When
Friday, 19 June, 2009 - Saturday, 20 June, 2009, 09:00 – 16:00
Where
Sala Rossa, Montreal.
Contact
Please address all inquiries to Poku Adusei
Schedule
Download the latest conference schedule.
Abstracts
Paper abstracts
About the Conference
Keynote speakers: Professor Ingrid Monson, Quincy Jones Professor of African American Music, Harvard University; Professor Desmond Manderson, Canada Research Chair in Law & Discourse, McGill University Faculty of Law; John Oswald (Plunderphonics); and Nicole Mitchell, President AACM.
Improvisation is an important art form and an artistic and cultural phenomenon; a manner of speaking, a way of being, and a realm of experience. For theorists improvisation as practice and as idea raise questions not just about how law comes to describe, judge, and regulate improvisation, but the converse: how improvisation might describe, judge, and regulate the law. What does or should law tell us about improvisation? What does or should improvisation tell us about law?
For intellectual property, ars non scripta is a challenge and confrontation to legal orthodoxy. Does the alternative paradigm of sharing provide a better set of governance options in the creative realm? What other models might serve the purpose of respecting the art in and of improvisation better?
For legal theory, lex non scripta is likewise a challenge and confrontation to orthodoxy. Perhaps all art is improvised. Perhaps all law. Or perhaps we have lost the description of something that we once knew: the relationship between meaning and silence, prescription and invention: justice and law.
Improvisational art practices are also deeply inculcated in assorted social constructions that one might think a just and civil society should protect and encourage. Do we have a right to improvise, and might we improve our rights? Can improvisation be seen as an ambex within which new forms and relations of social justice might be modeled?
The Conference will be hosted under the auspices of the Improvisation, Community and Social Practice, a Major Collaborative Research Initiative (www.improvcommunity.ca), and is supported by the Suoni de Popolo Music Festival, the McGill Centre for Intellectual Property Policy (www.cipp.mcgill.ca) and the Faculty of Law at McGill.
The conference will include a number of performances and other events, and it promises to be rich and interesting.
Accommodations
We have reserved a number of rooms at New Residence Hall, which belongs to McGill. New residence Hall is a 20-30 minute walk from the conference venue and is easily accessible by public transportation. The room reservation is not open forever, so confirm your participation.
Getting to and from Montreal
In addition to travel by air, you can get to montreal via Greyhound from NYC and Boston, as well as from Canadian cities.
VIA Rail also services most destinations often in tandem with Amtrak
Getting to and from the Airport/Bus Station/Train Station
From Pierre Elliot Trudeau International Airport

• Taxi ($38 one way) or limousine transportation
• L’Aerobus, which transports travellers to and from Montreal’s Pierre Elliot Trudeau International Airport ($15 one way, runs every half hour)
• Montreal’s public transportation system, the STM