Thinking Spaces: The Improvisation Reading Group and Speaker Series
The Improvisation Reading Group and Speaker Series, Thinking Spaces, considers the ways in which improvisation can provide us with new ways of thinking and acting. Throughout the year, this group organizes public talks, workshops, special events, and concerts, as well as reading sessions that may include music, performance, film, academic texts, fiction, etc., based around critical thinking on improvisation. Readings are circulated in advance, and may also include short informal presentations by current IICSI students, artists or community groups.
This group is open to all—community members, faculty, and students. We welcome new participants at any time throughout the year. Please contact us for more information or to be added to our mailing list.
Schedule of Current Events:
The winter 2021 Thinking Spaces series will be online. Attendees will need to register in advance of the event they would like to attend, and will be sent a link to the Zoom Room in the days just before the event.
Friday, February 26, 10AM- 12:30PM, Taiwo Afolabi: Ethical Questioning in Research: Insight from an Applied Theatre Project.
Taiwo Afolabi, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor at the University of Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada. This presentation examines ethical questioning as an inquiry process germane to making ethical choices necessarily for an ethical practice. A moderated Q&A will follow the talk. Please register online at https://uoguel.ph/TaiwoAfolabi.
Friday, March 12, 3-4:30PM, Jessica Bissett Perea: Improvising Indigeneity
Jessica Bissett Perea is an interdisciplinary scholar whose work intersects the larger fields of Native American & Indigenous Studies (NAIS) and Music & Sound Studies. This talk frames improvisation as a practice through which we can better understand the densities and significance of performing Indigeneity in its many forms, including is/as an idea, analytic, and process.
Friday, March 26, 3-4:30PM, Dhruv Jani – Studio Oleomingus: The Concentric Fictions of a Generous History. Hypertext and other annotations to memory
Dhruv Jani is the founder the game & arts studio Oleomingus; where they practice at the intersection of postcolonial writing, speculative architecture, and interactive fiction, and use games to study colonial power structures and the histories that they occlude and how hypertext might be used to pollute a single reductive record of the past or of a people.
See below for an archive of past events.
Thinking Spaces Archive
2020 – 2021
- Feb. 12, 2021, Raven Chacon and Candice Hopkins, “Dispatch”.
- Dec. 18, 2020, Interactive Improvisation in Times of Isolation project, Improvising and Listening
- Dec. 4, 2020, Dong-Won Kim, Time To Plant Seed
- Nov. 20, 2020, Joni NehRita, LOVE + PROTEST
- Nov.6, 2020, Joel Bakan
- Oct. 23, 2020: George Lipsitz, Insubordinate Spaces: Why Improvisation and Accompaniment Matter Now
2019- 2020
Sept 27, 2019: Erin Felepchuk, Ben Finley, David Lane, Brent Rowan, Carey West, and Reza Yazdanpanah, Summer Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation: Showcasing Research & Lessons Learned.
- Oct 9, 2019: Benjamin Mayer-Foulkes – Improvisation as institution: the post-University
- Oct 18, 2019: Dong-Won Kim, The Nature of Improvisation From a Korean Traditional Music Perspective
- Nov. 15, 2019: Drs. Daniel and Irene Oore, Listening and Telling about Listening and Telling
- Nov.22, 2019: Lisa Sandlos, Jashen Edwards and Carey West, Improvising Bodies: Sounding Creative Critical practices in Education
- Nov. 29, 2019: Stacey Bliss, Improvising Through Non-mindful Moments
- Jan. 31, 2020, James Harley, Collaborational Issues Between Improvisers & Composers
- Feb. 26, 2020, James Wood, Plastic Time, Optimistic Criticism
- Mar. 12, 2020, Eric Fillion, Jazz Libre: The Musical-Political Praxis of the Quebec Left
2018-2019
- Oct. 15, 2018 : Yazz Ahmed post-TAN concert talk back
- Oct. 25, 2018 : Jesse Stewart, Improvising Inclusivity: Community Music, Accessibility, and Improvisation
- Nov. 15, 2018 : Edgar Landgraf, Improvisation and Posthumanism: Liberal, Radical, and Methodological Perspectives.
- Nov. 30, 2018 : Dawn Matheson, Dreaming at Land’s End
- Jan. 18, 2019: Night Improvisations: Ben Grossman, Kathryn Ladano, and Reza Yazdanpanah, curated by Ajay Heble, College of Arts 50th Anniversary: A Night at the Museum
- Feb. 7, 2019: Jay Reid and Ajay Heble, Improvisation Across Disciplines : from Theory to Practice
- Feb. 14, 2019: Nathan Mejia, Computer Vision Ambisonics
- Mar. 6, 2019 : Troy Hourie, Mervyn Horgan, and Kim McLeod, Improvisation and Public Space
- March 22, 2019 : Jim Harley, Ayac Village, Northern Uganda: Music and Dance as Community Building and Treatment for Trauma
- April 5, 2019 : Thinking-In-The-Making: A Conversation About Practice-Based Methodologies & Collaborations with IICSI’s 2018-2019 postdoctoral fellows, Dr. Leila Qashu & Dr. Teresa Connors.
2017 – 2018

Kade L. Twist and Collaborators : Priya Shah, Jeji Varghese, Madhur Anand, Cherish Blood, Lacey Hill and Heather Majaury performance at Silence
- November 7, 2017 : Danielle Palardy Roger – workshop
- December 1, 2017 : Musical Improvisation at Land’s End/Coin-du-Banc en folie film screening
- December 1, 2017 : Dr. Michelle Stewart & Dr. Rebecca Caines, Improvenabled: Interdisciplinary Responses to Social Isolation
- December 8, 2017 : Kade Twist, “That’s Just Indians Being Indians”
- March 2, 2018, 2018 Improvisers-in-Residence Jen Reimer & Max Stein
- March 9, 2018 : Dr. Maisie Sum & I Dewa Made Suparta, Balinese Gamelan and Community: Composition, Practice, and Performance
- March 21, 2018 : Hafez Modirzadeh, Musical Compost, Consorts, and Collapsing Pyramids
- April 5, 2018 : Dolleen Tisawii’ashii Manning, Off the Cuff: Mnidoo Infinity Squeezed through Finite Modulations
2016 – 2017
- October 25, 2016 : Guelph Ukulele Club and Dr. Kati Szego, Guelph ON
- February 10, 2017 : Dr. Ellen Waterman, Improvisation and the Audibility of Difference: Safa, Canadian Multiculturalism, and the Politics of Recognition
- March 3, 2017 : Dr. Jeremy Matthew Glick, HAITIAN REVOLUTIONARY OUT-TAKES: BRECHT, FANON, BARAKA/HEGEL.
- March 10, 2017 : Brent Lee : Musical Improvisation within Audiovisual Installations
- April 7, 2017 : Hospitable Offbeats: Jazz Improvisation and the Unconditional Welcome
2015-2016
- Oct 23, 2015, Douglas R. Ewart, Improviser in Residence
- Nov 6, 2015, David Lee, Change of the Century: How Ornette Coleman Transformed Improvised Music
- Nov 20, 2015 : Documentary Film Screening: Amplified Gesture, Directed by Phil Hopkins (2009)
- Jan 29, 2016 : Georgia Simms, Freeing Frameworks: A Movement Improvisation Workshop
- March 4, 2016 : George E. Lewis in Conversation with Harald Kisiedu How do you turn an academic book into an opera?
- March 14, 2016 : Harald Kisiedu: Like a Cry You Wanted to Answer: Ernst-Ludwig Petrowsky and the Emergence of Jazz Experimentalism in East Germany
- April 1, 2016 : Session on Fluxus with Jeannette Hicks, Silence, 46 Essex St.