ABSTRACT
The chapter explores the importance of affectivity in the improvised practices of artistic performance and argues that analysing specific and special kinds of improvisational practices might contribute valuable insights to philosophical argumentations. The analysis focuses on the case of dancer and choreographer Kitt Johnson’s artistic concept and work Mellemrum, in which audiences are guided through selected places in their native cities while being invited to attend several minor site-specific performances. The analysis highlights how artistic improvisational expertise can be rooted in and connected to the improvisation, characterising everyday activities of places and communities. Drawing on contemporary phenomenological discussions, the analysis indicates how affectivity can be attentively used by the artist when attuning herself to other people’s lives and how the beholder-beheld relation is to be established throughout the performance event. The artists thereby not only improvise affectively while engaging in the improvisation taking place in everyday life of people and places, they also improvise in relation to how affective impact comes about.
