Rose Butler presents at Improvising Care Conference – McGill/Montreal, October 5–9 2024
Improvising Care, McGill University, Montreal, Canada, 5-9th October as part of Flux experimental music festival, Arts in the Margins, Montreal.
“In a democratic society art should be the location where everyone can witness the joy, pleasure, and power that emerges when there is freedom of expression….” bell hooks, “Workers for Artistic freedom”
“Healing can occur . . . when one’s inner experience is made manifest and accepted by others.” Pauline Oliveros, Sonic Meditations
Recent history, from COVID through climate change, massive displacements of people, a worrying increase in various forms of totalitarianism, unjust wars (are there any other kinds?) the rapid rise of neo-liberalism (one can easily multiply this list) has both placed a greater focus on, and need for, care, and at the same time radically reduced the structures from which care often operates. As traditional institutions of care are denuded of resources, and governments implement policies that make care simultaneously more difficult to enact, yet that much more needed, it is fair to say we are facing a crisis of care. How can art and artists implement care in their practices? How should society care for artists, and artists for each other, and how can art itself be a tool for care and how should artists interact with communities in caring ways? Given improvisation’s ability to creatively and imaginatively find ways to modify existing structures, subvert norms and implement new forms of sociality, do we perhaps now more than ever need to improvise new models of care?
Read more on Rose Butler’s website.