I'm so excited to bring you all this second episode of Occulted!
It was such a moving experience to work with Indira on this and I've been so lucky to dance with them in butoh class over these last few years. In that class, I felt so grounded by their presence and confidence as a performer– during our recording, they had much the same effect.
In this episode, we speak on this connection, and the importance of inspirited objects within this practice– an intuitive route to connecting with the world around us in a very human and very animist way. We also explore the recent transit of Pluto into Aquarius and talk about the implications for society, technology, and the negotiation of new power dynamics.
Indira shares so much in this episode, but it barely scratches the surface of the work they are doing, weaving, and building community with. Check out more of their info and work below:
INDIRA ALLEGRA is a social psychopomp accompanying people, places, and non-human beings through cycles of death, memorial, and regeneration. They are the founder of Indira Allegra Studio—a performative craft design studio using weaving as a ritual, conceptual framework to craft living structures off the loom and in the world. A living structure can be performed as a memorial, a text, or the movement of human and nonhuman behavior across a rolling planet. Rather than focus on “human-centered” design, the Studio situates human concerns within a broader network of more-than-human desires and ecological temporalities.
Allegra’s work has been featured in Artforum, Art Journal, The Art Newspaper, BOMB Magazine, the San Francisco Chronicle, and KQED, and in exhibitions at the Museum of Arts and Design; the Arts Incubator in Chicago; the Center for Craft, Creativity, and Design; the John Michael Kohler Arts Center; Yerba Buena Center for the Arts; and the Museum of the African Diaspora, among others. They have been the recipient of numerous awards including Creative Capital, United States Artists Fellowship, Burke Prize, Gerbode Choreography Award, Mike Kelley Foundation for the Arts’ Artist Project Grant and a Lambda Literary fellowship among others.
Indira's Links:
- texere.space (password: weave)
- grammarofgriefhandbook.com
- dearmercury.substack.com
- indiraallegra.com
- @indiraallegrastudio (instagram)
Waitlist for books:
Transcript
00:00
Jove Spucchi
Welcome to episode two of Occulted. I'm Jove Spucchi and I'm so excited to share this lovely conversation with artist and practitioner Indira Allegra. Join us as we dive into the magic of weaving within spirited objects and discuss the importance of reenchanting the digital in this new era of pluto in aquarius, indira Allegra is a social psychopom, accompanying people, places and nonhuman beings through cycles of death, memorial and regeneration. They are the founder of Indira allegra studio, a performative craft design studio using weaving as a ritual conceptual framework to craft living structures off the loom and in the world. A living structure can be formed as a memorial, a text, or the movement of a human and nonhuman behavior across a rolling planet. Rather than focus on a humancentered design, the studio situates human concerns within a broader network of more than human desires and ecological temporalities.
00:59
Jove Spucchi
Interior's work has been featured in many publications and exhibitions, including art Forum, museum of arts and Design, yorubuina center for the Arts, and the museum of the African diaspora. Come explore the ways we can participate in better relationships with a rapidly changing world and discuss the magic with which we can reenchant the digital.
01:34
Indira Allegra
I just want to say hello to the occulted audience. My name is Indira Allegra and I am an artist and performative, craft, designer and lover of all things unseen, which I think that we will get into. I'm very happy to be here today.
01:56
Jove Spucchi
Welcome and thank you for being here, Indira. It's great to have you. It feels so special to have connected with you in that butoh class. UE is absolutely amazing. The way she led our group into such a richly embodied practice over zoom, I know, was incredibly grounding for me over the pandemic. How did you come to join that class?
02:18
Indira Allegra
I had taken some classes with Hiroko Tamano, who was a student of Hitchikatas. And one of the things that is really amazing about the bay area is that there are a lot of places where you can plug in to learn a bit more about butoh. I was working on a project at the time which was really interested in movement forms that come out of periods of devastation, quite frankly. I had been researching like the origins of swing coming out of the depression era and whatnot, and thinking about movement forms that are coming out of Japan after world war II and during a time of rapid industrialization in that country. So, yeah, I think this question of how do we move with grief, how do we move literally move through and with times of transition, not only individually but culturally and as a species, was really interesting to me.
03:24
Indira Allegra
And I love that butoh seemed to be a form, that privileged presence over the entertainment of the folks who may be there witnessing it. And that butoh also seemed to privilege a sense of courage in the face of ambiguity, which I feel like is what we're tasked to do as artists. A sense of nonlinear wisdom, understanding that things are always cycling around and through and also privileged an aging body, a sick and disabled body, a body that didn't necessarily have to move smoothly or play to fantasies about what a dancer might be or look like. I think we need a lot more of that in general, all over the place. I found the classes at the Berkeley Repertory Theater shout out with Yui, I just felt so fortunate. I felt that the way that she taught the class I love to shout out teachers yui.
04:48
Indira Allegra
Thank you. I felt that the way that she held our curiosity and our awkwardness and our varying backgrounds coming into movement was really skillful. And it was a great moment for me, actually, to understand the difference between, say, how Hijakata would approach butoh, and definitely with we're talking about the dance of darkness and dance of death, people. With that kind of feel, and then Halkazua Ono would approach it with this sense of, I think the mutability of the body being able to tune into the life cycle of a snowflake. For me, I felt that there was something that really landed for my own sense of I have so much stuff going on in the mutable cross in my own chart, so I also, as a nonbinary person, feel very mutable in my being. I was like, oh yeah, I can totally get down with these portals into other types of consciousness, be they climate based, be they based in the life cycle of trees or other types of bodies.
06:04
Indira Allegra
And for me, that felt so liberating. One of the pieces of the curriculum that COVID brought, I think, was an invitation to become curious about other forms of intelligence. Even though I am a long hauler myself, I do understand that we have coevolved with viruses over time as a species, and that viruses have their own intelligence to them. There's an opportunity there for me as an artist and for me as an intellectual and curious person, or being with a great big heart, to be like, what is it that you want? What do you come here with, besides the fact that you're making me ill? Have pointed out the weak spots which are already there in so many different bodies and in so many different social forms. Right? Yeah. What else can I learn here? And so for me, butoh is a way of dipping into many different somatic languages and intelligences and temporal realities.
07:12
Jove Spucchi
I so appreciate this perspective on viruses and the tenderness of viewing them as an essential part of archaeology. How do I sit in relationship with this thing that causes me harm, but ultimately exists as part of the balance, part of the rhythm and flow, the life cycle of things? In butoh. I really felt this as well. The different ways of looking at life and how death is an integral part of this twisted spiral. It really does bring a different temporality to things or allows you to experiment with temporality in the body and how the body interacts with the other.
07:50
Indira Allegra
I just wanted to say that I felt even through our hybrid format in class, I just felt your presence and your commitment to the exercises that were tasked to do so strongly. I just wanted to thank you for that because I felt like all of us are holding a little piece and the piece that you were holding I felt was such a valuable gift to the group. I just wanted to shout that out.
08:17
Jove Spucchi
Thank you so much, Indira. It was the first time a movement practice has really clicked for me. Yui does such an incredible job honoring the ways in which different bodies can contribute. And in butoh, there's so much space for pain and things that have made it difficult for me to otherwise be embodied as a dancer. I remember having the opportunity to do some of the partnered mirror work with you. It was over camera and I was pretty unsure. Your grounding energy really helped me to push through some of the awkwardness in the moment.
08:47
Indira Allegra
Thank you.
08:49
Jove Spucchi
It was a truly beautiful and strange experience, hidden away in our apartments and dancing together over the internet. It was really hard to tell what could be seen and what couldn't. It was in this occulted space that were able to meet. How else has occultedness shown up in your work or in your practice? Or is that a word or language that you use to describe what you're doing?
09:13
Indira Allegra
Oh my goodness. I would say like that the word occulted isn't necessarily a word that I grew up around, but I would say that the practice of being in relationship with forces that are much larger and older than human and being in relationship with cycles and tracking patterns over time be they through ancestral relations or through ecological relations. It's definitely something that I've always been sensitized and sensitive to. I feel that is such a resource in the way that I work as an artist because I see or I experience sights and objects as being conspirators in the making of any work. It would be really lonely for me as an artist to say, oh, this is just me out here doing a thing and gosh, it's a really lonely place to be above what it is you're trying to actually be in dialogue with or understand.
10:27
Indira Allegra
If you're trying to be in dialogue with something or understand something, then you need to actually recognize again, I come back to this word, intelligence. You need to understand the everything that what you're working with is bringing. And it has boundaries too. There are certain things that sights and objects want to do that others won't. Cotton works in a way and has its principles and properties, and Silk has other principles and properties. If I'm working at a site that's in the middle of a city, there are certain things which are going to be allowed. If I'm working in the country, there are other things which are going to be allowed. For me, I don't see that as being a barrier. For me, it's an opportunity to practice a kind of fluency and to intuit and imagine into all the different ways that consent can manifest itself or permission can manifest itself.
11:21
Indira Allegra
I feel like there's something that isn't talked about a lot, certainly within like a traditional art school experience. For those of us who are sensitive and sensitized to working with energies that we can't see, I think that permission is such a core piece of how we keep ourselves safer and other people safer and are able to achieve what it is that we want to achieve to really understand who our allies are. Maybe your allies are plants, and maybe your allies are planets. Maybe your allies are people who have passed. I know that the way in which I've been able to practice building allyships in those realms helps me to build allyships with cities, with materials, with tools, with narratives, all of that.
12:14
Jove Spucchi
There's such a beauty in this way of connecting with things, conspiring breathing, with witnessing the things in their forms that can't necessarily be fully seen in solar light. There's a humbling of sorts, placing yourself on the same plane of an object, communing in conversation and appreciating its intelligence. Not just objects, but in systems and rhythms and patterns as well.
12:46
Indira Allegra
And everything is always speaking. Prior to working the arts professionally, I did a lot of different things. One of those things was working as a sign language interpreter for both deaf and deaf blind folks. That training as an interpreter, again, sensitizes me to the presence of expression, which is always happening, and that maybe you just need someone who knows. Again, the most Gemini thing I could possibly say maybe just needs mercury to come along. Someone's got a psychopom totally to be like, what? Yes, I understand what you're saying. I understand the cultural context. I understand how to sculpt, that interpreting is a sculpting practice. I take this message, I sculpt it because I know the cultural context of this other person and I understand the language that they're using. And then I offer it up. It's not just word for word that's transliteration, interpretation takes into account the whole environment that the clients that you're working with have learned to language through.
14:08
Jove Spucchi
It's inspirited.
14:09
Indira Allegra
Yes, it's inspirited. Thank you. Absolutely.
14:14
Jove Spucchi
As you said, in that inspirated act, you must take into account the environment and that communication is richer than just language. It includes the entire context and the echoes of it through time, through space.
14:28
Indira Allegra
For me, that's just a huge piece of maybe what being occulted is about and that there's a beautiful sense of repetition around going to certain practices or going to certain places to make offerings. And maybe your offering is of language. Prior to these storms that we've been getting here in California, we've been living in a multi year drought. Sometimes for me, I am blessed to have a beautiful relationship with plants. Sometimes I'll take walks where the offering is just water that I spill to say thank you or in exchange for a piece of fruit off a tree in my neighborhood or something like that, or a blossom. Going out to Ocean Beach in San Francisco is also an important practice to me. I feel like that salt water knows how to deal with my salt water. I like to bring a little sweet water out there, some champagne as an offering.
15:31
Indira Allegra
Just when I feel like I need to, I have a practice myself of on the winter solstice going out there and either timing it. I walk across the city and I get to the ocean right at sunset or if I'm not feeling well, I'll take a f****** car out there and I will be out there at sunset. To chase the sun down to that final moment and to celebrate that, I've made it to the darkest point like that's the edge. I literally go out to the edge of where the water meets the land as a ritual for myself to kind of be like, all right, Indira, okay, Scorpio rising, let's pull it back. Let's dial it back because the light has to come back. That is something that I feel like I do place my faith in. There are a lot of things which are precarious at best to place a trust in, and I think that is something which is so clear.
16:48
Indira Allegra
I don't know about you, but I feel like I know how to go really deep with a thing and to keep going down and down. At the end of the day, you got to come up out of the underworld at some point.
17:02
Jove Spucchi
Absolutely. I think it's so good to note the importance of those balancing practices that bring us back from the beauty and seduction of that darkness. I think that's where that solar light can be so useful and so healing. For me, it brings to mind the third and 9th house axes in astrology where you have the sun rejoicing in the 9th house which contains big things like ceremonial magic and the moon rejoicing in the third which I think of as equally as powerful but a smaller type of magic, more like folk magic and things like that. Big rituals and magic have all this outward display of pomp, but the little and off repeated things that influence our inner spheres like cleaning with intention or taking a walk somewhere special to you or evoking feelings of the treasured object. These things are the things that have such a real impact on our daily lives.
17:54
Jove Spucchi
With that, I think this is a place where we can find a lot of really necessary healing, as beautiful as it is to stay dissolved in the beauty and ethereal nature of those nighttime practices. Pulling our heads up to reintegrate what we've learned in the light of the sun is ever important for balance and spiritual growth?
18:14
Indira Allegra
Yes, absolutely. When I talk about areas of focus in my own practice, I think about death, memorial and regeneration. The snake has to bite its tail, y'all, also to have some clear articulation of how we have been transformed by experience. Again, coming back to this idea of the mutable body what do you want to be now? What do you want to be today?
18:44
Jove Spucchi
Truly, it's so powerful to be stepping into this era of agency where bodies are more mutable than ever. The opportunity for alchemy and transmutation in both corporeal and ethereal forms is so much greater now with the cross pollinization of culture and technology and magics that we have now. There's so much potential for people to explore themselves, to really go deep and figure out who they are which in turn, I really hope will lead to stronger and more genuine connections with other people.
19:18
Indira Allegra
I think so. I think it's one reason why there has been for a long time and there is right now in the US. Such a violent attack on the ability for trans people, particularly trans youth, to be able to access the types of health care needed in order to be embodied in a powerful way or in a pleasurable way as a nonbinary person, as a trans person. That's big magic that we're working with.
19:55
Jove Spucchi
It's huge. It's huge. I'm so glad you bring pleasure into the conversation because it really can just be that simple. The pleasure, the comfort, the joy of just being able to be, to just be. I think that's part of why it's so magically potent and probably so scary for the people opposing trans healthcare. They are terrified to imagine a world where people have that power of imagining a reality in which they could make that choice themselves or would have to make that choice themselves.
20:31
Indira Allegra
That's right.
20:32
Jove Spucchi
Because it's from that place of just being truly ourselves that we're able to be in our own and exert our own will to be in a place where we can make honest connections with the other.
20:50
Indira Allegra
Yes.
20:51
Jove Spucchi
It's ever more important that we create space for people not just politically, although that's very important, but in the smaller third house sphere. How do we in conversation in our one one relationships make sure that we are uplifting and supporting and creating space for trans identities and other identities.
21:16
Indira Allegra
That's right. Talk to your friends, talk to your neighbors, folks. Truly, when I think about what occulted might mean to me, I think it's also a way of being able to work with energy that gives you courage. Not everything happens in the altar at home, y'all? How can you walk out your door and recognize your allies around you? That when you're on the bus and you're on the subway and some bullshit starts going down, how can you touch into something which is an ally around you? There a magnolia tree that the bus is passing by? Can you say hello to your relative there, draw some string and set a boundary with the bullshit that's happening? Sir, you cannot talk to this young person like that. I need you to mind your own business. Yeah, that's magic too.
22:20
Jove Spucchi
Absolutely. Those are crossroad moments. Moments where we have the chance to choose to define ourselves through the ways that we interact, the ways we entangle and integrate with that happenstance and chaos we experience in the outer world. It's at those moments of agency, those crossroad moments, where the most magical potential exists, the most opportunity for change, to exert will, to transmute ourselves and bend ourselves into what we want to be.
22:56
Indira Allegra
It's a crossroads opportunity. Yeah, absolutely. I'm reading the Broken Earth series right now by N. K. Jemison, and for those of you who are not familiar, the series features a type of being that can do something called sessing, which means to sense into movements of the Earth and to be able to use that ability to move matter around. As someone who lives in the Bay Area on many fault lines, which I feel like is part of the consciousness of this place, it really appeals to me also as someone who is attuned to what I feel like are subtle movements within people, places, and things that I'm around, it appeals to me as well. These characters are able to literally drop down into the Earth at any time to access power to do a thing. So I think of it like that. I was in New York recently on a trip, and it's like, okay, it's a big city, but there's trees around.
24:07
Indira Allegra
I just energetically imagine, like, zoop, like, sending out like, a spider's thread of communication. Hey, I see you. Hello? Can you help me? Oh, I'm kind of tired. Okay, sorry. I'll keep it moving. Can you help? Yes, I can. Okay, great. Zoo so you find your ways to make connections wherever you are. If you get caught up on the optics of, like, oh, it has to look like a big, fancy altar, then you're going to miss a lot of opportunities to practice moving energy around like you're talking about.
24:44
Jove Spucchi
I think it goes back to what you were saying, too, about having an openness to be willing to relate with objects from the same level as an equal magical other opportunities exist everywhere for a spiritual mutual aid.
25:00
Indira Allegra
Yes. Spiritual mutual aid. Yes. I love that. I love that. That's it.
25:08
Jove Spucchi
It sounds like you take a pretty animistic approach to the world.
25:14
Indira Allegra
Absolutely. I feel like god, I just feel like I'd be so lonely. I think we live in a spirited world. There's a reason why people pass things down or objects down in their families. And maybe you want it. Maybe you don't want it. Whenever I give artists talks, I talk about this and some people I can see certain people whoa. Checking out in the audience. I'm like, wait, have you ever inherited anything? You know what I mean? Have you ever gone to a second hand store and found a leather jacket that you were like, b****? Yes. This makes me feel a kind of way this jacket has a something, right? And people are like, oh, well, yeah. And I'm like, Right. So there's an essence there, right?
26:07
Jove Spucchi
It's got the juice, it's got the zoos.
26:11
Indira Allegra
Yeah, I think it's one of the big medicines that we are going to need through this ongoing time of huge transformation. Life is always changing. Things are always changing. I think during moments where things feel that they're changing, maybe at a pace where the usual supports I think this happened especially in the early pandemic, things that were usual supports for people kind of dropped out.
26:41
Jove Spucchi
Yeah, I really felt that too. It does feel like the pacing, the speed the BPM at which intelligence operates has picked up quite considerably.
26:51
Indira Allegra
The BPM at which intelligence operates? Yes. I love it.
26:56
Jove Spucchi
There was something you posted it on Instagram the other day that really made me think about how we can work with this increased speed. I think it was dizzy.
27:05
Indira Allegra
Oh, Dizzy Gillespie. Yes. Yeah, totally. Totally.
27:10
Jove Spucchi
I loved so much how he spoke about keeping in rhythm by moving faster and hitting the in between spaces of the beat. I think it's that way. With information and intelligence moving so quickly now we need to be able to move within the liminal to really get into the flow of things, to not be so focused on the discrete points of binaries or absolute truths. How can we squish and morph and bend to find new ways to spiritually enmesh ourselves in this new world? It's so quickly changing and being redefined by new technologies like Chat GPT in the AI space or this paradigm shift that's going on with decentralized finance. I think there's a lot of work to be done, a lot of exploration, a lot of experimentation to figure out how to work with these new currents in magic and technology and information, intelligence and energy.
28:09
Jove Spucchi
There's a lot of opportunity for folks who are willing to cross those boundaries and work interdisciplinary ways to really build a new kind of future.
28:25
Indira Allegra
I'm curious about what those technologies have to offer with regard to divination. Actually, to run it back right quick, for those of you who are not following me on Instagram, you need to follow me on Instagram. It's at Endira Lagra studio, and the post that was referenced is I'm a big jazz fan. Dizzy Gillespie is teaching a master class and he's a brilliant trumpet player. He's talking about how most people, they'll count in one and two and three and four, but that he fills up the bar, meaning that he's not thinking in one and two, and he's like, one and a two and a three. There's so much happening in the in between space, right? That's another thing that I really believe is that places that are seen as being empty are not. Pages that seem to be blank are not. There's no such thing as blank space or empty space, that there's always something there.
29:27
Indira Allegra
There was always someone living there before you got there. He's talking about this in a musical term. He says, so I might miss the note, but whenever I hit, it's going to be correct because I'm not missing the time, because there's so much time within the time between the one and the two is in an infinity of places where he can begin to blow. And, yeah, I really love thinking about that in terms of how each of us gets to become our own best archetype, our own best expression of an archetype. Who do you want to be in this moment of transition? Are you a psychopomp? Are you the memory holder? What's your archetype that you're getting into? Whenever it is that you have the courage to do the thing, don't worry about, oh, I was too afraid to do it six months ago, or, oh, I should have done this, and I should have been in the streets in 2020, child, we need you now.
30:33
Indira Allegra
Whenever that expression hits, it's going to be right on time. You may have missed the note in the summer 2020. You may have missed the note, actually, your whole d*** life. But you know what? You don't have to miss the time right now.
30:45
Jove Spucchi
We need you, yes, more than ever. That courage you mentioned to be the in between, to answer the call, to show up in the ways that you can in the now, that's what's important. I think there's even more room for things to shift with this Pluto transit into Aquarius. That something you felt yet or seen yet in your art making practice?
31:12
Indira Allegra
Well, I had Pluto sitting in my 12th, so I don't even know I have the strength to even get into what that means for the audience. Actually, maybe if you want to say a word or two about it? I don't know.
31:24
Jove Spucchi
For the listening audience, yeah, for sure. That's a beautiful and heavy placement. Pluto represents power, the struggles for it, the exchange power dynamics, and he tends to add a deep intensity wherever he goes, reminding us of the weight and potency of the treasures hidden beneath the earth, be they money or souls. In the 12th house, being the far back porch of the mind, the place that is new and old at the same time, the depths of being nothing and everything right before the beginning, pluto there gives gravitas and severity to that, a connection with those darker and older thoughtic spirits.
32:13
Indira Allegra
I love the back porch because the back porch is I'm just hold on, I just need to yes. I mean, everyone has porches, but I feel like porches are such a specific kind of portal for black people, and the energy of the back porch is a thing. Sometimes it goes down on the back porch. You can't see it from the street.
32:42
Jove Spucchi
Yes, certain kind of conversations happen on the back porch.
32:46
Indira Allegra
Totally can't hear it from the street. It may not be as well lit. It's probably not going to be as well lit as the front porch. Thank you for that. That's really powerful. That's what I love about astrology. It's just you never stop learning about it. I love hearing other people talk about it. Yeah, I'm going to think about my 12th house as a back porch now. Thank you for that. Because I was like, lord, I don't even have the I can't talk about. I'm tired, I'm living it. Like, I would say, having said, you expressed that all that so beautifully. I am very alert to the weight of what is unspoken between people, places, and things. I feel like I'm able to walk into whether it's like a museum, institution or site that I'm working at or whatever and have an acute sense of a haunting that's happening there.
33:50
Indira Allegra
My son and my Mercury are all placed in the 8th house. I feel that a lot of my work has to do with actually giving those hauntings an opportunity to express themselves and to do this. This is, again, why permission is really important, y'all, because I'm not trying to move in with these energies, and I'm not trying to take them home because what? They ain't paying rent on my expensive a** apartment in the Bay Area. To come back to my training as an interpreter, I recognize that there's something that needs to be spoken in a place. Oftentimes my performances or installations actually create conditions where in that speech can happen. I use weaving as a framework to work with tension off the loom and in the world. Hence me talking about sending out spider webs of energy to different things. I really do think in terms of the thread is such a core technology for touching.
34:56
Indira Allegra
Into the energy that an ally might be able to offer and also keeping me. Tethered I think about the work that I do with weaving as a methodology, with craft in that way in the world, as a way of quite honestly, it's a spiritual design practice.
35:16
Jove Spucchi
Yeah. And repair, it would seem, as well.
35:18
Indira Allegra
Yes.
35:21
Jove Spucchi
I just get this beautiful image of you entering a space and seeing all these disparate, ethereal threads, then asking them for their consent and cooperation and weaving them back together in this wholeness with the strands of their spiritual and historical contexts. In this mending, you're creating a structure that keeps the things that belong there. Tethered, as you were saying.
35:46
Indira Allegra
Yes.
35:46
Jove Spucchi
This technology is so exquisite, it's deceptively simple. Just like in textiles, the many different forces that fabrics are able to hold and direct while maintaining their integrity, that's a powerful magic.
36:02
Indira Allegra
Thank you. I would say that weaving is just so profound. I mean, we've been doing it as a species for 30,000 years. We have so many other different types of animal relatives who've been doing it too. We're not the only species who weeds. I remember the first time I saw loom as someone who's worked as a dom in their prior life. I was like, what kind of device is this? I was like, I've seen a lot of s*** in San Francisco, but I ain't seen this before. I was like, lord. I was like, kind of sweating. I was looking a little, like, intimidated myself. I know. I was like, what I got to do now? I remember my instructor doing a demo and laying the threads in, and I realized in that moment that it was another kind of writing device because I've been working as a poet for a long time, and I was like, oh, the threads are just stanzas.
37:10
Indira Allegra
You're just binding a story together. Poems are spells. We all know that. I was like, oh, it's another way of not only writing, but like, spell casting. It's another way of binding energy together. It's another way of encoding. It's another way to make something that's going to hold a memory outside of yourself. There's a reason that we keep returning to it as a species, because it just works. I think that for me, it's like, okay, I know that we've been doing this on the loom for 30,000 years. How can we take what weaving teaches us out into the world? I have a project that's called texare. When we use words like text, we're actually invoking the word the Latin verb texare, which means to weave. Again, this practice of encoding information and the practice of weaving have literally been intertwined forever. Texeri is a digital weaving platform where people are able to weave different images and pieces of text about things that they've experiences of loss that they have had together.
38:24
Indira Allegra
So I'm a big cat lover myself. I think about cats that I've lost in my life, and I know that there's going to be other people who are listening to this who have lost animal familiars as well. You've lost your cat, I've lost my cat. We can both upload pictures of our past feline friends, and those images will be woven together. I don't know who you are on the other side of the world, right? That's confidential, that's private to you. What I do know is that there's someone else out there who love the f*** out of their cat, just like I did, and that we can make this digital memorial tapestry together. I think that the way that we need to think about memorial has to shift. Right? Okay, Pluto, let's get on into Aquarius now. We can no longer think about things that it's like, okay, it's a bronze statue of someone you may or may not have heard of that's getting pooped on by pigeons in a square.
39:26
Indira Allegra
How can we actually use technology to link our experiences up? And Instagram doesn't do it. Twitter isn't interested in your grief. For me, I was like, okay, as someone who's interested in social design, there was a place for Texare to be like, this is something very simple that you can do to support your grief hygiene on a daily basis. For those of you who are listening, who are interested, you can go to website called texteri space. I'll spell that for you, Texerespace. The password right now is weave on lowercase letters, and you can pick from a menu of different types of losses. I think there's over like, 50 different types of losses there, which range from the scent of a flower that you'll never get to smell because it goes extinct before you get to it, to a ring, to a loss of a loved one, to a virus.
40:32
Indira Allegra
There's a huge range. I think we're losing all the time. We're losing all the time. The losses that get the most airtime are the big things like diagnoses and divorces and deaths and things like that. What about the plant that dies in your absence when you go out on a trip? What about the tree that blows down in the storm that you pass by on a regular basis? I noticed that stuff. There's a tree from the storm that we just had that blew down. I'm like, oh, I had to take a moment around that. All the losses which are in the menu, there are losses I have experienced in my own life. Part of the creation of this work was for me to kind of cast my threads out and to say, hey, I wonder if there's someone else who misses how their niece was as a baby and is now experiencing, like, yes, there's a lot of joy in a child, in your life growing up.
41:28
Indira Allegra
There's a grief of, like, oh, but you were so small, and I held you in my arms once. I wonder if there's anyone else out there who's feeling a kind of way about that. I wonder if there's anyone else out there who's lost a loved one to cancer. I wonder if there's anyone else out there who's lost a ring right, or lost respect for someone who once helped you. All of these are different categories that you can pick from, and then you can upload an image, you can upload text, you can upload pre recorded video, and all of that gets woven together into a digital memorial tapestry, which is always changing. That was a kind of magical way of thinking about weaving. For me, that is possible through the digital, where I'm like, what about a tapestry that is never done? What about a tapestry that is woven into infinity whose composition is always changing, even as we are always changing in relationship to our losses?
42:22
Indira Allegra
What would that be like? Texari comes out of a place of my performative craft designer mind being like, there's a need here for us to make something out of our losses together. It also comes out of a place of being alert and sensitive to mythology as being a kind of original technology that we've used as a species to understand big cycles, big themes, big energies, and putting that all together. So, yeah, I welcome all of y'all who are listening to try it out.
42:59
Jove Spucchi
I'll have the links and information in the show notes as well. What I really connected with in this piece is how it challenges the notion of loss being a void of being nothingness, of being immaterial. It reifies loss as a medium that can be approached and actually worked with. The way this experience can switch our perspectives, expand our sphere of agency, and reintegrate us with that essential nature of death really speaks to the reparative weaving that we touched on earlier. It's such a beautifully human use of technology, one that honors the truth of how it came to be and how it needs to be reenchanted. I feel it's part of the call of pluto and aquarius to re enchant the digital, to honor the lineages and peoples from which these ideas spring from and to recognize the inherently spiritual nature of what we're doing when we organize and manipulate information.
44:01
Jove Spucchi
Yes, these ideas are so present in ancient human technologies. Weaving as a primary example, comparing it to circuit boards. Weaving might seem really simple, but it's a process that's been refined and explored for over 30,000 years. We haven't even had digital circuits for 100 years.
44:21
Indira Allegra
Yes.
44:22
Jove Spucchi
Weaving is a technology that's so highly, almost inconceivably sophisticated.
44:28
Indira Allegra
Highly sophisticated. Highly sophisticated. I love that you use the word yeah. That the digital space can be enchanted. It's such a strange binary that people trying to be. It's a digital thing. It's like really cold and I'm like, what? What are you talking about? All of the 50,000 images that you have in your phone, I guarantee you have a warm blooded feeling about those because you took them and they represent your life and they're remembering something for you. With the chat bots and the AI stuff, it's like, I want everyone to take a deep breath and in the face of something new, it seems new to say, okay, how do I want to be in relation? What do you offer? Talk to it. Sometimes I do when I work with students. It's like talk to it.
45:32
Jove Spucchi
Play.
45:33
Indira Allegra
Play.
45:34
Jove Spucchi
There's an opportunity to be in conversation with something new that we don't yet understand.
45:39
Indira Allegra
That's right.
45:40
Jove Spucchi
When we play, we have the space to explore boundaries in a healthy way and communicative way and be supported by that foundation of consent.
45:51
Indira Allegra
Yes.
45:51
Jove Spucchi
A chance to understand boundaries not from a place of violence, but from curiosity.
45:58
Indira Allegra
That's right. That's right. We don't have to be in this space of technological xenophobia. I'm sure at the moment that people started writing things down and transitioning from a solely oral culture, the written word was like, whoa, whoa. What are we doing? What's going on? There's always going to be those moments where something else comes along.
46:29
Jove Spucchi
Yeah. I think that takes us nicely back to Pluto Shift. Who holds power in this new aquarian age?
46:37
Indira Allegra
Yes.
46:37
Jove Spucchi
In these liminal and chaotic moments when power is shifting, there's an immense opportunity for hopefully everyone to engage in the redistribution, to challenge the status quo.
46:52
Indira Allegra
That's right.
46:53
Jove Spucchi
My hope is that these emerging technologies are democratized in a way that can truly empower people and lift them up. Coding, for example, I think is going to be accessible to a lot more people. I used to work in tech education and it's hard to learn how to code and it's made necessarily harder by institutions and individuals who like to gatekeep. There are so many engineers who think they are God's gift to the world when really coding is just another trade, another craft, another skill, and it happens to be highly valuable to the people with all the money right now. Once we all have access to these new tools, I can literally code up anything we ask for. I think that economy is going to change quite a bit. I'm excited to see how power ends up changing hands when everyone, or almost everyone has the ability to weave and create in the digital with this significantly more accessible interface of natural conversation.
48:02
Indira Allegra
Yes. I just want to remind people that, yes, I'm exhausted. A lot of us are exhausted. It is a privilege to be alive right now and we are being tasked to participate again. We can't just be in front of the altar at home.
48:20
Jove Spucchi
It's a crossroads moment.
48:21
Indira Allegra
It's a crossroads moment and it requires social participation however you want to do that. I feel incredibly grateful to be an artist and to know that part of how I participate is with creative force. Again, coming back to this question of like, what kind of archetype do you want to be in this moment? That tells you how you're going to participate. But it's social, folks. That's what we have to use our training and our practices to support us in doing.
48:56
Jove Spucchi
Yes. Going back to Pluto, who is in the highly materialized Earth sign of Capricorn for so long, and then those six ish years of a strong Saturn domicile as well. The value is on the thing itself, absolutism, absolute truths. I think where we're being called now with Pluto in area Aquarius and Saturn in Mutable PISCES, we are to understand things differently, no longer by their innate qualities, but rather how they exist in relation to other things.
49:31
Indira Allegra
Right.
49:32
Jove Spucchi
How they exist in the constantly changing ecologies. We are just barely beginning to understand objective truth, or rather the concept of it is not nearly as valuable as it once was. Now is the season to try and understand things with more nuance.
49:48
Indira Allegra
Yes.
49:48
Jove Spucchi
How does this sit in conversation with everything else?
49:51
Indira Allegra
To think like artists. Exactly.
49:56
Jove Spucchi
Yeah, I really like that. I think there's an added level of discernment we need to interact with our world now. I think it relates with climate change as well, in the sense that it's only something we can really begin to comprehend if we start to view things on a more systems level. Thinking about how an action or effect exists not just within the sphere of ourselves, but also within the larger chain reaction, one that I think is larger than we've ever had to challenge ourselves to really think about before.
50:30
Indira Allegra
I love that. I love that so much. I'll leave you all with I've gone on and on about like you need to participate. I'll offer a resource that hopefully will help with that effort. It's the Grammar of Grief Handbook. Go to thegrammerofgriefhandbook.com and what that is a place where you can find different practices to metabolize grief in your life. It doesn't mean that you have to wake up feeling like you're totally unable to get out of bed. Sure, I've been there. Many of us have been there. Maybe again, think about regular grief hygiene practices. You don't have to wait until your hair is a disaster to wash it or to comb it out. You just put some leave in today. You do what you can do every day. What I love about The Grammar of Grief Handbook is that these are practices that different folks have just offered up, that have worked in their own lives based on particular experiences of loss that they have had.
51:30
Indira Allegra
Maybe you've lost a parent recently or someone who is a caregiver to you or a mentor to you. You can actually go to the Grimmer Group Handbook and find someone else who has experienced a similar loss and see what kind of physical practice worked for them. I think that we can perform memorial in a very democratic way in our own lives, with our own bodies and in our own spaces, and we don't have to wait for someone to give us permission to do that. You don't need a million dollars to build anything. Again, it's a way of incorporating nourishing ritual into your life. Ritual is very important to me. It's like super thrilling that folks have contributed writing practices that are focused on movement, practices that are focused on sound and the environment. If you want to submit your own practice, there's a way on the site for you to do that as well.
52:26
Indira Allegra
Again, thinking with my social design brain, I'm like, what if there was like, literally a handbook for grieving, something that I could just take 15 minutes out of my day or five minutes out of my day to do. It exists as like a gift and an offering to anyone who's interested. Feel free to, like I said, write in. If you have your own practices. I'd love to hear from people.
52:50
Jove Spucchi
Thank you Indira for sharing that lovely resource with us all. The community aspect as a way to further connect and build with each other to participate is really profound. I know so many of us have a lot of grief debt right now that we haven't been able to really tend to, and I think this is something a lot of people can use to heal. You've given us so much today, and I know we've just barely scratched the surface. I'll make sure to add all the links you spoke about today to the episode notes so folks can find out more about you and your work. Are there any upcoming projects or appearances you'd like to let us know about before we go?
53:30
Indira Allegra
Oh, my goodness. Tech series. It's not only the offering online, but the long arc of that project is to have a series of networked digital memorial tapestries across the nation. In a couple of years time, there will actually be another installation that people can visit outdoors this time. The way that the digital tapestries have been installed in physical space has always been indoors up to this point. It's been my dream to be able to make an outdoor garden of this where people could actually come and sit and you can enter your text or your images from your phone and then see the changes in the glowing tapestries happening before you as you sit outside in the garden. One of the things I'm doing right now is securing institutional partnerships where that can happen. I want to give a big shout out to creative capital for their financial support of the project.
54:31
Indira Allegra
Also the Ford Foundation and a big shout out to Sassafras tech collective y'all are my ride or die who have been doing really the magical work of coding to be able to make this happen. Folks wouldn't believe that. For something that seems as simple as Weaving, we actually had to use five or six different programming languages to make texter RA work. I had the delightful task of explaining to them how Weaving works and then them trying to explain to me how they're working. It's a beautiful thing because the loom is the ancestor to the computer as we know it today. I actually kind of see it as being another moment of it's another full circle kind of moment wherein this ancestor gets to be in direct, creative relationship with its descendant, which is something that's really important to me in terms of just in my own spiritual practice, thinking about the role and the company of ancestors in my life.
55:33
Indira Allegra
Oh, I just wanted to say that keep your eye out for later in the year. I have two books coming out. One is called Tension Studies, which is a lyric essay. The other is dispersal of a feeling. Blood notes on illness and choreography. That's a chat book size. That'll be coming out through Swing swing books. That's later in the year. If you're on my Instagram, you'll be the first to know because I'm going to do it as an art book so that it's going to be like a limited edition. If you don't have zillions of dollars to buy my other artwork, then the book is for you.
56:14
Jove Spucchi
I'm excited to check it out. Indira, thank you so much for joining us today and sharing everything that you have. It's been lovely to be in conversation with you and thank you for joining Occulted.
56:28
Indira Allegra
Thank you for this conversation and for the care with which you hold this space and that you hold your audience. It's just a real privilege yeah, to be here today. I'm really grateful.
56:41
Jove Spucchi
I know I can speak for everyone when I say the privilege was definitely all ours. Thank you for being a part of this episode of Occulted to follow for future episodes and learn more about me, Jove Spucchi, you can visit Spucchi.com. That's spucchi.com to.
Note: transcripts are auto-transcribed and likely contain errors.
