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.
A double bill. A simple first person, Dundee-specific tracking shot that approaches the cinema/ screen/ space the film will eventually be shown in and in Brazilian opera house, a fixed camera gazes at a local audience from the stage: a choir, hidden in the orchestra pit, sings and gradually fades to silence.
A system in which oscillators shake The Arches, seismographs pick up the harmonics that are then amplified through massive sub-bass PA.
What does it mean to resist seeking assimilation or inclusion within, or let our demands be co-opted by the very systems we seek to dismantle?
Acoustic turntable, engines, trumpet and accordion joined by Bassist Magarida Garcia: build long-form quietly detailed pieces that clatter and rumble, that expand and contract with the tension and release of deeply held breath.
The films in the programme take the essential and fundamental building blocks of cinema (combining sound and image through time) screw about with them, interrogate them and cast them anew.
Chris Corsano, Akio Suzuki and John Butcher performing in the Hamilton Mausoleum, Hamilton.
Jacobs’ pulsing and abstract 3D Nervous Magic Lantern performance grounded by Eric La Casa’s manipulated recordings of everyday locations.
Solo by Jean-Philippe Gross, a French electro-acoustic improviser, working with mixing board, cheap mics, small speakers and an analog synth, built around a honed interest in feedback.
A 3-day exploration – through performance, screenings and discussion – of the art and politics of wayward communities who refuse to be bound by the fictions of race and sex.
Smith/Stewart set up allegorical situations over which they often have little to no control, but which instigate explorations of dependence and trust, the body, sex and death.
Akio Suzuki and John Butcher performing in an old underground reservoir in Fife.