Improvisation as a trigger for a logic of the common: a study of hip-hop as a strategy of shared imagination

• Grant number: 25/15357-9
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate
• Start date: September 01, 2025
• End date: August 31, 2028
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Arts - Dance
• Principal Investigator: Christine Greiner
• Grantee: Camilla Millan Coelho de Magalhães
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Comunicação, Letras e Artes. Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo (PUC-SP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Associated research grant: 25/01865-2 - Laboratory of Experiments to Co-Imagine Possible Worlds: Commonism, Anarchic Composting and other Seedings., AP.R

Abstract

The main question of this thesis is to inquire how improvisation can work as a political and collective strategy to form new alliances and affective bonds. The theoretical foundation is based on what Pascal Gielen has called common-ism and the analysis (started in the master's degree) on the Hip-Hop communities in Brazil. The proposal is to identify the emergence of a logic of the common. According to Gielen (2018 and 2023), common-isms are future imaginaries that activate movements for collective action. They draw an orientation, according to which one can move together. Common practices focus primarily on aesthetics as a starting point for shared imagination and collective creativity. In this perspective, the project will inquire how some manifestations of Hip-Hop play a relevant role in the creation of the common, especially when they are thought of as subversive political strategies. Authors such as Katz (2012), Moten (2023), Butler (2019), Nyong'o (2018), Hartman (2021), Rufino (2019) and Greiner (2013, 2017 and 2023) are also part of the theoretical foundation. The methodology will follow the research-creation proposal (Manning, 2017) that seeks to connect theoretical discussions with practices, abandoning the dichotomies between thinking and doing. The corpus will be formed by visual documentations to document experiences focused on common-ism and Hip-Hop. The practice of improvisation, present in several manifestations of African-American vernacular dances (Hip-Hop, Popping, Campbellock, Krump, among others) is often understood as a combination of random movements that, when "fitted" with the music, provide an improvised dance session, without choreography given a priori. However, the hypothesis of this thesis is that improvisation goes far beyond technical procedures, constituting itself as a political practice that engenders common-isms. In other words, it is not just about constituting specific communities, but about activating a common logic to co-imagine and create together. Studying improvisation or improvisation (as it has been called in hip hop) requires, first of all, understanding the performance of the body as an operator of destabilization of norms and paradigms (Greiner, 2013). This mode of action of performativity, which happens collectively and with a focus on the process, is capable of breaking previously established systems, supported by the dichotomy between individual and collective bodies. In this context, improvising is also a strategy to fabulate existences (Nyong'o, 2020), giving visibility to ways of life made invisible by history from the fictional perspective. When studying artistic manifestations linked to a violent process of search for identity and belonging - such as Hip-Hop - it is perceived that there is a constant attempt for the participants to keep moving. Power emerges from the lack - of security, dignified conditions and/or assistance from the State - and in it plural existences are fabled. It is worth noting that the Hip-Hop performed in Brazil is different from what emerged in the United States, with other histories of violence and a context of colonization that to this day can be linked to the fables of specifically Afro-Brazilian manifestations. Researchers such as D'Alva, Oliveira, Postali, and Dias are some of the exponents of Hip-Hop studies in Brazil, exploring its singularities. Likewise, the bibliography proposed by Gielen, in a European context, will be analyzed in the light of Brazilian authors interested in the theme of communities and the common, as is the case of Luiz Rufino (2019), Fabricio Pereira da Silva (2024) and Antonio Bispo dos Santos (2023).