I’ve been thinking a lot about time recently (I recently completed my MA thesis on the subject of entropy, and by inference the complexities of time perception, and how artists have dealt with them both), and it occurs to me that improvisation, which seemed to be the key theme of the Interplay exhibition, sits at the extremes of how we deal with the perceived time available to create something. Indeed, improvisation would seem to have a highly piqued relationship with time, highlighting time, possibly making it more tangible in its passing.
Improvisation lies at the very deepest foundation of what makes us human, what lifted us above the other animals, gave us tools and fire. Yet rarely is it celebrated or isolated as a behaviour that we should regularly engage in. Perhaps this is due to the circumstances of the first kind of improvisation I want to talk about, the sort of improvisation that artists are all too familiar with, where one is short of time and resources. It’s not necessarily a pleasant place to be (although it’s funny how often you hear people come out of such situations saying “wasn’t it fun during that time!”), there are the links with impoverishment – the rickety improvised shelter or meal, the association with the temporary and make-do, too rarely are these thought of in the positive arena of playing. We look for the well-made, the honed, the practiced. It lasts, saving us the time it takes to renew it. But it would seem that out of the pressure and discomfort of a situation such as a starving artist in their garret, the desperate clamour for superiority or survival during military conflict, or even just a wider situation such as an economic recession such as the one we are experiencing now, out of these situations, through the sheer focus in us which they can bring about, have emerged great creative invention and technological advances and spinoffs – some unwanted, it is true. And it is easy to see in this light the odd position of why people look back fondly on these times, highlighted as they are by invention and feats of survival, yet of course avoid actively pursuing the creation of such times.
The second kind of improvisation occurs when, not necessarily dependent on resources, we have an abundance of time. Time to gather in a small club somewhere and listen to someone like Evan Parker knock out a great improvised saxophone routine, or hear a comedian regale an audience and make them laugh at themselves through a joke they’ve inspired in the last few minutes. Perhaps it’s found in the kid on the street corner, freestyling a rhyme to a beat which is mouthed and finger clicked out by their friends. Warm imagery of collective creation. Perhaps less warm is the hobbyist, alone in their shed and soldering together a device which might come to revolutionise our lives. Maybe more common now is the solo laptop musician, pushing out music which reflects wonderfully on solitary urban existence, it’s muted sorrows and intense joys, from their bedroom computer. Again it seems like a nebulous, rarely recorded behaviour from the edges, except this time it’s a snatched couple of hours in the evening or at weekends, when the day job relents and we have the energy to do as we please. And again it’s capable of incredible invention, away from the market research, management boards, and focus groups responsible for too much in our lives.
I was sorry to miss the great bout of improvisational performance which occurred at the opening of Interplay. But in evidence afterwards, at the exhibition and on this blog, was perhaps a third kind of improvisation where people took a couple of minutes out to make a change to the arrangement of the show. I laughed upon finding that three units (blobs, grenades, conjoined flowerpots, whatever you want to call them) from my cement sculpture – brilliantly installed in my absence by Akiko and Janne – had been ingeniously used as weights holding up a floppy sculpture by Sarah Bowker-Jones. There’s a photo of these from Guocheng below, sadly I didn’t manage to get a photo of the whole of Sarah’s piece. But I did manage to capture another blob, tucked by some unknown under a great boxer’s punch bag, almost as if to stop it from sliding off.
These small pockets of improvisation occurred elsewhere during the show and were promoted by the curators. To me they enlivened the experience and imparted a sense of uncertainty and humour, reminding me of the poignancy and vitality in the embracing of time as it passes.
Here’s to Interplay#2…
