Fred Moten – Chat
Fred Moten
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.
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.
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.
Deliberately blurred drones, absent of definite structure or rhythm, framed in silence and devoid of any distraction from the pure matter of sound.
A performed film lecture exploring how the ‘Rumberas’ of Caribbean cinema of the 40’s and 50’s subverted demeaning images of themselves through dance, sound and a sociality that insisted on blackness as being a cultural performance, not simply due to skin colour.
Relative patterns of occlusion and exposure occupy two screens. Each exposure fires a stroboscopic flash of colour: yellow for one screen; blue for the other, filling the centre of both screens with colour, haloed with after-images.
A public gathering that brings together local artists, musicians, activists, and community organisers.
Individual experience separated by physical boundaries (of space, time or ability) suggested as communities of collective experience by (perhaps voyeuristic) artists.
Autobiographical detail becomes a lens to reflect and refract the deepest aspects of personal and social life in Delany’s ground-breaking non-fiction writing.
A cast of pioneering spirits over an expanded three day festival including Jandek (one year on from his first ever show at INSTAL 04), JO-JO, Tetuzi Akiyama,Tom Bruno, Pauline Oliveros, a legendary Hijokaiden performance and Henri Chopin.
Blissed-out sun-dappled drone ragas of the highest order, with a metal-tinged signature sound of plucked and bowed strings.
Sound as it is endured by space and the body: 15 participants lie face down and pound the floor with a microphone one thousand times, each person choosing their own rhythm and intensity.
Somewhere between performance, stripped down theatre and an intense kind of public learning or maybe even a public hearing.
A dance party love letter to our community, expressing the joy of relation in the abstract and through actual physical proximity.