Across a number of Arika events Writing and Reading have been key practices with numerous iterations. As a way in here are a few highlighted events: Fred Moten's reading of his poems at Episode 4: Freedom is a Constant Struggle, Amiri Baraka and Henry Grimes's poetry and double bass duo and Evan Calder Williams' talk about horror and darkness.

These themes or paired ‘terms’ offered up here are not synonyms nor are they binary oppositions but words that combine to (hopefully) produce un-rational anti-categories. The aim is to allow (encourage) the archive to be read in ways counter to normative or reductive categories. To allow things in the archive to appear in sometimes unlikely groupings and to resist essentialism.