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Classical, Concerts, Other genres
Jam session. Video art, jazz and the curatorial impromptu
FZM lecture series "Improvising: Spontaneous creativity in art and everyday life" with Prof. Dr. Yvonne Schweizer
Contributors
Program
Contemporary video art exhibitions are always also technological showcases. In the Black Box, Dolby Surround meets the latest projection technology. The duration of the video loop is precisely measured. No room for improvisation, one might think. However, it can be observed that in some recent works there is an examination of the improvisational cultures of jazz. The lecture discusses this productive contradiction using the work of Stan Douglas, Steve McQueen and others. It draws a line to the exhibition history of video art, when chance and improvisation shaped the curatorial reality. This history of curatorial impromptu is connected to the positions mentioned, just as the filmic jam sessions are reminiscent of the community-building, political moment of jazz.
Prof. Dr. Yvonne Schweizer will be Professor of Art History at the University campus Freiburg from summer semester 2026. She researches and teaches modern and contemporary art, with a focus on questions of media and institutional history.
The lecture is part of the FZM lecture series "Improvising: Spontaneous Creativity in Art and Everyday Life".
In the summer semester of 2026, the Freiburg Research and Teaching Center(FZM) is organizing a lecture series on the topic of improvisation from various specialist perspectives and facets. In addition to ten lectures by members of the FZM and guests, which will take place on Wednesdays in the lecture hall of the University's Musicology Department, events with improvisational-musical performances or cross-genre performances are planned on five Monday evenings at the College of Music, two of which are part of the FZM event series "musik + wissen".
Here you can find the brochure (pdf) (this file is not barrier-free) for the public lecture series with all individual dates.
The Freiburg Research and Teaching Center (FZM) is a joint institution of the College of Music and the University campus Freiburg with the aim of mutual networking in music-related research and teaching.
