Improv Notes: December 2011
 IMprov Notes: News of the Moment December 2011 Workshop Recap: Making the Changes
 On December 2, 2011, the ICASP symposium “Making the Changes: Ethics and the Improvising Business” brought together leaders in the fields of cultural studies, management, ethnomusicology, business ethics, and music performance to address issues that emerge from the intersection of improvisation and business management. As the afternoon progressed, the presenters considered the symposium theme from a rich variety of perspectives. Keynote speaker R. Keith Sawyer, Professor of Education and Psychology at Washington University in St. Louis, participated in a plenary interview with ICASP Postdoctoral Research Fellow Mark Laver, discussing ways in which Sawyer’s work on an improvisatory approach to business management might also offer ways to break down the racialized and gendered power hierarchies that pervade in conventional management models. Alan Convery, National Manager of Community Relations at TD Bank, talked about his work with community arts organizations and other not-for-profits. He also described some the ways in which Canada’s largest bank has attempted to incorporate elements of improvisatory management structure, both by engaging local communities, and by attempting to make its own employees vocal participants in the bank’s corporate and charitable initiatives. Chris MacDonald, Visiting Scholar at the Clarkson Centre for Business Ethics and Board Effectiveness at the Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto, and Professor of Philosophy at St. Mary's University, explored how a corporation’s response to a crisis – such as emergent political turmoil, a plane crash, or hurricane – demonstrates the improvisatory essence of business ethics. Faced with an unexpected disaster, corporate stakeholders and spokespeople must quickly improvise an ethical response, relying simultaneously on extant structures (such as a statement of ethics or code of ethical conduct), and their own spontaneous reading of the situation. Improvisers Ken Aldcroft, Scott Thomson, and Pete Johnston collaboratively presented a challenging, impassioned, and polemical account of the politics and ethics of improvised music, reminding us that capitalist business practices of all stripes – especially those associated with real estate development and the financial sectors – have often had a deleterious impact on both the sites and the practices of avant-garde and subaltern cultural and artistic production. Moreover, they insisted that avant-garde improvised music is almost always necessarily anti-capitalist, standing as a musical critique of the capitalist ideologies of endlessly expanding production and profit. The final speaker of the afternoon was Nancy J. Adler, S. Bronfman Chair in Management at the Desautels Faculty of Management, McGill University. Dr. Adler’s talk “Leading Beautifully: The Serendipity Suite” sought to bridge the urgent political critique of improvised music and the comparatively conservative pragmatism of much business management scholarship. Adler argued that corporate and global leaders need to adopt a kind of artistic reflectivity in their lives and work, taking time out to let their minds dwell in possibility instead of being anchored in pragmatism. In particular, she urged leaders to reevaluate their corporate goals, considering not only how their actions are benefiting their shareholders, but also how they are helping to make the world a better – and more beautiful – place. Every presentation generated stimulating – if occasionally contentious – conversation. While there were a number of points of debate, most circled around differing views on capitalism and the free market. In essence, presenters and audience members were left wondering whether the free market should be considered as an economic fact of life in capitalist society, or as a set of discourses and ideologies to be critiqued and deconstructed. This fundamental question lies at the heart of many of the other questions that emerged over the course of the day:
Special thanks must go to the co-sponsors of the symposium – the College of Management and Economics, the Department of Philosophy, and the Macdonald Stewart Art Centre at the University of Guelph, and Social Innovation Generation at the University of Waterloo – as well as to the graduate student moderators – Rita Hansen Sterne from CME, and David Lee, Nicholas Loess, and Paul Watkins, from the School of English and Theatre Studies. Recap by ICASP Postdoctoral Fellow Mark Laver Oral Histories: In January 2012 ICASP will be launching a new section of our website dedicated to the Oral Histories of Improvising Artists. Oral Histories is a showcase of interviews, performances, and articles by and about improvising musicians, artists, writers and scholars. This new monthly feature, published on ICASP’s website www.improvcommunity.ca, will offer an intimate look inside the minds and practices of some of the many dynamic, innovative people whose energy and ideas make Improvisation Studies such a vibrant field of inquiry. Over the coming year, witness conversations with musicians including Dave Clark, Tanya Tagaq, William Parker and Amiri Baraka, writer Cecil Foster, and scholars from fields as diverse as legal studies and musicology. The conversations and musical performances of this diverse group, drawn from ICASP’s online Research Collection in Improvisation Studies, are sure to inspire and to enlighten. They are also fun in their own right. Quote of the Month:
If gender is a kind of a doing, an incessant activity performed, in part, without one’s knowing and without one’s willing, it is not for that reason automatic or mechanical. On the contrary, it is a practice of improvisation within a sense of constraint.
– Judith Butler, Undoing Gender
Improv Notes was initially distributed in 2008 as a quarterly newsletter. The ICASP team is happy to announce that the newsletter is back in action and will be distributed once a month. If you have anything improvisation related that you would like to have included in the newsletter, please send an email to: icaspweb@uoguelph.ca
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This Month's Featured Artist:
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Judith Butler is an American post-structuralist philosopher, who has immensely contributed to the fields of feminism, queer theory, and ethics. She is a professor in the Rhetoric and Comparative Literature departments at Berkeley.
