ABSTRACT
The decades-old phenomenon of derelict and abandoned factories attracting the creative, subcultural, and deviant aspects of the underground scenes is as vibrant as ever within our urban art scenes. In fact, even such dispersed authorities as local councils, national funding agencies, and the EU are diverting funding towards these bustling cultural centres, often justified within a large spectre of cultural policies ranging from arts funding (local sustainability), regeneration (gentrification), and branding (cultural capital and image building). The attraction for the experimental arts towards the hard grind production environments of derelict factories seems obvious. These large spaces represent an attractive array of possibilities for arts-production, often detached from the pressures of commerciality, and with opportunities for building a home for the local underground scene. Performing such spaces is yet another balancing-act-experience, where musicians often encounter a whole new set of expectations, norms, and codes outside the established divisions of musical genre. For improvised music, this has the capacity to fuel new musical outcomes, in particular, as musicians are able to work outside the restrictions often encountered in heavily branded venues like a jazz or a rock club. Subsequently, this chapter will deal with the fusion between improvised music and cultural factories, and critically review how the performers negotiate the performative, cultural, and political aspects of these spaces, ranging from an old (still functional) train station (Stanica) to an abandoned tobacco factory (Tabacka), via a long-closed brewery (Tou Scene) and a Tokyo concrete basement (SuperDeluxe). Here, we provide jazzaerialism with a home, empower site-specificity with musical agency, and spark off exciting forms of improvisational performativity in the process.
