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.
Contents
Chapter 1 Double-resonance: improvisation, relationality and transdisciplinarity. Simon Rose
Chapter 2 The performance of improvised music: what do we mean when we talk about performance? Simon Rose
Chapter 3 Contemporary Art and Improvisation. Simon Rose and Julie Myers
Chapter 4 The shared space of improvisation in dance and music. Simon Rose and Ingo Reulecke
Chapter 5 Levels of improvisation and neocybernetic relations. Simon Rose and Adam Pultz Melbye
Chapter 6 Interspecies improvisation. Simon Rose and Barbara Berti.
Chapter 7 A phenomenology of improvisation in dance and music: peripatetic symphilosophein. Simon Rose and Andrew Wass
Chapter 8 From South Korea to Berlin: ‘moving between the notes’ in collaborative and improvisation. Simon Rose and Youjin Sung
Chapter 9 Sympoiesis and improvisation: how I work, how you work and how we work.
Simon Rose and Paul Stapleton
Chapter 10 Musical identity and exchange in improvisation. Simon Rose and Kriton Beyer
Chapter 11 Light, music and improvisation. Simon Rose, Lena Czerniawska, Emese Csornai and Viola Yip
Chapter 12 Improvisation and uncovering collaboration. Simon Rose and Nicola L. Hein.
Biography
Simon Rose is an independent researcher and professional musician. He holds a PhD from Glasgow Caledonian University and is the author of The Lived Experience of Improvisation: In Music, Learning and Life.
"This massively interdisciplinary book of dialogues on improvisation, conducted by one of the most influential and innovative scholar-artists in the field, provides trenchant new insights on creativity, performance, collaboration, and ultimately, the human spirit itself."
—George E. Lewis, Columbia University
