Exias-J
Exias-J
The Experimental Improvisers Association of Japan, [EXIAS-J] are a loose collective of musicians and dilettantes who seem to represent an entire and self sufficient scene in one band.
Arika have been creating events since 2001. The Archive is space to share the documentation of our work, over 600 events from the past 20 years. Browse the archive by event, artists and collections, explore using theme pairs, or use the index for a comprehensive overview.
The Experimental Improvisers Association of Japan, [EXIAS-J] are a loose collective of musicians and dilettantes who seem to represent an entire and self sufficient scene in one band.
Three workshops lead up to an open invitation to improvise with the festival as concert. The last four hours of the Sunday 14 at Instal 10 were devoted to presentations devised during the three workshops. The material conditions (time, space, facilities…) were the instruments. From there anything could happen.
The mutability of the body and the mobility of identity: queered pop culture, drag, lip-sync and performance.
Everyday objects and materials (rubber bands, paper, a sink, microphones) disabused of their inertia and made to speak for themselves in a kind of focusing in on the tiny, repetitive, almost unobserved (sonic/ visual) potential of everyday things put into motion.
An original and beautifully simple performed installation forging a direct link between sound and image.
Akio Suzuki and John Butcher performing in a remote sea cave near Durness.
One of the most arresting and unique improvisers in Japan, creating an original and powerful body of free music.
Blissed-out sun-dappled drone ragas of the highest order, with a metal-tinged signature sound of plucked and bowed strings.
Some of the most breathtaking, delicate and smoke filled guitar playing this side of Loren Connors or the quieter sides of Keiji Haino.
Seven women recite monologues composed from texts from the vibrant years of the Weimar Republic. A kind of cultural echo: an experience of histories brought to the present.
Looking at and listening to different ideas about sound and music, INSTAL 09’s collection of artists included Tetsuo Kogawa, vocalist Joan La Barbara, Phil Minton (and his Century FC feral choir), Austrian Actionist Hermann Nitsch, Steve McCaffery and many more.