Exias-J
Exias-J
The Experimental Improvisers Association of Japan, [EXIAS-J] are a loose collective of musicians and dilettantes who seem to represent an entire and self sufficient scene in one band.
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.
The Experimental Improvisers Association of Japan, [EXIAS-J] are a loose collective of musicians and dilettantes who seem to represent an entire and self sufficient scene in one band.
A stroboscopic and intense sensory overload of flashing abstract forms, cut to ribbons by modified projectors.
Sound and image slipping out of synch and into discord, the programme includes (in London at least) a very special version of Hollis Frampton’s masterful (nostalgia) with a live narration by Michael Snow.
As opposed to suggesting soundtrack’s to Brakhage’s works [which are almost entirely silent] Text of Light use his works to stimulate improvisation, enveloping them into the structure of the group much like an additional musician.
How do you know what you want? Should freedom be doing what you ought, not doing what you want? How might a philosopher and artist turn this thinking into an enabling condition in the context of noise and improvisation?
Post consideration and post rationalisation… How do we think about experimental music and film after the performance?
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.
A series of badly felted lock-ups and garages + multiple locations within the Megastructure – a purpose built town centre in one building, comprising (in the 50’s at least) of housing (never occupied), shops, apartments, a hotel, ice rink, police station and other amenities
Exploring the interplay between punk sinewave aggression, high-speed video sequences and stroboscopic lighting
Noise music for the eyes. A 6 screen 16mm projection performance of intense audio and visual stimulus.
Freeform Super 8mm documentation of Sunday at Instal 06 by filmmaker Matt Hulse.
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.