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.
Sometimes we put on club nights. But we want to think beyond genre so we’re also considering patterns in this theme. Things that repeat and define surfaces, but also scenes that sustain themselves over time. Documentaion that speaks to the theme of Club and Patterns: First up the sets and performances from the Episode 6: Make a Way Out of No Way Club night. Then learn more about the history, politics and creative practices of the House|Ballroom scene in this discussion led by the Vogue’ology collective. It might be helpful to note that these paired ‘terms’ or ‘themes’ are not synonyms nor are they binary oppositions but words that combine to (hopefully) produce un-rational anti-categories. The aim is to allow (encourage) the archive to be read in ways counter to normative or reductive categories. To allow things in the archive to appear in sometimes unlikely groupings and to resist essentialism. And to encourge exploration into all the archive documentation.
The club as a community and a site for performed politics: deep/ queer house, vogue femme, lipsync and ballroom.
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 performative survey of listening, as we managed to find it being used as a tool in different practices, disciplines and communities in North America (music, poetry, film, philosophy, activism…).
A dense, hard, immersive, chaotic spatial performance in sound: a momentary gap in consciousness, free of order or decision.
Complexly interacting colossal drones by the creator of some of the most legendary yet least heard music of the 70’s.
A multi-speaker, electronic, spacious and spatial performance from Florian Hecker.
Felix Hess is a unique crosser of the boundaries between science and art. He wrote his doctorial thesis on the aerodynamics of the boomerang
Los Glissandinos work with clarinet and sine tones beating and thrumming in your middle ear, all beautifully paced and serene, but with just enough steely menace broiling under the surface to keep you on edge.
AVVA sees the internal feedback of Toshi’s no-input mixing desk is fed to Billy, and transformed into bright and variegated patters, striations and blooming colour, before being fed back to Toshi and manipulated on route to the PA.
Includes: tamed TV snow, video feedback of racing particles, a remake of a polish photogram film destroyed in WWII, a visual and aural representation of Gestalt theory, hole-punched film and Guy Sherwin’s Cycles 3 double-projection.
Includes: a classic of innovative computer graphics, ex-pat Scot McLaren on form, a riotous psychedelic oil show with a Soft Machine accompaniment, subtle manipulation of data feedback, a colourful road movie and a reworking of a lost Paul Sharits film.
A rare live performance which, although not a full installation, made use of the unique acoustic and spatial properties of the Arches to rattle the audience and help it locate its third ear.