Andie Flores: The Monster in the Office Cubicle Next to Yours

We caught up with Andie Flores (@bidibidibummer), an Austin-based writer, comedian, and performance artist, and chatted about the beauty in the strange, eating cookies, and her new Horny Quarantine show. Read on to discover Andie’s influences, creative processes, and upcoming projects.

CA: Where are your roots? How long have you been in Austin?

AF: Born in San Antonio / been in Austin for 6ish years.

CA: How do you identify?

AF: As a big stupid idiot, but also as a queer Tejana.

CA: When did you get into these forms of art?

AF: I've always been a writer and I've been performing steadily since I was in middle school. This first manifested through doing competitive theater/performance via speech and debate competitions all the way through college, and then playing in a band. And then after that, I began to experiment with what I could do on variety shows and sketch and stage shows. Performing over the last five or so years particularly has been an ongoing experiment in figuring out what styles of performance make me feel, not to sound cheesy but, most alive. Lately, doing drag has been the most wonderful and fun playtime for me.

CA: Do you have one core medium?

AF: All of my work seems to somewhat blend together, truthfully, which I really like, and each aspect brings something different to my practice. Making photos of myself gives me a visual mode of understanding myself/how I see myself, with the freedom to mold and mend those representations of self in any way I want. Bringing comedy into my drag gives me the chance to use music, costume, and humor to tell a unique story or bring validation to a unique experience. This in turn lets me give new characters some stage time, and lets me show how beautiful like, weird looking goblins or conehead baddies or deranged clowns can be. They're beautiful too. They get to be beautiful!

CA: How do your IRL performances differ from your digital practices?

AF: So much of what I've been focused on in the last year have been dissecting anxiety-driven audience-centric questions: Do I need an audience? What do I want from them? Can I focus more on how performing makes *me* feel than trying to create a formula to make a certain group of people feel a particular way? The thing I love about being there live is that moment before. The buzz of the room feeds how I'm about to move my body, it feeds what I know I can try, or what I know might not be communicated clearly. I can gather reactions and vibes and let it fuel what decision I make next. I can play with people. My digital performance presence, on the other hand, is an ongoing exercise in self-confidence, but it's also one that lets me really blend a drag persona with my real life personality, etc. An advantage to working digitally is that I don't spend as much time prepping things: I do it and put it out there and if I want to delete it later, I can. It's ultimately a lot of fun to not overthink things.

CA: What daily rituals do you have that maintain your practice? Have you had to develop new rituals due to social distancing?

AF: My schedule is pretty much dictated by my dog and his wants and needs. And as much as I'd like to say I work out regularly or cook delicious healthy meals, I definitely don't. I'm in graduate school pursuing a PhD right now, so my rituals are reading, thinking about reading, thinking about thinking, eating cookies, and dancing in front of the mirror a lot. Like, a lot a lot. Since being isolated in my apartment, and because I don't have roommates, I have been spending a lot of time Facetiming or playing phone games with my friends all over the place, which has made the days go by in a much more lovely fashion.

CA: What discoveries have you made in these past couple weeks working alone?

AF: I've learned that the only way to get through this in one piece—mentally, physically, emotionally—is to only pursue what makes me feel excited when I feel excited, without the pressure of trying to "create" constantly or to "be on" all the time. I've also learned that trying to do school all online is really difficult. I need people to talk shit with in person, you know?

CA: How and where do you imagine your next IRL performance?

AF: I have no earthly clue but I definitely want to be upside down for some portion of it. And I want an extra set of arms. Maybe it's in the pet aisle at H-E-B.

CA: What are your favorite venues and events to perform live at?

AF: I loooooove performing monthly at Cyb3r Qu33ns (produced by Y2K and P1nk Star at Coconut Club) and at anything or anywhere produced by Jeremy von Stilb, especially Magical Realness, which is an incredible drag ball. There's something about the crowds that show up to these events—they're gorgeous and fun and weird and queer as fuck and ready to fully embrace every single performance and game for anything and it starts to all feel like the most fun chosen family.

CA: How do fashion and makeup play a role in your process?

AF: A good majority of my work is guided by the magic of found objects and elevated in the hunt for them. I typically scope out thrifted/secondhand toys or clothes or accessories and try to imagine who would wear them or use them and for what and in what world they could exist with a breath of new air. I think of silhouettes that feel especially powerful to me clothing-wise, and then I typically use makeup as the last element to kick start a story. A lot of my makeup looks are a mish-mosh of some kind of tragic clown presence, a little bit of weird sex and part scary monster from the office cubicle next to yours— and I love getting to put all of these pieces together out in public.

CA: What is your process behind character creation?

AF: I think music really glues a character together and cements one interpretation of their story. Like, what does it mean for a disheveled alien woman in a business suit to sing a Britney Spears song? Or what if a bald little goblin creature did a monologue from a popular teen movie or something and then did a Selena number and then all of a sudden is stripped down to a diaper and gets dragged off stage? How would that change the stories and narratives we already understand as true? Essentially, in character creation, I like to think about new visual sub-genres or sub-cultures I can fuse with popular culture moments or identity legibility.

CA: What Cultural Icons or Artists are important to you?

AF: I'm always influenced by artists like Xandra Ibarra (@lachicaboom), Jesús I. Valles, Lorelei Ramirez, Shaboom, Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeah's, Pee Wee Herman... people who know how to mix raunch and beauty and mess and humor to tear apart real fucking problems.

CA: in Austin or online?

AF: There's way too many to name! Off the top of my head, in Austin at least... Cindy Popp (@cindy.popp), Natalia Rocafuerte (@dadawestern), Sam Lavigne, Rosalind Hussell (@rosalindhussell) (and the entire incredible Austin drag scene, really), Diego Duran (@fayeg0), etc. etc. etc. Online there's much too many!

CA: What projects do you have in the works?

AF: Currently, I have a new weekly show on Instagram Live with comedian and writer Kelsey Rodgers called My Horny Quarantine, where we play with a call-in talk show format and discuss dating, sex, relationships, and general horniness in isolation. I'm also slowly experimenting with digital drag performances and talking about new ways to collaborate with artists I admire across the country. I also just started working on a new live show with Austin artist Natalia Rocafuerte, set to happen in the summer (or sometime after this is all done with!), and am a new artist-in-residence with Boss Babes ATX (@bossbabesatx).

Follow Andie Flores surrealist equations of character and cultural context on Instagram (@bidibidibummer) and check out her website for more work.