INACJA and Improvisation — Where Does the Difference Lie?

INACJA [iˈnat͡s.ja]

Improvisation concerns the relationship between action and a plan. INACJA concerns the relationship between action and the conscious controller.

The distinction is subtle, but fundamental to understanding Orapizm.

Improvisation does not mean the absence of control

In improvisation, the future course of action remains open. An artist or musician does not need to know exactly what they will do a few seconds from now. Decisions are made in the course of creating, in response to what has just emerged.

This does not mean, however, that conscious self-monitoring disappears.

An improvising artist may continuously evaluate: keep or change, continue or stop, intensify or soften. The absence of a predetermined plan can therefore coexist with a very high degree of conscious control over the unfolding action.

Research on musical improvisation likewise suggests that spontaneous creation is not simply the opposite of control. In a study by Charles J. Limb and Allen R. Braun, professional jazz pianists improvising during fMRI showed characteristic changes in the organization of prefrontal activity together with broad engagement of sensorimotor regions. The authors related this pattern, among other things, to changes in processes associated with self-monitoring and conscious regulation of ongoing performance.

Charles J. Limb, Allen R. Braun, Neural Substrates of Spontaneous Musical Performance: An fMRI Study of Jazz Improvisation, PLOS ONE, 2008. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0001679.

This study does not describe INACJA. It does, however, illuminate something important for understanding it: highly skilled creative action can alter the relationship between spontaneous generation, conscious self-monitoring, and sensorimotor organization.

What, then, is INACJA?

Within Orapizm, INACJA refers to an alert, pre-narrative event of action in which the artist no longer directs each successive gesture from the position of a separate, explicitly commenting controller.

This does not mean losing awareness or motor control. The body continues to regulate balance and tension. The eye still sees. The hand responds. The tool encounters the resistance of matter. Years of acquired experience remain present in the way the action unfolds.

What changes is something more subtle:

the conscious “I” no longer needs to approve each successive gesture before it happens.

A gesture may arise before it is consciously named, evaluated, or narratively justified.

INACJA therefore does not mean chaos or randomness. On the contrary, action may remain highly precise, even though it is no longer being guided by a continuous sequence of explicit instructions issued by the conscious controller.

Intention remains

This is another essential distinction.

Orapizm does not begin from the premise of having no intention. Konopka begins a painting with Intention — there may be a concept, a sketch, a composition, a figure, or a direction.

Intention establishes the beginning.

It is not, however, guaranteed authority over the entire further development of the work.

At a certain point, what is actually present before the artist — the paint, its resistance, the thickness of a layer, the edge of the palette knife, an existing mark, the position of the body, the space of the canvas — may begin to organize the next gesture more strongly than the earlier image of what “should” happen.

It is here that the possibility of INACJA emerges.

Not as an abandonment of Intention, but as the relinquishing of its exclusivity.

Body — tool — matter

In consciously controlled action, the relation can easily be described as linear:

I intend → I make a gesture → a mark appears.

In INACJA, the relation becomes a feedback loop:

body → tool → matter → mark → perception → next movement.

Each element modifies what follows.

The palette knife is no longer merely a passive executor of a decision already made. Its angle, pressure, the resistance of the paint, and its contact with the surface all participate in shaping the movement. The mark that appears immediately becomes new information for the body and for the gesture that follows.

The experience of “becoming the end of the tool” does not need to be understood metaphysically. Research on tool use shows that, through practice, a tool can become functionally incorporated into the organization of perception and action: the representation of reachable space may change, and the functional tip of a tool can become a particularly relevant point around which attention and movement are organized.

In the language of Orapizm, this can be expressed simply:

the artist does not have to guide the tool solely through conscious instructions. The artist can act through it.

Where, then, does the boundary lie?

It can be expressed in two sentences:

Improvisation concerns the relationship between action and a plan.

INACJA concerns the relationship between action and the conscious controller.

In improvisation, the question is:

“Do I know in advance what I am going to do?”

In INACJA, the question is:

“Do I need to consciously decide each successive gesture for the action to remain organized?”

Improvisation and INACJA may therefore meet, but they are not synonymous.

One can improvise while remaining in an intense dialogue with one’s own commentary and evaluation. One can also begin from a very specific Intention and only later enter an event in which its dominance gives way to direct action.

INACJA is therefore not the name for an absence of plan.

It names a change in the relationship between Intention, conscious control, and action.

The painting as trace

From this perspective, the meaning of the completed painting also changes.

A work of Orapizm is not merely the execution of an earlier idea. Nor is it the record of a random gesture.

It is the material trace of a process in which Intention encountered something it could not fully foresee.

This is why one of the central propositions of Orapizm is:

Orapizm does not teach a life without intention. It restores the possibility of encountering what intention has not yet foreseen.

INACJA names the moment in which such an encounter can take place through action.

Original work developed with editorial support from ChatGPT (OpenAI).