 
Zong!
M. NourbeSe Philip
Can a collective performance of NourbeSe’s poem of black life as it exceeds containment enact alternative forms of selfhood that emerge in and out of African diasporic experience?
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.
 
Can a collective performance of NourbeSe’s poem of black life as it exceeds containment enact alternative forms of selfhood that emerge in and out of African diasporic experience?
 
Open community meeting to discuss some of the prevalent concerns impacting the ballroom community.
 
Poems are kisses, fists, and underground rivers. For all these reasons and many more, I am a poet.
 
A conversation of intergenerational trans-resistance and anti-racist fierceness between two of the most inspiring public speakers we know.
 
A spectacular musical show which discusses the representation of a nation state, its characters and history. A learning play on myth construction and its reproduction.
 
Three speakers play back pre-recorded sounds, Marc listens and responds: “What is played is the imperfect witness of what I listen to (or maybe better, how I listen).”
 
One of the most incessantly experimental musicians in the UK, Youngs’ aesthetic is entirely unique, never really part of any scene [whilst influencing many], steadfastly unafraid and honest
Sarah Washington uses electronics and wind-up radios, running out of charge to repsond to the festivals’ Self Cancellation provocation.
 
A concrete walkway ending in mid air, a ridiculously tight squeeze between three office buildings and various other sites of Labour politician and council leader T. Dan Smith’s modernist regeneration projects and ‘slum clearances’ of the 1950’s and 60’s.
 
60 minutes of hard ass minimal film, projected onto a weather balloon and accompanied by the inspired poetic rant of a visionary Frenchman.
 
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?
 
Each of these films addresses place, landscape or location and the personal reaction to their magical or concrete properties. Watch out for Kren’s structural, throbbing investigation of a forest and Baillie’s intimate and humble essay on a blind guitarist and the relationship between songs of Mexican revolutionaries and the people and places they looked to inspire.