Iris Colomb, Luna Montenegro and Adrian Fisher introduce their new SLANT event, Spontaneous Combustion, to be livestreamed on the 13th and 14th of June 2021
How can a poem be composed through performance? How can a performance become a poem?
improvisation (n.)
"act of improvising musically," 1786, from French improvisation, from improviser "compose or say extemporaneously" (17c.), from Italian improvisare "to sing or speak extempore," from Latin improviso "unforeseen; not studied or prepared beforehand," ablative of improvisus "not foreseen, unexpected," from assimilated form of in- "not, opposite of" + provisus "foreseen," also "provided," past participle of providere "foresee, provide". From music the sense expanded to a general meaning "do or perform on the spur of the moment."
spontaneous combustion (n.)
the ignition of organic matter without apparent cause, as a result of heat generated by internal chemical action.
The Oxford Handbook of Critical Improvisation Studies: Volume 1
Luna Montenegro & Adrian Fisher
The last event of our SLANT programme follows a period in which we have all had to learn to improvise. The sustained instability and successive shifts of the past year have pushed us to relentlessly react and adapt. Global uncertainty has taught us to work with the unexpected. Our final online showcase, ‘Spontaneous Combustion’, will bring together an incandescent set of improvisers to provoke an explosive release of poetic energy.
We will present a brilliant range of pieces full of immediacy, intensity, and unpredictability; with co-curators montenegrofisher, headliners Anne Waldman and Rhys Trimble, and contributors Amelia Zhou, SubPhonics, Maja Jantar, and Jah-Mir Early. Their performances will involve chance encounters (Waldman) and turbulent materials (Trimble), collaborative presence (montenegrofisher) and collective listening (SubPhonics), associative processes (Zhou), live composition (Early) and vocal transformation (Jantar).
Anne Waldman is in her words, "drawn to the magical efficacies of language as a political act." A cultural agitator and activist, her work is energetic, passionate and panoramic. "Waldman's work is the antithesis of stasis... She's a flame." (Quarterly Conversation). Deeply involved in the second generation of the New American Poetry, she is a highly original "open field investigator" of consciousness, committed to the possibilities of radical shifts of language and states of mind to create new modal structures and montages of attention. From improvising with women in a Mexican prison to performing at poetry venues and festivals across the world. Anne's openness to collaborate with others and embrace the local give her work a radical force that irrupts in social and political dimensions.
Anne Waldman, photo by HR Hegnauer
Rhys Trimble
Rhys Trimble is a performance poeartist, sound maker, book-filler and desecrator, serial manifestist, destructive tester of verse, glitch-lexicographer, saboteur and póesie taxidermist. Through his performances, he builds and unravels spatial environments of textual materials. His readings involve physical eruptions of textual fragments: words spring from his pockets, books cascade into turbulent piles, printed matter gradually floods the stage. Rhys weaves these textual layers into vibrant poetic incantations, swaying between Welsh and English.
Collaboration and improvisation are at the core of montenegrofisher’s (Luna Montenegro & Adrian Fisher) artistic practice. Their poetic, sonic, visual and performative work focuses on ideas of presence, embodiment (of a moment), availability, specificity of a site or a thought, the dis/mis-placement of objects and language as alternative narratives or experiences. Their work celebrates the unexpected, embraces playfulness, interweaves the poetic and the political in a fabric that expands in physical and virtual spaces.
SubPhonics
Amelia Zhou
Writer and movement practitioner Amelia Zhou explores intuitive, experiential, and associative uses of language through works merging movement, voice, text, and objects. She will perform a fragment of ‘CHORA’, a performance piece she has developed through improvisational processes such as embodied listening, writing aloud, experiential repetition and speaking-moving.
SubPhonics is an experimental music and sound art collective. Their collaborative process is playful, investigative, and non-hierarchical. Their community-centred approach involves collective listening as well as text, graphic and video scores. Their Spontaneous Combustion performance will be an effervescent collective dialogue, mixing sonic and linguistic improvisation.
Multidisciplinary, multilingual and polysonic artist and director Maja Jantar works across media and languages to produce mesmerising visual, sound and performance pieces. In her contribution to Spontaneous Combustion, she will channel the transformative power of spring to produce an embodied vocal improvisation through which language combusts into revitalised sound.
Jah-Mir Early
Maja Jantar
Jah-Mir Early is a poet and improv spoken word artist. His practice is rooted in improvisation. His poems are performances and his performances are poems. His pieces emerge in the moment, take shape through speech, and are discovered by author and audience simultaneously. His contribution will be a captivating burst of powerful images, patterns, and unexpected connections.
These practices span a range of exciting approaches to improvisation, both individual and collaborative; combining the chaotic forces of chance with the balance of iterative precision, and the intuitive processes of poetic embodiment. Spontaneous Combustion lends to the idea that improvisation can be a force for social and political change. Whether to collaborate with other bodies, energies, in a spontaneous, non-hierarchical, egalitarian manner, or through its insistence on continually re-organising in a world full of changing complexities.
