Abstract In this presentation I introduce my PhD project A Vuoto, which reconsiders musical improvisation through the lens of non-dual philosophies developed outside the Western canon. As a double bass player and improviser, I explore presence and gesture beyond functional logics, questioning interpretations of embodiment that emphasise the body as the site of artistic production.
First, I outline how non-dual philosophies such as Advaita Vedānta and Taoism make it possible to question distinctions between subject and object, performer and instrument, approaching music as an ontological experience rather than an act centred on an individual agent. In this framework, non-dual thought offers a counterpoint to dominant Western approaches to corporeality and experience, opening space for ways of knowing that tend to remain overlooked.
I then explore the concept of inoperativity, as conceived by Giorgio Agamben, as a practical and epistemic principle grounded in the suspension of productive function. Through the practice of “suonare a vuoto” — literally “playing into the void”, an Italian expression denoting an action deliberately without a direct result — the body is withdrawn from the role of producing sound and allowed to appear in its potentiality and availability to what happens.
Finally, I focus on gesture as the site where theory and practice converge. I analyse liminal zones emerging in two performative contexts: Muta, for three double basses and two performers, where awkward configurations foreground bodies beyond instrumental efficiency; and a practice of conducted improvisation, in which gesture does not directly govern sound but suspends will, activating unpredictable relations between bodies, instruments, and listening.
In this way, gesture and inoperativity do not simply negate production, but shift attention toward forms of improvisation that resist complete reduction to functionality, opening space for fragile, often ineffable modes of experience.