Beijing Inside-Out Art Museum is pleased to present Improvisation, a group exhibition that considers the importance of improvisation in art and life, from actions and performances of the 1980s and 1990s to practices of today. Improvisation is one of the characteristics of art, a method of artistic practice. It emphasizes the unpreparedness, the uncontrollability, actions prompted by external stimuluses or internal impulses, the coming of the moment, instantly, quickly, using all that is at hand to create. Among the unchanging principles of creativity, improvisation is arguably the most closely associated with creativity. 

Improvisation is a self-generated and spontaneous process, a self-directed and self-reflective process, with deliberate interruptions, disruptions and overflows, containing unsettling and discordant tensions. Improvisation becomes art in large part by setting specific constraints and arranging the process of creativity itself. Just as art requires improvisation to become original, unique, and coherent, improvisation both contains and transcends constraints. This is essentially creative autonomy. The idea of improvisation as the final form of creativity, which means that change itself and the process of creating itself is creativity, is what we can learn from improvisation.

Improvisation is wary of rules, institutions, dogmas, and thoughts that are overly systematic and even ossified, constantly looking for chances to disrupt sequences and connections. Meanwhile, improvisation, as an integral part of the order, enters into a paradoxical and alienated relationship with the existing order, a form of self-imposed exile. Improvisation is a unique expression of the way artists break away from stable structures, a manifestation of their power of subjectivity. In this sense, improvisation contributes to an intrinsic impetus of art and art history.

In 1992, as China’s market economy took off, cultural economy and cultural industry began influencing and regulating the orientation of art and cultural practices. Unprecedented anxiety, depression, and even emptiness occupied the mind of the literary and artistic community. At this time, performance art in the Beijing East Village, which paralleled the rock ‘n’ roll scene in Beijing, was a demonstration of a collective restlessness after a long period of inhibition, and of the awakening of artists’ individual consciousness.