Improvised Melting Improvisations, 2012

The Antenna Auxiliary
2114 St. Claude Avenue
New Orleans, LA
[Galvanized wash basin, wood, metal braces, 3-piece drum kit, paint, plastic tubes, stop valves]

“How might an examination of the distribution of power in improvised expression provide models for social responsibility and action? Improvisation is viewed by many as facilitating direct intervention in political, social, economic and scientific discourses, promoting an awareness of intercultural and transnational discourses, and providing an atmosphere for the acknowledgment and articulation of difference that employ expressive means to challenge totalizing narratives that seek to reify notions of the role of creative expression in society. Building on these kinds of insights enables an examination of the potential for improvisation to aid in imagining new possibilities for interrogating power structures.”
The Condition of Improvisation, George E. Lewis. Columbia University

As part of Antenna’s Auxiliary, Butter on the Sidewalk, ephemeral art show, we were invited to submit projects that dealt with melting, consumerism and hedonism. Improvised Melting Improvisations was intended to explore improvisation as a political tool to incorporate through a system that sometimes seems to have regressed even more into the old ways of power distribution.

The wash basin with ice was placed on top of the wooden structure, as the summer heat melted it into water, people could regulate the nozzles at the end of plastic tubes, and improvise with the dripping beats that fell over the drum kit.

Musical improvisation was what fed into this piece. Personally, was the desire to incur on a musical instrument with some sense of agency but not strict determination that comes out of knowing how to play it. In the end, I intended for the drum kit to have a rattling voice by the melting of ice. Maybe as a way to air discontent, maybe to create a system within a colorful structure where nothing goes as planned. A system, I was able to find out, has a louder voice in the unity and power of the melting stream and most important, in the crucial need to fix leaks where the power of this stream might get lost.

Special Thanks to Case Valadie, Scott Oman, Danielle Paciera and the invaluable help of the people at Mike’s Hardware & Supply in Gentilly.