Tying a shoelace as a belt. Starting a fire on a desert island using your glasses. Drawing without your hands. What happens when we are limited? Maybe we’ve encountered a terrible unforeseen obstacle, or maybe we’ve just locked ourselves in a room with pen and paper to force ideas; but improvising is something we all have to do all the time. We might not realise it, but we are constantly inventing genius ways of bending the rules to their limit, avoiding convention and celebrating inconvenience. My project is all about the magic that occurs in the everyday examples of improvisation, beyond the professional jazz musicians and stand up comedians and into the subconscious, involuntary displays of creativity in the most mundane moments. How do we react in situations with no time to deliberate? And how does a lack of premonition actually benefit our creativity?
For my final piece, I have made a film depicting how improvisation can range from the most basic survival instinct to a purposeful explosion of creative emotion. I prioritised the essence of improv in my process, approaching the film in a multimedia format and allowing my image making to be dictated by what felt right to me in the moment.
… Like Nobody’s Watching