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Experiential knowledge and improvisation: Variations on movement, motion, emotion

This is a double blind peer reviewed journal article co-authored with Coessens, Vrije University, Brussels/Orpheus Institute of Research into Music (ORCiM).

The article deploys Hallam & Ingold’s conceptual framework from anthropology of ‘improvisation in life’ comprised of four qualities: ‘generative’, ‘relational’, ‘ time dependent’ and ‘part of life’ to elucidate how improvisation may inform experiential learning. The authors position improvisation as a way of knowing pivotal to the body’s movement and growth in the world i.e. different from more familiar explanations of improvisation as a particular approach to form building in music. Each author contributes a case study. Douglas as lead author curated Calendar Variations 2010-12 (visual arts) and Coessens analysed her performance of Kurtag’s Jatekok 2010 (music). They situate these experiences within theories of learning and artistic practices: Klee, Harrisons (Douglas) and Dewey (Coessens).

Calendar Variations articulates an approach to artistic experimentation through improvisation, contributing to ORCiM’s five year investigation of experimentation in music. Working within a conceptual frame based on Kaprow’s Calendar score 1971, seven artist researchers in the fields of art and ecology, art and the social/political, art and farming challenged and reconfigured customary articulations of ‘socially engaged art practice’. This experiment flips the relationship of performer to score from control to creative opportunity, in a phenomenological method designed to critique specific ‘givens’ of aesthetic practice as a shared and individual process, offering fresh articulations. The analysis led to two further artistic experiments: Coessens’ A Day in My Life (2011) and Douglas & Coessens Sounding Drawing (2012).

The paper was presented at Experiential Knowledge Interest Group SkinDeep 2011 conference (http://www.experientialknowledge.org.uk/), subsequently selected for publication in ADCHE. This research was supported by Orpheus Institute, Belgium; IDEAS Institute, RGU; a Carnegie Scotland Small grant (£1,780) and informed a successful AHRC collaborative doctoral award with Woodend Barn (Oct 2011).