El gran aprendizaje takes its name from Cornelius Cardew’s The Great Learning, composed in the late 1960s and based on the Confucian text of the same name. The project treats free improvisation not only as a musical or artistic practice but as a framework for collective action, where listening, responsiveness, risk, conflict, and negotiation become tools for enacting forms of life in common.
Against a broader backdrop of rising authoritarianism in parts of Latin America, the project develops its first chapter across four cities with significant political histories, social movements, and active free improvisation scenes: Medellín, Bogotá, Mexico City, and Buenos Aires.
The research aims to deepen understanding of improvisatory cultural practices in Latin America, contributing situated regional perspectives to a field of theory and practice – approaching improvisation as a practice of the commons, continuously enacted through listening, negotiation, reciprocity, and shared vulnerability.
Ana Ruiz Valencia is a Colombia-based musician, sound artist, curator, and researcher interested in the social and political dimensions of sound and collaborative music-making.
