Category: Past Events

Talk :

27 January 2024 Saturday 2-3:30pm

£5 | 12 places only | Please email divfuse@gmail.com for tickets

A talk by experienced improviser Caroline Kraabel

Exploring her own practice, along with a wider view of improvisation and identity: even the world of freely improvised music can be experienced as an enclave that excludes, despite the perceived association of improvisation with limitlessness and freedom.

How do people who improvise feel and think DIFFERENTLY from each other on the subject? How do we avoid or alter any dominance of particular groups over the theory or practice of improvisation? Does the experimental nature of improvisation make it easier for members of élites to shine in the field, because they have more pre-existing socio-cultural capital? Or, does improvisation come more easily for outsiders who are already primed to find alternative paths? How are improvisers affected by their musical and cultural histories? How does a group, maybe a large group, of improvisers negotiate space and time, noise and silence in a musical and just way?

For improvisers who have experienced forms of oppression in music making and/or life, is the aim when making music merely to recapitulate existing power structures, but try to place themselves at the top? Or to create new and fairer structures?

References: Gittin’ To Know Y’all: Improvised Music, Interculturalism, and the Racial Imagination, by George E. Lewis, Columbia University

Naked Intimacy: Eroticism, Improvisation, and Gender, by Ellen Waterman, University of Guelph

https://www.criticalimprov.com/index.php/csieci/article/view/845/1396

Caroline Kraabel is a London-based improviser, saxophonist, artist, conductor, and composer.

In 2022 Kraabel founded a large improvising group made up of all sorts of women, non-binary, and transgender improvisers: ONe_Orchestra New.  (https://oneorchestranew.com/)

Performances:

7 October 2023 Saturday 6pm [CANCELLED] [Changed to 15 October 2023 Sunday 6pm]

8 October 2023 Sunday 6pm [CANCELLED] [Changed to 15 October 2023 Sunday 6pm]

15 October 2023 Sunday 6pm

£5 | 10 places only per session | Please email divfuse@gmail.com for tickets

Two performances and dialogues between seemingly disparate objects and materials, exploring potential and illusory connections . These collections of small sequences and actions use sound, gesture, synchronicity, mark making and projection to create their own expressive language and suggest hidden narratives and structures. 

Materials – Projection – speakers – tennis ball – coin -chalk- metronome – gloves

Using high pitch frequencies along with movement and gesture, these improvisational performances will explore the physicality and musicality of high pitch resonant tones. Integrating recorded and live elements with hand, body and gesture to manipulate and shape the signal. 

Performed initially as part of Perpetual Possibility at Iklectik Arts Lab this next series of performances will continue to explore aspects of physicality, duration, musicality and collaboration

Matt Harding is a musician and artist whose work explores movement, texture and repetition. He has released several albums, scored films and live soundtracks. His audio visual pieces include performative installations and an ongoing series of sound films. He has exhibited and performed at The Freud museum, Cafe Oto, Margate and Ramsgate Festivals, Radiophrenia, Klingt Gut, Hackney Wkd, and The Serpentine Gallery amongst others. He also runs the sound and art platform The Thames Submarine.

Mattharding.co.uk

Image by Matt Harding

Audio-Visual Exhibition :

19 August 2023 Saturday Session One : 6pm – 7pm | Session Two : 7pm – 8pm | Session Three : 8pm – 9pm

20 August 2023 Sunday Session Four : 3pm – 4pm | Session Five : 4pm – 5pm | Session Six : 5pm – 6pm

£3 suggested donations to the venue. Please reserve a place through this link: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/automated-audio-visual-installation-tickets-684745410957?aff=oddtdtcreator

What does one do when everything they believe in ceases to exist? This concept album presents the listener with this scenario, explored through ambient and industrial soundscapes, spoken poetry and experimental pop tracks. Automated is a reflection of monotonous life, how Western society is currently programmed to be, with most not questioning their existence. This narrative and lore are conveyed through concepts of cycles, time, the meaning of life and the interpretation of one’s reality, with the perception of its characters and stories. The visual elements are essential to the presentation of this project, but at its heart, you will find the musical material. This audio-visual installation means to create a safe space for free interpretation, instigating thought on these philosophical themes, through its abstract imagery and lingering, sombre symbolism.