Negotiated Moments

The contributors to Negotiated Moments explore how subjectivity is formed and expressed through musical improvisation, tracing the ways the transmission and reception of sound occur within and between bodies in real and virtual time and across memory, history, and space. They place the gendered, sexed, raced, classed, disabled, and technologized body at the center of critical improvisation studies and move beyond the field's tendency toward celebrating improvisation's utopian and democratic ideals by highlighting the improvisation of marginalized subjects. Rejecting a singular theory of improvisational agency, the contributors show how improvisation helps people gain hard-won and highly contingent agency. Essays include analyses of the role of the body and technology in performance, improvisation's ability to disrupt power relations, Pauline Oliveros's ideas about listening, flautist Nicole Mitchell's compositions based on Octavia Butler's science fiction, and an interview with Judith Butler about the relationship between her work and improvisation. The contributors' close attention to improvisation provides a touchstone for examining subjectivities and offers ways to hear the full spectrum of ideas that sound out from and resonate within and across bodies.
Contributors. George Blake, David Borgo, Judith Butler, Rebecca Caines, Louise Campbell, Illa Carrillo Rodriguez, Berenice Corti, Andrew Raffo Dewar, Nina Eidsheim, Tomie Hahn, Jaclyn Heyen, Christine Sun Kim, Catherine Lee, Andra McCartney, Tracy McMullen, Kevin McNeilly, Leaf Miller, Jovana Milovic, Francois Mouillot, Pauline Oliveros, Jason Robinson, Neil Rolnick, Simon Rose, Gillian Siddall, Julie Dawn Smith, Jesse Stewart, Clara Tomaz, Sherrie Tucker, Lindsay Vogt, Zachary Wallmark, Ellen Waterman, David Whalen, Pete Williams, Deborah Wong, Mandy-Suzanne Wong

“" Negotiated Moments is a timely and exciting multidisciplinary collection that is not only essential reading for critical improvisation studies specialists, but is valuable for scholars and students in ethnomusicology, performance studies, sound and popular music studies, and media studies. I know of no other place to turn in the existing literature on improvisation to find the range of perspectives offered here." ”

"Collective insights touch on a number of themes that cut to the core of critical improvisation studies. . . . The editors of Negotiated Moments have assembled an impressive and diverse array of studies." - Joel V. Hunt (Notes) "A timely and relevant collection guiding the way for a radically inclusive approach to critical studies of improvisation. . . . One of the outstanding intellectual contributions of this book lies in its presentation of so many viable alternatives to prevailing dominant views about improvised music focused on individual genius and legitimacy of lineage." - Miki Kaneda (Journal of the Society for American Music)

Gillian Siddall is Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities at Lakehead University.  Ellen Waterman is Professor of Music at Memorial University of Newfoundland and the coeditor of Art of Immersive Soundscapes. 

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