Sonia Sanchez
Sonia Sanchez
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.
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.
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.
The Cube is a 6 hour performed installation in which sound and image are treated as independent but equal, where musicians and filmmakers sit alongside each other, improvise to and feed off both projected image and amplified and acoustic sound.
Three intense solo performances for drums (both played and screamed through), cymbal, voice, credit card, bird whistle, and guitar amplifier/leads.
Where we join Nackt Insecten’s disembodied spectral howls and heavyweight locomotive drones about SPT’s Subway.
What would have happened in 1963 if someone from the voguing ball scene going on in Harlem had travelled downtown to perform alongside the early postmoderns at Judson Church?
A changing pool of people (40 or so at a time – artists, audiences, etc) talk for 90 minutes in a simultaneous series of open-ended round-table discussions, structured like speed dating, and mixed live as both a concert and for radio broadcast.
A somehow hyper-modern, ancient and folkloric lip-synced, made-up, fashioned performance.
Wordless, reverb drenched voice, ghosted electronics, seething and ferocious electronic damage and Patty Waters style vocal mania.
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.
How do communities formed under the duress of violent othering and the joy of solidarity – such as ballroom culture, Black diasporas, Zapatistas – reform bonds of kinship?
A beautifully crisp, slowly evolving duo for cello and projected images. Abstract but still figurative; change only noticeable after the fact.
A performed lecture concerned with Renaissance occult (musical) thinkers of the cosmic who put forward the notion of the “disharmony of the world”