Symposium Session 2

Abstracts

Rachel Austin – Feeding Uncertainty and Finding Community in rural Southern USA

It is possible to perform a new way of being within community?

Rachel Austin talks about her social engaged performance work, Feeding Uncertainty, a potluck series she has been moving in the rural South of the US. By presenting nonaligned and unrelated talking points to gathered potluck attendees and pointing to the idea that we don’t have to agree, she created a salon atmosphere that is much lacking throughout the currently polarized country. In this talk, she proposes that it is essential to curate spaces that create new ways of “responding to the crisis” (Báyò Akómoláfé) and offer folks a way into ritual that isn’t based on shared belief systems (Byung-Chul Han), except the belief that no single one of us has all of the answers. By allowing attendees to improvise and co-create ritual, a new way forward can emerge.

Emiddio Vasquez – Can the Subaltern even Listen?

Building upon the performance proposal and my PhD work in which I explain the themes that my work grapples with, I would like to further develop those sonic ideas theoretically by cross-reading three key texts:

Thomas Nagel’s essay ‘What is it like to be a Bat?’ to illustrate the irreducible “character of subjective experience” and its pertinence to current discourses around AI and creativity,

ii) Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s essay ‘Can a Subaltern Speak?’ by turning the attention towards listening and asking, whether the subaltern is able to even hear, and

iii) Michael Taussig’s book Mimesis and Alterity, as a way of working through the problem of mimesis and Othering, especially in sound practices and their mimetic machines.

Given that synthesizers from their beginning are embedded with a mimetic property, but also the hegemonic influence of music cultures by those controlling both the production and transmission of music, I would like to argue that one way to overcome these dead-ends is precisely through improvisation practices coupled by custom instruments that resist mimesis like the ones found in early synthesizers. For this I will reflect on my improvisation practice and in particular the development of instruments using modal synthesis.

Mervyn Horgan – Dwelling Differently: Improvisatory Infrastructures in Public Space and Everyday Life

This presentation begins from the premise that extending ideas and practices from improvisation in music into the realm of everyday urban life holds promise in addressing contemporary social crises, in particular the twin crises of social isolation and polarization. Taking a cue from the multiple ways that scholars in critical studies in improvisation centre chance, spontaneity, the here and now, and the use of whatever resources—material or otherwise—are close to hand, this presentation treats everyday collective life in public space as a form of collaborative improvisation.

Drawing on a range of recent public space ethnographies (from city parks, skate parks, dog parks, ice rinks, sidewalks), this presentation develops and advances two concepts: affordances of improvisation and improvisatory infrastructures. Focusing on public space as space shared by strangers, these concepts direct attention to how the everyday life of public space is threaded through with practices of improvisation. Despite the rise of digital technologies, physical copresence—people sharing time and space—remains central to human well-being, whether for the deepening of social relationships, initiating new social ties or, as is especially the case in urban public spaces, simply being together with unknown others. Thinking through everyday urban life as improvisation may help us find pathways to address contemporary crisis and to dwell differently.

Margomool with Saskia Horton – Improvising Survival: how can communal vocalising sustain trans+ lives?

It’s sad to say that offering trans+ people space to make sound is a radical act. Yet across the world, an ever-increasingly hostile environment is emerging for trans and gender nonconforming folks (gnc). One which seeks to erase us. One which seeks to silence us.

Within this presentation, we will explore how group vocal improv offers avenues towards survival for trans+ people. The audience will be offered perspectives on communal singing through a neurophysiological and social lens. On an individual level, we will speak to the capacity of vocal improv as a tool for cultivating nervous system regulation and proprioception, which is especially supportive for trans+ people who are often moving through challenging body responses. In group contexts, we will discuss how communal embodied vocalising gives us a space to witness each other in our emotions, creating greater capacity for co-regulation as well as a temporary safety that sustains trans+ folks in the outside world.

Vocalist & facilitator, margomool of Trans Chorus, will present two strands of their research. The first is Embodied Voice – a project conducted through QUEERCIRCLE’s Queer Creative Health programme. The research culminated in a podcast series which gathered audio and interviews from the Queering The Voice course – a workshop series for queer and trans+ adults based in London led by diverse trans+ vocal practitioners. The primary question of the research asked how can embodied vocalising can generate resilience and body autonomy within queer and trans+ folks? The podcast will be released in October 2025. The second research strand margo will draw from is Generative – Trans Chorus’ current year-long residency at Staffordshire St, London. Generative is co-produced somatic research project by and for trans+ disabled folks, asking how we can overcome disabling systemic barriers through creative intracommunal innovation? Trans Chorus is hosting monthly workshops using singing, movement, improvisation and rhythm as the primary tools for exploration. The aim of the research is to co-produce a toolkit of accessible embodied exercises that trans+ disabled folks can tap into that support our thriving, finding embodied paths to creativity and improvisation which are generative for our bodies.

Please note that the presentation will have themes of transphobia and ableism, and how systems of oppression cause mental health issues that can lead to suicidal ideations.

Delivered in collaboration with IF 2026, with support from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada