Talk by Alan Cummings: A personal history of the Japanese Underground
Alan Cummings
Talk charting the radical history of experimental music in Japan + the lowdown into the careers of many of the artists appearing at MLFC.
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.
Talk charting the radical history of experimental music in Japan + the lowdown into the careers of many of the artists appearing at MLFC.
Everyday objects and materials (rubber bands, paper, a sink, microphones) disabused of their inertia and made to speak for themselves in a kind of focusing in on the tiny, repetitive, almost unobserved (sonic/ visual) potential of everyday things put into motion.
Ecstatic, scalding and ludicrously heavy, nobody matches Incapacitants for live noise energy. One of the most exhilarating live acts in underground music.
Transfeminist, communist, revolutionary poetry that refuses to flinch. Nat Raha presents new work in the nine.
Merzbow takes the junk of sound and transforms it into blistering noise assaults with an incredible spectrum and impact.
The final iteration of Arika’s INSTAL festivals, the 2010 edition was an experimental festival of experimental music – 3 days of events at the Tramway that explored un-average ideas about sound and music.
Jandek’s second ever live performance, and the first to be advertised in advance.
Long Stringed Instrument performance involving up to 100 wires strung in tension over a 40m arch.
An audio and video investigation of gender cults, Catholicism, hauntings and nuns’ use of audio devices…
A double bill of A (imageless) film of nothing but a sound recording and its transcription and a found film of news interviews about Malcolm X’s assasination, where the filmmaker decided to add nothing to it, except our attention.
A new interpretation of Kosugi’s Catch-Wave, producing a cloud of fluctuating, hypnotic drones, in front of a backdrop of projected waves.
Amid the blur of erotics, the jangle of poetics, and the fetishizing of sickness and disability, the heat of Panteha’s performance and sculpture freezes all.