I guess the first thing that we really did for a formal audience was the Fringe Festival three years ago. We\u2019ve had other projects since then \u2014 the Utah Arts Festival, more Fringe Fest, a 36-hour performance of Erik Satie\u2019s Vexations<\/em>, etc. \u2014 and we\u2019re working on a new Musicircus-style show that\u2019s scheduled for sometime this spring.<\/h4>\n

SH: <\/strong>Tell us about the Performance Calendar<\/em>.<\/strong><\/h4>\n

IC: Performance Calendar<\/em> started as a solo project. I\u2019d just barely moved back to Salt Lake in 2019, the New Year was happening, and I wanted something to do that wasn\u2019t a New Year\u2019s resolution. A Fluxus composer that I really admire named Don Boyd has a piece called A Performance Calendar<\/em>, and it\u2019s a text score where each month of the year has a different direction to follow. So, each month of that year I realized the directions he wrote and I had a blast with it. I cut up a carrot and used the shavings to notate a little composition for one month, for another month I had to write a letter to the IRS explaining how hard it is to \u201cachieve lofty dryness,\u201d etc. The year ended and I figured I\u2019d keep the ball rolling into 2020, so I commissioned a bunch of friends and artists to write text scores for me. Each month I realized a piece by a different artist \u2014 I composed a vocal score in February, I made a Fluxfilm in October, I performed a \u201cforetelling\u201d in December inspired by Ursula K. Le Guin\u2019s The Left Hand of Darkness<\/em>, etc.<\/h4>\n

Then in 2021 \u2014 year three of the project \u2014 I wanted to get other artists involved as performers. And that\u2019s when I incorporated it under the IAC umbrella, mainly so that I had a place to archive the material. I put together a score and I had people sign up for months they were interested in. This score was generated using chance procedures. I have a ton of books in my house, and I used a random number generator to pick a shelf on a bookcase, a book on that shelf, and a page in that book, then I took a sentence that was interesting to me and turned that into the score for each month. The group of artists working on each month\u2019s score got to decide what sort of direction we wanted to take the realization in \u2014 some months were all process and experience-based, while we created more formal \u201cthings\u201d or \u201cperformances\u201d for other months. Nathaniel Woolley and I wrote and premiered an operetta in April, we went on a Fluxus scavenger hunt around the city in July, and we had a slumber party at my house in September where we just stayed up late performing Flux scores for each other and dancing (there was lots of confetti by the end of the night).<\/h4>\n

I just started year four, which is exciting! 2022 \u2014 I was loving all of the even numbers, so I decided to turn it into a duet year. Each month I will be working with one other person and we\u2019ll be doing a text score together. This year\u2019s score is excerpted from the \u201cFirst Infrarealist Manifesto,\u201d written by Roberto Bola\u00f1o.<\/h4>\n
\"\"<\/a>

Indigo Cook, Elijah Cook, Edison Corvera, Dani Mendez, and Nathaniel Woolley performing October 2021: \u201cOne cried, \u2018God bless us!\u2019 and \u2018Amen\u2019 the other, \/ as they had seen me with these hangman\u2019s hands.\u201d<\/p><\/div>\n

SH: <\/strong>I love his novels \u2014 particularly The Savage Detectives<\/em>, which actually mentions the manifesto. I didn\u2019t realize it was something he actually wrote. (His alter-ego, Arturo Belano, is also a poet in that book.) I haven\u2019t read much of the poetry\u2026<\/strong><\/h4>\n

IC: I\u2019ve just started reading a little bit of the poetry. I read 2666<\/em> last year and it fucked me up. Fantastic!<\/h4>\n

SH: <\/strong>Have you read any of the shorter fiction? (I particularly love <\/strong>this one<\/strong><\/a>.)<\/strong><\/h4>\n

IC: I haven\u2019t. I have Antwerp<\/em> sitting on a bookshelf waiting for me and I\u2019ll get to it eventually. Are you reading anything?<\/h4>\n

SH: <\/strong>I just started reading Dhalgen<\/em> by Samuel Delany. I bought the book years ago when I lived in New York. I actually found a postcard from a choreographer I worked for in 2009, Yve Laris Cohen, that I\u2019d used as a bookmark. I was with my friend the other day at Sam Wellar\u2019s and we saw one of Delany\u2019s book and started talking about another book of his that I actually did finish \u2014 Times Square Red, Times Square Blue<\/em> \u2014 which is about sexual politics, movie theaters, New York, gentrification, the rapid pace of change in that part of the city from the seventies until the early oughts\u2026<\/strong><\/h4>\n

But anyway we realized we both have Dhalgren<\/em> and so we started reading it together. I love doing book clubs with fellow artists. I am also reading this really depressing book about the history of the DSM and psychiatry, which my cousin lent to me.<\/strong><\/h4>\n

IC: You\u2019re not still teaching in schools for Tanner, are you?<\/h4>\n

SH: <\/strong>No, I miss it, but I couldn\u2019t afford to keep doing it. I work for the school district part-time and I do this. You\u2019re still doing Tanner?<\/strong><\/h4>\n

IC: I\u2019m working there as a dance teacher and an accompanist, and I love it. I love working with Rachel Kimball so much.<\/h4>\n

SH: <\/strong>She is a great teacher and an amazing teacher-of-dance-teachers. But back t<\/strong>o your project, you were saying, the whole year is Bola\u00f1o. Tell us about who you are working with?\u2028<\/strong><\/h4>\n
\"\"<\/a>

Elijah Cook, Dani Mendez, Nathaniel Woolley, and Eglantine the dog. September 2021: \u201cYou\u2019ll wake up someday and it\u2019ll be too late.\u201d<\/p><\/div>\n

IC: This is a great question, because I am still looking for people to sign on for the coming months. [You can email Indigo here<\/a> if you<\/em> are interested.] Most of the months are full but I still have some empty ones, and I\u2019d love to work with some new folks. In January I am working with this really great visual artist named Dani Mendez. They are a body piercer, and they do a lot of visual art \u2014 they also just graduated with a metal-smithing certificate \u2014 so they make their own stones and jewelry. A lot of people who have signed on have been members of IAC in the past, or they\u2019ve written scores for me in calendars of past years, or they are people that I\u2019ve had on my collaborative hit list that I keep bugging and eventually they say yes\u2026 Part of Don Boyd\u2019s inscription for A Performance Calendar <\/em>says, \u201cFor whom? Anyone.\u201d and I\u2019m trying to take that very literally and work with a lot of different kinds of artists. And non-artists and anti-artists as well, which is a big focus in Fluxus! I\u2019ve roped all of my siblings into the project at one point or another, and at one of IAC\u2019s Fluxconcerts my dad showed up with an electric kettle and made himself a cup of tea in the middle of the stage. Anyone and everyone can flux.<\/h4>\n

As far as the score for this year goes, it\u2019s a great manifesto. I haven\u2019t actually read Savage Detectives<\/em> yet, which I am sort of doing on purpose, because I want to work with the manifesto on its own before I bring in any of his storytelling. The Infrarealists took a very anti-establishment approach to their poetry and how they saw their relationship to Mexican society and art-making. I felt a lot of resonance between their approach and the anti-art roots of the Fluxus movement itself, so I thought using Bola\u00f1o\u2019s manifesto to build my Fluxus score this year would be a fun way to connect the dots\u2026<\/h4>\n

One of the things that drew me to Fluxus was that it had a clearly defined historical beginning in the sixties and seventies, but it purposefully never had a super rigidly-defined ethos or aesthetic. Fluxus was meant to be in flux, and so different artists (and anti-artists!) interpreted it in different ways. It was a sense of experimentation and a set of strategies to approach a process, as opposed to a piece or a product that had to look or sound a certain way. As someone who\u2019s drawn to collaboration and interdisciplinary communication, I\u2019ve found Fluxus to be a great way to get people to team up and try new things with me. They don\u2019t need to be able to read music or paint or have perfect dance technique, and they don\u2019t need to be fully versed in the who\/what\/where\/when history of Fluxus in order to engage in experimentation and conversation. This is all just a way of asking really funny questions for me, and finding new ways to talk about and maybe answer those questions with some very cool people.<\/h4>\n

One of my favorite experimental composers, Pauline Oliveros, says, \u201cit\u2019s not people performing experiments on the music, but the music is an experiment on the self.\u201d I think that\u2019s a beautiful way of looking at it.<\/h4>\n

SH: <\/strong>Tell us about how we can experience the calendar. It sounds like there is a website where people can experience some of the past work\u2026<\/strong><\/h4>\n

IC: The archive<\/a> is kind of fun, if you want to take a look on the website. I\u2019ll definitely say that with the Performance Calendar<\/em>, it’s up to us each month whether or not we want to create any kind of formalized thing for an audience \u2014 so sometimes it’s just something that happens between the two of us more than some kind of outward facing art making. But some cool stuff has collected over the past three years that you can check out, and if you want to follow along with this year I\u2019m trying to be good about updating and letting people know what\u2019s going on.<\/h4>\n

Fluxus sort of chooses to happen wherever it happens. Sometimes I don\u2019t even feel like I\u2019m in control. It\u2019ll happen. And I\u2019ll be there. And I\u2019ll try to tell people when it\u2019s happening if you want to be there as well.<\/h4>\n

SH: <\/strong>Having spent time at NYU before you came back to Utah to go to Westminster, what do you think of the experimental dance and music scenes here in Salt Lake?<\/strong><\/h4>\n

IC: Salt Lake has such a robust dance scene in relation to the size of the city. So that\u2019s really delightful. I\u2019ve found that the experimental music scene isn\u2019t quite as visible here, but there\u2019s actually really cool stuff happening if you look for it. Dancers are so good at mobilizing and going to see each other\u2019s work \u2014 I want them to all go to see all the music things too so that we can all talk about it together. And start collaborating\u2026<\/h4>\n
\"\"<\/a>

Elijah Cook and Nathaniel Woolley. October 2021: \u201cOne cried, \u201cGod bless us!\u201d and \u201cAmen\u201d the other, \/ as they had seen me with these hangman\u2019s hands.\u201d<\/p><\/div>\n

SH: <\/strong>Who should we have our eyes (or ears) on?<\/strong><\/h4>\n

IC: NOVA Chamber Music Series is doing good work and has been programming some great contemporary rep lately. The Utah Symphony and Opera tend to be a bit more conservative in their programming, but sometimes they\u2019ll have interesting stuff to watch out for, and a lot of their individual players branch off into small chamber music projects that put on cool concerts now and again. There are also some great new music folks working at the University of Utah and Westminster, and they\u2019ve been making some fun experimental stuff happen. College concerts might not always be something that you\u2019d think to prioritize, but I\u2019d highly recommend checking out some of their work.<\/h4>\n

I\u2019ll also shamelessly plug my mentor\u2019s music duo. His name is Devin Maxwell, and he and his wife Katie Porter, who is an amazing clarinetist, have a great group called Red Desert Ensemble. They play some really excellent stuff, and I have Devin to thank for my relationship to experimental art to begin with. He was my percussion professor at Westminster \u2014 I had transferred after my sophomore year at NYU, and had such a bad experience with the percussion department there that I thought I was done with music completely. Devin totally turned that around.<\/h4>\n

SH: <\/strong>It\u2019s so good when people can come along and save your relationship to an art form\u2026<\/strong><\/h4>\n

IC: I was very lucky to have met him and been able to study with him. He\u2019s actually how I first got introduced to Fluxus. He and Katie have invited me to play with Red Desert a few times, and several years ago we went up to Casper, Wyoming to play a Morton Feldman piece. There\u2019s this little community college up there that has a thriving new music program. I think the program director just figures, \u201clet\u2019s play new music, no one really knows we\u2019re up here so let\u2019s just go for it\u2026\u201d<\/h4>\n

So I showed up with Devin and Katie to play the Feldman piece for this New Music Day the school was putting on, and they did a Fluxconcert prior to the \u201cactual\u201d concert. And I was standing there thinking, \u201cthis is the greatest thing I\u2019ve ever seen.\u201d People were pouring water into tubas and torn textbook pages were flying through the air and someone was running around with a blow dryer as the music started \u2014 it was so fun to experience.<\/h4>\n

I got back to Salt Lake and said, \u201cFluxus will start happening here,\u201d and I immediately started IAC.<\/h4>\n

SH: <\/strong>IAC \u2014 I love how nondescript the name is\u2026<\/strong><\/h4>\n

IC: It\u2019s a little bit of a music joke as well because IAC stands for imperfect authentic cadence \u2014 a perfect authentic cadence is how music often ends, like a V to I or [sings a conventional resolving harmony] \u2014 an imperfect authentic cadence is still a V to I chord, but some of the pitches move in directions you don\u2019t expect so there\u2019s less of a sense of finality when music ends\u2026<\/h4>\n

IAC is the beta version of an interdisciplinary company I want to start in the future. I\u2019m not sure if I\u2019ll end up in Salt Lake permanently, but in its evolved form I hope to take IAC wherever I go.<\/h4>\n

And the performance calendar I am intending to do for the rest of my life.<\/h4>\n

SH: <\/strong>Really? Year after year?<\/strong><\/h4>\n

IC: Every year. Fluxus opens up so much space for experimentation and decision-making, and I get to determine what successfully fulfilling the project means to me, as long as it\u2019s a good-faith decision. So maybe I\u2019m ninety and I don\u2019t want to make art for one month, but I just decide to experiment with drinking a cup of tea and that\u2019s that.<\/h4>\n

SH: <\/strong>The long game.<\/strong><\/h4>\n

IC: The long game.<\/h4>\n

 <\/p>\n

This article is published in collaboration with loveDANCEmore.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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