IN·​FLO·R​ES·​CENCE

Dear friends,

Music has been central to a number of conversations during lockdown. But for some, like Filmmaker Producer Reece Ewing, it became a catalyst for something else. Namely, a larger enquiry into what it takes to generate jazz as an art form in isolation, or better say, what it means to produce within the limits of a media and the chances we are offered to exceed those limits. From those initial thoughts and commissions, and a collaboration with ingenious Assistant Curator Katherine Finerty, comes IN·​FLO·R​ES·C​ENCE – The Showroom’s first project conceived as a digital platform, which in centring jazz in an art space – or a more fluid version of it, aims to offer more pathways for a practice that already yields different worlds and narratives. 

For The Showroom, considering music as an art object is hardly new. In its more than 35 years of history, this organisation has galvanised audiences around sound and music as part of its commitment to foster collaboration, criticality, and community in the production of unconventional art and discourse.

This interdisciplinary project sits within that context, resonating across creative fields and geographic borders, bringing together art, sound, agency, and social justice. It advocates for music’s and technology's power to expand their remit as storytellers. What is the imaginative and technical state when one aims to create a piece of jazz? By exploring this question, IN·​FLO·R​ES·C​ENCE addresses the capacity of music as a source of poetic knowledge, but also the possibility of merging it with different fields of practice.

I would like to thank both Reece and Katherine for their extraordinary energy and rigour, their bravery and imaginative thinking; the composers for allowing us to thrive through their music and all the other aspects that make every composition possible; Elio Villafranca for opening his creative process to these ten magnificent universes; and all the collaborators, for allowing us to transcend the possibilities of each of their media, in formulating what we know will be unexpected encounters, compositions, and a set of fantastic conversations.

We welcome you to listen, embrace the pauses, detain yourselves in the silences, and engage with tempos and crescendos. We welcome you to be transported, to be sent.

Warmly,

E

Elvira Dyangani Ose
Director, The Showroom