
Episode 4: Freedom is a Constant Struggle
Do art forms like black radical poetry, free jazz and improvisation create a space for the performance of freedom? Did they ever? And can they still do so now?
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 art forms like black radical poetry, free jazz and improvisation create a space for the performance of freedom? Did they ever? And can they still do so now?
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.
Rather than asking the state for services, what kinds of change are made possible when we prioritise people supporting each other?
Includes: tamed TV snow, video feedback of racing particles, a remake of a polish photogram film destroyed in WWII, a visual and aural representation of Gestalt theory, hole-punched film and Guy Sherwin’s Cycles 3 double-projection.
Akio Suzuki and John Butcher performing in an old underground reservoir in Fife.
A specially commissioned performance for organ. “The course of the stars were to be put to sound.”
A 101 panel on sex work in Scotland, hosted by National Ugly Mugs, Sex Workers Union, Scotland for Decrim (Decrim Now) host
A film performance about Guy then, and Guy now, as a metaphor for the passing of time, which of course all film is inherently about.
Blissed-out sun-dappled drone ragas of the highest order, with a metal-tinged signature sound of plucked and bowed strings.
Psychedelic and intense, and featuring some of the most visually stunning, mesmerizing and transcendent experiences you can imagine, batten down the hatches for some of the boldest, most immersive and abrasive works in experimental cinema.
A riot of 60’s psychedelia, magick, ritual and tight black leather, this programme highlights underground innovators who use and subvert pop music for their own experimental ends; and be warned, in Anger, there’s real darkness.
A sort of prayer and conference, a sort of scream and dialogue – a monologue and declaration at the time, addressing how we can build complicity with one another.