Improvisation jamming, under the COVID cloud

This film explores the relationship between the free expression of improvised drawing and the intertwined practice of movement and music in what we frame as ‘creative jamming’. The film tracks the journey from studio-based improvisation jamming to on-line practice imposed by the onset of the 2020 pandemic which forced remote working and collaboration. Our sites of encounter shifted from performance spaces to our home environments, where multiple spaces were simultaneously connected using technology. Through the practice we discovered that bodies, objects, materials and movement could be shared, replicated, recycled and mirrored back to us. The film observes how the pandemic opened new spaces for play, imagination and world building; the adaption of practice from live to digital performance breeds both difference and familiarity. No longer inhabiting the same physical space, this new environment, created and framed by the lens of the laptop and phone camera, holds the practice somewhere between different houses creating a catalyst for new observations and inquiry. The film demonstrates that the gap created by the COVID-19 lockdown bought with it new creative elements including using the technology as a mode of enquiry, rather than merely a form of recording the performance.