Cadavre Exquis - Part Two: “Improvise”

The chain reaction continues…

Theatre 1308 presents Cadavre Exquis, a cross-disciplinary arts series curated by composer and violinist Jeremy Gignoux. Inspired by the surrealist collaborative game “exquisite corpse,” this series unfolds as a process of sequential response—each artist engaging only with the work immediately preceding their own. Music gives rise to visual art, visual art gives rise to music, and the cycle evolves.

Across three events, artists and musicians build upon one another’s creations, forming an unfolding dialogue across disciplines. What began as a single, anonymous musical “seed” now moves into its next transformation.

What Happens in Part II – Improvise

This second event responds directly to the recorded performance from Part I.

6:30pm – Exhibition: Visual artists Doro Buch, Jared Tailfeathers, and Simon Aitchison present new works created in response to the music generated during the first Cadavre Exquis concert.

7:30pm – Performance: An ensemble led by Jairus Sherif performs an improvised response to these artworks. This performance will be recorded and become the creative catalyst for the final chapter of Cadavre Exquis.

 

Featured Visual Artists

Simon Aitchison is a visual artist based in Calgary Alberta, inspired by metaphysics, nature, music and dream-like states. His artistic practice is centered on a lifelong passion for oil painting, a medium he has explored since 1998. Simon was active in Calgary’s art scene throughout the 2000s, as a member of artist collectives and societies, and co-founder of the Vanishing Point Art Gallery (2005 – 2007). During this time, his work was also featured in the Alberta Foundation for the Arts (AFA) Travelling Exhibition program (TREX) Mainly Masks, which toured the province’s southwest region for three years. Throughout his career, he has remained committed to the community, participating in local exhibitions and donating works to charitable fundraisers. After a twelve-year semi-hiatus dedicated to family and career, he returned to the easel in 2022 with renewed focus. His current body of work, the Stone Series, marks a return to his roots in oil painting. Highly inspired to paint from and unknown source within, the paintings produced are reflections of deep introspection and contemplative thoughts combined with the action of painting. Simon’s current work is best described as Abstract Expressionism, Abstract Realism and Surrealism. Today, he works from his studio at Artpoint Gallery and Studios Society, balancing his entrepreneurial life with his creative drive, he currently exhibits locally and opens his studio for annual events such as East Side Studio Crawl. “Art – Live, Love, Explore, Think, Create”

https://simonaitchison.com

Doro Buch is a visual artist working with oil painting, animation, projection, and sound. Her work understands the body as a resonant space, where external influences meet inner experience and set things in motion.

This perspective connects to her background in the social sciences and her curiosity about the relationship between inner and outer worlds. She is interested in how social frameworks, shared spaces, and cultural contexts enter personal experience, and how this exchange becomes visible through perception, emotion, and movement. The body becomes the place where these encounters unfold — where outer conditions and inner states meet, respond, and shift.

In her work, form bends toward meaning. Line, contour, colour, and composition follow the theme. Fragmentation is part of this process, allowing essential aspects to come into focus while the unnecessary recedes. Abstraction is the method that enables this and, beyond that, allows simultaneity: different moments in time, reactions, and emotional states can exist side by side, held together rather than resolved.

https://www.dorobuch.com

Jared Tailfeathers is a multidisciplinary artist, musician, author, curator and inventor. A broad variety of work that heavily focuses on narrative, community engagement, blending media, genre, high-concepts, public art, design, and public discussions. Much of his work deals with Blackfoot and Indigenous Treaty 7 Art, history, site protection and acknowledgement, Traditional Methods of Making and cultural sustainability.

https://www.tailfeathersart.com/

Featured Musicians

Jairus Sharif is a Black-Canadian multi-instrumentalist, composer and sound artist based in Calgary, AB, Treaty 7 land. His work combines spontaneous composition, sound collage, and free improvisation to create a liberation technology used for self-understanding, freedom of expression, and collective healing. Sharing a truthful message though the free exploration of music is important to Sharif, and blurring his own understanding of immediate reflection, ecstatic improvisation and tranquil focus is at the centre of his current creative work.

Operating the studio as an instrument, his recordings apply improvisation to assist in forging connections between ecstatic jazz, folk traditions, ambient, drone, dub, and noise. Primarily composing, performing, and recording all of the elements found in his music, Sharif has generated 3 full-length albums, numerous self-released projects, EPs and collaborations, and his 2022 album Water & Tools was long-listed for the Polaris Prize.

Involving extended techniques in instrumental improvisation, live-looping and sampling, combined with an evolving collection of electronics, traditional, and non-traditional instrumentation, his live performances offer a glimpse into an ongoing hermetic journey. Sharif has toured his solo and small group projects internationally, and his work has been presented at Canadian establishments such as Western Front, The Music Gallery, and Massey Hall. In recent years he has shared stages with The Sun Ra Arkestra, Farida Amadou and Still House Plants, and perfomed at festivals across Canada including Suoni Per Il Popollo, send.recieve, Pique, Everyseeker, Calgary Folk Music Festival and Active/Passive.

https://q4db.org/