Episode 4: Freedom is a Constant Struggle
Do art forms like black radical poetry, free jazz and improvisation create a space for the performance of freedom? Did they ever? And can they still do so now?
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Do art forms like black radical poetry, free jazz and improvisation create a space for the performance of freedom? Did they ever? And can they still do so now?
Originally billed as a duo of Ingar Zach and Derek Bailey, John Butcher stood in for Bailey at the last minute.
TEST is a collective creative improvising quartet based out of the NYC Underground (figuratively and literally). Their street-hardened, spatial Jazz is riotous and intense: is also makes us think about collective organization, and different ideas of responsibility and liberty.
Edinburgh. Beer and smoke befuddled drone/ deadly efforts by Pjorn72 kingpin.
Ken presents his Nervous Magic Lantern, wherein film itself is forsaken for an investigation of hypnotic and trancelike crystaline forms. Eric La Casa works with recordings of everyday occurrences: the background hum of place.
A performance for dry ice and four specially constructed steel tables, each one heated by a single candle until searingly hot.
A series of events organised by the Vogue’ology collective from the House Ballroom community in New York grounded in the scenes history of autonomous, self-organised struggle and a shared investment in collective art practices and how those intersect with the multiple and often divergent struggles for freedom.
Three speakers play back pre-recorded sounds, Marc listens and responds: “What is played is the imperfect witness of what I listen to (or maybe better, how I listen).”
How do we sense entanglement? Can the knotting of ropes according to a poem’s rhythm make the social pulse of language matter?
Long Stringed Instrument performance involving up to 100 wires strung in tension over a 40m arch.
Cardboard boxes, metal guitar, critical homage, attempts to describe things you can’t describe. A one-man Grand Guignol school play.
Ellis’s processional, precessional cessation and continuation of movement and music comes to us via his forthcoming release Aster of Ceremonies (Milkweed Editions, 2023)