Xenochronic Encounters at the Africa Open Improvising Collective

Abstract

Africa Open Institute’s improvising collective, established in 2020, meets regularly to explore facets of free improvising and publishes  online on Soundcloud and the Internet Archive. This article sketches some of the reverberations that ensued from encounters between this collective and a similar collective in London (AMM All-Stars). Xenochronic practices are briefly described, and noted as they unfolded  in 2023 (from these collectives’ connections). Xenochrony, from ‘strange overlayering’ of tracks, to overlayering of bizarre memories, is extended to consider South Africa’s ‘strange times’ of local ignorance towards improvisatory practitioners classified by monikers of ‘race’  and which music was ‘of worth’. The article unfolds as layered recounting against horizons of international platforms of  questionable fame for local musicians – where author Erasmus reflects on his encounters with Derek Bailey in the 1980s, to find  knowledges that surfaced in 2023 – things he had not been informed of until Ben Watson and Erasmus met online and spoke to one  another for the first time. The article uses the concept of xenochrony (Zappa/Watson) as entry, then proceeds to enact xenochrony – as a  layering of online audio tracks with recent and past memories – thereby considering music outputs as process (Redhead and Hawes  2016). Practice-based research methods of self-reflexivity (Sullivan 2010) and aspects of ‘making’ (Ingold) expose multilayered  methodologies, whilst probing an objective of finding suitable terminology such as ‘social experimental audio’ to aptly describe  contemporary sound art ‘audiospheres’ (López 2020) of the improvising collective.