Indexical Moment/um: Solidarity (Cooperative) Economics Conduction System

Description:

Over the course of Marshall Trammell’s two-week residency at Western Front, he hosted three participatory, improvised music workshops connected to his ongoing Insurgent Learning Workshop series. Using ideas developed by the US Solidarity Economy Network as a framework, the cumulative workshops served as a public and collective process towards developing a new language through improvisation. 

The second event in Trammell’s series, Indexical Moment/um: Solidarity (Cooperative) Economics Conduction System, was an open rehearsal and workshop with Vancouver-based percussionist John Brennan that reimagined Underground Railroad quilt codes as scores. Set up in the Grand Luxe Hall with two drum kits side-by-side, the two-and-a-half-hour workshop began with Trammell and Brennan performing alternating solos that elaborated on the previous workshop’s generative practice. These ideas accumulated into “multi-solos,” where each percussionist improvised simultaneously. Trammell’s solos also incorporated contemporary African-American face jugs by potter Jim McDowell, who creates replicas of the historical vessels used in spiritual practice. 

The next module of the workshop invited audience members to form small groups to discuss different examples of Underground Railroad quilt codes. These patterns, which communicated secret instructions to help direct enslaved people to freedom, were analyzed as both visual culture and community-developed apparatuses for resistance. Each group took turns presenting their observations, questions, reflections, and interpretations of their quilt codes before turning to a collective discussion where Trammell shared the historical usage for each pattern. 

The workshop concluded in a series of “conductions” in which Brennan and Trammell translated the audience’s responses to the quilt codes into improvisational compositions. A volunteer from the audience was invited to conduct the percussionists by cycling through a stack of signs printed with different quilt codes. Evoking musical notation marked on sheet music, the musicians interpreted the collection of symbols into sonic narratives. Following their fifteen-minute performance, Trammell and Brennan debriefed the physical sensations and emotional observations that arose during the conduction—a gesture towards the embodied practice of improvisation.

Curated by Pablo de Ocampo. 

Video documentation of this event is available upon request.