Process of improvisation: performance and situated action, from social sciences to artistic practices

This transdisciplinary research project aims to elaborate a critical and collaborative reflexion, between social sciences and artistic practices (i.e. visual arts, performance arts, music and film) upon the function of improvisation, as a theoretical model and a creative process, related to situated action and performance. Based on recent researches in social sciences around improvisation through different modes of actions (conversations, urgency situations, etc.), the stakes is to understand how artistic models inform social theories and render legible their interpretative process. At the same time, the ambition of this research project is to demonstrate that these same models are at the core of artistic practices and can shade a new light on the creative process. During the first year, the research resolves around four workshops-laboratories led by an artist and involving Bachelor students in each art school: Oscar Gomez Mata at the HETSR, Véronique Goël at ECAL, Yan Duyvendak at HEAD and Rudy Decelière at HEMU. During the second year, the workshop-laboratory will be led in common with the four art schools and will take shape through a collaborative research and experimental form, presented to the audience at the end of the project. A colloquium in May 2015 and a special issue of the anthropological magazine Gradhiva will conclude this research project.

Main applicant
Manufacture - HETSR, Frédéric Plazy, with Serge Margel and Claire de Ribaupierre

Co-applicants
Ecole cantonale d’art de Lausanne
 (ECAL), François Bovier
Haute Ecole d’Art et de Design - Genève (HEAD-GE), Christophe KihZ
Haute Ecole de Musique (HEMU), Angelika Güsewell with Bastien Gallet

Period
From September 2013 to September 2015

Funded by the Swiss National Fund (SNF)