Militant-Improv

In moments of profound crisis, the limitations of form become impossible to ignore. The act of depiction collapses under the weight of necessity, and the canonical tools used to represent suffering, injustice, or resistance within cultural production reveal their theatrical inadequacy in the face of material urgency.

Creative language, as inherited through dominant institutions, is already disarmed. It has been neutralized through repetition, commodified through circulation, and contained through institutional framing. Even the most violent realities are metabolised into spectacle where suffering becomes content and resistance is theme.

Art, when assimilated into this cycle, becomes soft décor for hard power, a symbolic currency within elite cultural economies, where it is asked to heal, to reconcile, to soothe. But what if healing, within this dynamic, is itself a trap? What if the invitation to “process” trauma is merely a detour, a return to a world that must be refused?

Militant improvisation emerges precisely at this point of refusal, through which it performs an entirely different function. It is tactically operational before it is metaphorical or symbolic, driven first and foremost by urgency: the urgency of the moment (the temporal) and the urgency of clarity (the contextual).

1. Temporal

Art produced within institutional frameworks often fetishizes immortality and manufactures relevance. It is nurtured by the luxury of time, slow reflection, delayed interpretation. It validates itself through processes of curation, contextualization, and critical analysis. It waits for reviews, and participates in cycles of exhibition and critique. By the time it arrives, the world it responds to no longer exists.

Militant improvisation refuses delay. It is born into emergency, through the very womb of crisis. It exists publicly, it is legible and disruptive. It understands that its urgency renders it ephemeral, sometimes by choice, but more often by force: erased by the state, censored by algorithms, or destroyed by counterinsurgency. In response, it improvises itself for immediate impact, with no formal attachments. It emerges not to be considered, but to confront.

2. Contextual

One might not always recognize the categorical form of the improvised on sight, as it is not meant to be measured by institutional metrics. It manifests as gestures that resist authorship, unconcerned with polish or permanence. It is not crafted for legacy, nor intended for the archive.

Militant improvisation does not require philosophical intricacy or theoretical complexity. It must be instantly legible, rejecting interpretive buffers and conceptual padding. It speaks to those already in motion, those without the luxury of time or distance. If it cannot be understood immediately, it has already failed to act.

Crucially, militant improvisation must not be confused with “Radical Art” as defined by galleries or academic discourse. It is not a provocateur in form yet conformist in function. It is not about illustrating slogans or echoing movements from a safe distance. It is not defined by style, and its aesthetics are not a choice.

Rather, militant improvisation is anchored in its refusal to obey institutional logic. It may appear alien, not because it is too abstract, but because it rejects the frameworks that render art palatable and profitable. It is not “art activism” in the liberal tradition, nor a strategic disruption of bourgeois spaces for symbolic effect. Instead it is refusal in motion, forged in struggle and indistinguishable from survival.

Likewise, militant improvisation does not refer to “militant aesthetics,” because insurgency has no aesthetic, and crisis follows no formal logic. It is grounded in non-metaphorical violence, not in shocking the spectator, but in sustaining revolutionary continuity.

Militant improvisation cannot be aestheticised into institutional logic, where “militancy” becomes a strategy performed within the sanctioned violence of the gallery, the biennale, or the grant-funded intervention. In fact, militant improvisation may not resemble art at all, because its goal is not to endure, but to interrupt. It refuses to ask for entry. It appears uninvited, acts, and disappears, knowing that inclusion is not solidarity, but often the final act of neutralisation.