The IMPROVISER AS FOREIGNER

A RESPONSE TO JOHN CAGE´S CRITICISM OF IMPROVISATION

Abstract

Improvisation in its purest form demands starting from scratch, which implies a subject without history, experience or habits. As this demand is impossible to satisfy, John Cage and other authors have criticized improvisation for its automatism and because it ends up depending on the subjectivity and tastes of the performer. But assuming the disappearance of the improviser's ego makes improvisation impracticable. That is why it is important to propose a category of open subject, who allows himself to be contaminated by otherness and the uncanny, clinging to the past in an innovative way, who considers each event as unique and unrepeatable. This basic impossibility can only be theoretical if we assume a deconstruction of the categories of subject, time and event. In this way, starting from the ideas of “the uncanny” in Freud, of messianic time in Walter Benjamin, of “otherness” in Derrida and of event in Deleuze, we will be able to think of a subjectivity that makes improvisation possible. This in a double sense: a subjectivity that produces improvisation and, at the same time, that is a product of it.