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Addressing a wide range of improvised art and music forms—from jazz and cinema to dance and literature—this volume's contributors locate improvisation as a key site of mediation between the social and the aesthetic. As a catalyst for social experiment and political practice, improvisation aids in the creation, contestation, and codification of social realities and identities. Among other topics, the contributors discuss the social aesthetics of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, the Feminist Improvising Group, and contemporary Malian music, as well as the virtual sociality of interactive computer music, the significance of "uncreative" improvisation, responses to French New Wave cinema, and the work of figures ranging from bell hooks and Billy Strayhorn to Kenneth Goldsmith. Across its diverse chapters, Improvisation and Social Aesthetics argues that ensemble improvisation is not inherently egalitarian or emancipatory, but offers a potential site for the cultivation of new forms of social relations. It sets out a new conceptualization of the aesthetic as immanently social and political, proposing a new paradigm of improvisation studies that will have reverberations throughout the humanities. Contributors. Lisa Barg, Georgina Born, David Brackett, Nicholas Cook, Marion Froger, Susan Kozel, Eric Lewis, George E. Lewis, Ingrid Monson, Tracey Nicholls, Winfried Siemerling, Will Straw, Zoë Svendsen, Darren Wershler
An Ethics of Improvisation takes up the puzzles and lessons of improvised music in order to theorize the building blocks of a politically just society. The investigation of what politics can learn from the people who perform and listen to musical improvisation begins with an examination of current social discourses about "the political" and an account of what social justice could look like. From there, the book considers what a politically just society's obligations are to people who do not want to be part of the political community, establishing respect for difference as a fundamental principle of social interaction. What this respect for difference entails when applied to questions of the aesthetic value of music is aesthetic pluralism, the book argues. Improvised jazz, in particular, embodies different values than those of the Western classical tradition, and must be judged on its own terms if it is to be respected. Having established the need for aesthetic pluralism in order to respect the diversity of musical traditions, the argument turns back to political theory, and considers what distinct resources improvisation theory--the theorizing of the social context in which musical improvisation takes place--has to offer established political philosophy discourses of deliberative democracy and the politics of recognition--already themselves grounded in a respect for difference. This strand of the argument takes up the challenge, familiar to peace studies, of creative ways to rebuild fractured civil societies. Throughout all of these intertwined discussions, various behaviors, practices, and value-commitments are identified as constituent parts of the "ethics of improvisation" that is articulated in the final chapter as the strategy through which individuals can collaboratively build responsive democratic communities.
This volume brings together philosophical and interdisciplinary perspectives on improvisation. The contributions connect the theoretical dimensions of improvisation with different viewpoints on its practice in the arts and the classroom. The chapters address the phenomenon of improvisation in two related ways. On the one hand, they attend to the lived practices of improvisation both within and without the arts in order to explain the phenomenon. They also extend the scope of improvisational practices to include the role of improvisation in habit and in planned action, at both individual and collective levels. Drawing on recent work done in the philosophy of mind, they address questions such as whether improvisation is a single unified phenomenon or whether it entails different senses that can be discerned theoretically and practically. Finally, they ask after the special kind of improvisational expertise which characterizes musicians, dancers, and other practitioners, an expertise marked by the artist’s ability to participate competently in complex situations while deliberately relinquishing control. Philosophy of Improvisation will appeal to anyone with a strong interest in improvisation, to researchers working in philosophy, aesthetics, and pedagogy as well as practitioners involved in different kinds of music, dance, and theater performances.
There is no prepared script for social and cultural life. People work it out as they go along. Creativity and Cultural Improvisation casts fresh, anthropological eyes on the cultural sites of creativity that form part of our social matrix. The book explores the ways creative agency is attributed in the graphic and performing arts and in intellectual property law. It shows how the sources of creativity are embedded in social, political and religious institutions, examines the relationship between creativity and the perception and passage of time, and reviews the creativity and improvisational quality of anthropological scholarship itself. Individual essays examine how the concept of creativity has changed in the history of modern social theory, and question its applicability as a term of cross-cultural analysis. The contributors highlight the collaborative and political dimensions of creativity and thus challenge the idea that creativity arises only from individual talent and expression.
This book presents interdisciplinary research on the aesthetics of perfection and imperfection. Broadening this growing field, it connects the aesthetics of imperfection with issues in areas including philosophy, music, literature, urban environment, architecture, art theory, and cultural studies. The contributors to this volume argue that imperfection has value in being open and inclusive. The aesthetics of imperfection is typified by organic, unpolished production and the avoidance of perfect finish, instead representing living and natural change, and opposing the consumerist concern with the flawless and pristine. The chapters are divided into seven thematic sections. After the first section, on imperfection across the arts and culture, the next three parts are on imperfection in the arts of music, visual and theatrical arts, and literature. The second half of this book then moves to categories in everyday life and branches this further into body, self, and the person, and urban environments. Together, the chapters promote a positive ethos of imperfection that furthers individual and social engagement and supports creativity over mere passivity. Imperfectionist Aesthetics in Art and Everyday Life will appeal to a broad range of scholars and advanced students working in philosophical aesthetics, literature, music, urban environment, architecture, art theory, and cultural studies.
This collection explores the growing global recognition of creativity and the arts as vital to social movements and change. Bringing together diverse perspectives from leading academics and practitioners who investigate how creative activism is deployed, taught, and critically analysed, it delineates the key parameters of this emerging field.
Over the last few decades, the notion of improvisation has enriched and dynamized research on traditional philosophies of music, theatre, dance, poetry, and even visual art. This Handbook offers readers an authoritative collection of accessible articles on the philosophy of improvisation, synthesizing and explaining various subjects and issues from the growing wave of journal articles and monographs in the field. Its 48 chapters, written specifically for this volume by an international team of scholars, are accessible for students and researchers alike. The volume is organized into four main sections: I Art and Improvisation: Theoretical Perspectives II Art and Improvisation: Aesthetical, Ethical, and Political Perspectives III Improvisation in Musical Practices IV Improvisation in the Visual, Narrative, Dramatic, and Interactive Arts Key Features: Treats improvisation not only as a stylistic feature, but also as an aesthetic property of artworks and performances as well as a core element of artistic creativity. Spells out multiple aspects of the concept of improvisation, emphasizing its relevance in understanding the nature of art. Covers improvisation in a wide spectrum of artistic domains, including unexpected ones such as literature, visual arts, games, and cooking. Addresses key questions, such as: - How can improvisation be defined and what is its role in different art forms? - Can improvisation be perceived as such, and how can it be aesthetically evaluated? - What is the relationship between improvisation and notions such as action, composition, expressivity, and authenticity? - What is the ethical and political significance of improvisation?
A source of profound insights into human existence and the nature of lived experience, phenomenology is among the most influential intellectual movements of the last hundred years. The Oxford Handbook of the Phenomenology of Music Cultures brings ideas from the phenomenological tradition of Continental European philosophy into conversation with theoretical, ethnographic, and historical work from ethnomusicology, anthropology, sound studies, folklore studies, and allied disciplines to develop new perspectives on musical practices and auditory cultures. With sustained theoretical meditations and evocative ethnography, the book's twenty-two chapters advance scholarship on topics at the heart of the study of music and culture today--from embodiment, atmosphere, and Indigenous ontologies, to music's capacity to reveal new possibilities of the person, the nature of virtuosity, issues in research methods, the role of memory, imagination, and states of consciousness in musical experience, and beyond. Thoroughly up-to-date, the handbook engages with both classical and contemporary phenomenology, as well as theoretical traditions that have drawn from it, such as affect theory or the German-language literature on cultural techniques. Together, these essays make major contributions to fundamental theory in the study of music and culture.
Investigates the connections between jazz, sexual identity, and radical black politics In his controversial essay on white jazz musician Burton Greene, Amiri Baraka asserted that jazz was exclusively an African American art form and explicitly fused the idea of a black aesthetic with radical political traditions of the African diaspora. In the Break is an extended riff on “The Burton Greene Affair,” exploring the tangled relationship between black avant-garde in music and literature in the 1950s and 1960s, the emergence of a distinct form of black cultural nationalism, and the complex engagement with and disavowal of homoeroticism that bridges the two. Fred Moten focuses in particular on the brilliant improvisatory jazz of John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, Albert Ayler, Eric Dolphy, Charles Mingus, and others, arguing that all black performance—culture, politics, sexuality, identity, and blackness itself—is improvisation. For Moten, improvisation provides a unique epistemological standpoint from which to investigate the provocative connections between black aesthetics and Western philosophy. He engages in a strenuous critical analysis of Western philosophy (Heidegger, Kant, Husserl, Wittgenstein, and Derrida) through the prism of radical black thought and culture. As the critical, lyrical, and disruptive performance of the human, Moten’s concept of blackness also brings such figures as Frederick Douglass and Karl Marx, Cecil Taylor and Samuel R. Delany, Billie Holiday and William Shakespeare into conversation with each other. Stylistically brilliant and challenging, much like the music he writes about, Moten’s wide-ranging discussion embraces a variety of disciplines—semiotics, deconstruction, genre theory, social history, and psychoanalysis—to understand the politicized sexuality, particularly homoeroticism, underpinning black radicalism. In the Break is the inaugural volume in Moten’s ambitious intellectual project-to establish an aesthetic genealogy of the black radical tradition
Relational Improvisation explores the creative exchanges that occur between artistic disciplines through the practice of improvisation in performance. Building upon the growing research into improvisation, the book explores contemporary transdisciplinary collaborations between improvised music and other fields including dance and visual arts, offering insights from a wide range of practitioners. Author Simon Rose takes a ground-up approach that places value on lived experience and reflects the value of collaboration. Mirroring improvisation’s relationality, chapters are co-authored by musicians, dancers and visual artists from diverse backgrounds who are engaged in active artistic collaborations with the author. The relational approach allows for the inclusion of improvisation’s scope and many levels. Showcasing a range of different voices, the chapters address topics in artistic improvisation including cybernetics, interspecies work, working with light, phenomenology, sympoiesis and identity, and utilise a range of approaches including autoethnography and philosophical analysis. Considering the relationships of improvisation to emotion, space, embodiment and philosophy, this book shows how improvisation, collaboration and transdisciplinary artistic practices combine to generate new creative possibilities. It provides vital insights for practicing artists, arts researchers, philosophy and pedagogy and all those studying improvisation and collaborative creativity in contemporary music, dance and visual arts.