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?
Our favourite Lancashire-born autodictact asks what’s political about the tension between the individual and the collective in free jazz.
How might two of the great musicians working within contrasting traditions of freedom collaborate? What might this produce: musically, socially, allegorically?
By focusing on the things that most people don’t notice or pass by uncaring – Steve Roden crafts gentle, sparse and metaphorically loaded compositions.
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.
Two-parts Helhesten spit strangled shanties and cracked reeds from under a net of the Glasgow Improv Orchestra’s six-strings and one moustache.
Three workshops lead up to an open invitation to improvise with the festival as concert. The last four hours of the Sunday 14 at Instal 10 were devoted to presentations devised during the three workshops. The material conditions (time, space, facilities…) were the instruments. From there anything could happen.
Could they be one of the most ferocious live noise acts around, or a necessary and ludicrous parody of ferocious noise acts? Could they be both?
Offering a crip grief transformation and witness altar. A place to sit and breathe, remember our dead, wash our hands and leave offerings to and for loved ones we’ve lost – and for ourselves. Expect fire and a little bit of smoke. Concluding with a D/deaf centered social space with conversational interpreters available for those who do not speak ASL.
Rhodri Davies plays two deconstructed harps. Lee Patterson examines the sonic properties of burning nuts.
A tour with John Butcher and Akio Suzuki that set out to allow the audience to experience (and to listen to) the enviroment around them in different way.
Conceptual writer and practicing lawyer Vanessa Place performs and talks with Mark Sanders, author of the brilliant “Complicities: The Intellectual and Apartheid”