Something Said
Jay Bernard
Haunted by the archive of the New Cross Fire, Jay Bernard presents a film and poetry reading that undertakes a queer exploration of black British history, reconstructed from archives and apparent debris.
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.
Haunted by the archive of the New Cross Fire, Jay Bernard presents a film and poetry reading that undertakes a queer exploration of black British history, reconstructed from archives and apparent debris.
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.
Ever wondered about the roadside festoons which are the innards of discarded cassette tapes? All will be revealed in this methodical and insightful documentary by UK luminary John Smith and sound artist cohort Graeme Miller.
A speculative narrative film informed by poetry and theories of quantum entanglement across diasporic distance. An intimate exploration of grief and resistance in shifting landscapes of loss, from the streets to the bed.
In many ways, this Episode is our attempt to engage with Fred’s incredible writing: with his proposal that all black performance (culture, politics, sexuality, identity, and blackness itself) is improvisation.
This performance brings together film, text and speech and temporarily constructs a filmic space to think through questions of resistance, and the choice and consequence of action vs. inaction: what does it mean to choose to not take part?
Repetitive, mesmerizing rhythmic workouts, to pieces of stark and rigorous introspection, where notes picked and slid in isolation, scatter like mercury around the listener.
Open-ended, paradoxical and performed investigations into: misunderstanding, language games, form saturated with sense, and consecutive matters…
This mini, late-night ball will include categories inspired by the events earlier in the weekend.
Taking a scalpel to the relationship between performer and audience: cutting something out to see what’s left, a drastic subtraction and shift of emphasis.
Originally billed as a duo of Ingar Zach and Derek Bailey, John Butcher stood in for Bailey at the last minute.
Joan La Barbara presents works exploring the colour spectrum of a single pitch resonating in her skull, an evocation of bird song and circular singing.