Electric Umbrella #6: Discomfort Dispatch

Electric Umbrella invited Fra Zedde to embed his Discomfort Dispatch format in our improv Electric Umbrella series.

Discomfort Dispatch is a non-profit organisation founded in Bologna in 2017. Thehe name does not belong to a specific group of people and rather refers to an event format that has been realised by a growing community of promoters and musicians all over Italy. As of 2023, 42 small festivals have been organised in 16 towns and 3 countries, involving around 350 improvisers from all over the world. Anyone can imitate us, contribute, and realise an independent edition at any time in any place.

The name “Discomfort Dispatch” is a metaphor for the uneasiness experienced by artists and audiences, a reference to the embarrassment generated by the situations that it creates. By accepting to collaborate with a stranger, every guest experiences an awkwardness in sharing the stage (or the recording). That feeling must be overcome in order to reach a common ground to complete the task for which the artist is invited. Sound is both the purpose and the tool for that task, the means that we use in order to challenge our coexistence and cooperation skills. The territory of sound provides a liminal space in which two performers are invited to communicate with each other and to collaborate in order to speak something to an audience without any pre-agreed constraints of language, music genre, or culture.
Discomfort Dispatch’s aim is first and foremost to open uncommon paths within our creative and listening habits, eventually making great music.

Those happenings have a few simple rules: a group of unrelated single musicians is invited to improvise for 20 minutes in a duo with a fellow-stranger artist. Rehearsing is forbidden, and verbal planning is inappropriate. Discomfort Dispatch mainly involves musicians and is open to any kind of performing artist. Every guest is invited for the sake of their interaction with other guests. Promoting a single project, artist or realisation is not part of the purposes of Discomfort Dispatch. Stimulating and supporting a set of behaviors, tendencies, and practices is the core of its reason to be, regardless of financial convenience and quality of the artistic outcome in commercial terms.

Musicians;
Demetrio Cecchitelli & Kick 2.0880468e+31
Burchhhha & Fra Zedde
Diego Manatrizio & Henrietta Muller
Maciej Domaradzki & Lieuwe Zelle
Rico Gamondi & Leonie Roessler