ABSTRACT
Misha Mengelberg always had a taste for cultivating situations of disagreement, annoyance, and anger. His duo performances with Han Bennink, where the two musicians were frequently playing against each other as much as with each other, are exemplary of this aesthetic. This chapter describes how this aesthetic continues to inform the practice of the ICP Orchestra today, and embeds this in a discussion of theories of improvised musical performance as a form of social interaction. Such theories often highlight the collaboration and sociability presumably involved in improvised music, but the practice of the ICP shows that this need not be the only way to consider the sociality of music-making, instead pointing to the importance of resistance and antagonism. Drawing on recent discussions of “relational aesthetics” as well as theories on the resistance of material objects to human behaviour, it argues that resistance is an important aspect of creative work. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the importance of humour in ICP performances, and suggests that the concept of humour might point towards the importance of materiality and resistance in improvised music more generally.
