
Urban Peasants
Ken Jacobs
Do almost nothing: re-present (unaltered and arranged by chance) silent family home movies handed down to Flo, (Ken’s wife) and follow them with a “teach yourself Yiddish” cassette tape.
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.
Do almost nothing: re-present (unaltered and arranged by chance) silent family home movies handed down to Flo, (Ken’s wife) and follow them with a “teach yourself Yiddish” cassette tape.
Terry is one of the most entertaining and unpredictable musicians in the London free improvising music scene. Rhodri Davies extends his instrument under a battery of techniques creating sound colours and textures quite alien to the harp.
From really simple, open instructions, An Unrhymed Chord creates a kind of half-way point between composition and improvisation.
One of the great experimental films. A 60 minute, three part riddle that maybe approximates our intellectual development by moving from imageless words to the recognition of silent images and the learning of simple tasks and finally a serenity and acceptance of death.
Do ideas emerging from particle physics help to re-think of blackness as a mode of life in which it’s possible to practice difference without separation?
A chorister attempting to sing Vivaldi, with live accompaniment, while trampolining for 20 minutes.
Mashed up queer fantasy of worker’s revolts, biblical demons and present-day hells, and dubbed out cyborg-electro.
The first of two short film programmes featuring works that blur the boundaries between music and film from artists who cross and redefine those long held divisions. This programme focuses on the forebearers of filmic and musical innovation over the last 70 years.
A specially commissioned performance for organ. “The course of the stars were to be put to sound.”
Goofily deformed, deeply thought vocal jams: like the sound of your own breath rushing through your head.
Whether drawing their own fractured, abstract narrative, or re-contextualising, chewing up and spitting out someone else’s, each of the films here take a dramatic arc as their starting point and throw it to the wind.
What happens when you are engaged in a deep and extended artistic practice that intersects between literature and music, notation and improvisation, sight and sound?