
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.
Los Glissandinos work with clarinet and sine tones beating and thrumming in your middle ear, all beautifully paced and serene, but with just enough steely menace broiling under the surface to keep you on edge.
Michael Colligan pressing white hot metal into dry ice, causing the metal to sing and scream.
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.
A poet, playwright and activist, Sanchez emerged as a seminal figure in the 1960s Black Arts Movement, writing in the name of black culture, civil rights and women’s liberation.
A performance for projectionist, musicians and audience, which plays with references to Oscar Levant and Gershwin: apparently a series of small doses of chaos.
A conversation about the movement for prison abolition and refusing the logic of race and sex that underpins the criminalisation and mass incarceration of communities.
A panel exploring the poetics of abolition. “Poetry is not only dream and vision; it is the skeleton architecture of our lives. It lays the foundations for a future of change.”
For day five of Ultra-red’s project, the investigation will review the previous work undertaken together, and perhaps draw up a summary of reflections and pose some future questions.
Acting at the minimum. Each film here substitutes one small thing for another, (ironically) transforming received meanings by the simplest of actions; often kind of funny too.
Can our favourite Vegas-born poet of prophetic blackness and a South Central transmuter of social rage into beauty feel through each other?