 
Episode 2: A Special Form of Darkness
A festival asking how ideas of nihilism, darkness, subjectivity and abjection play out in experimental music, performance art, horror, neuroscience and philosophy?
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.
 
A festival asking how ideas of nihilism, darkness, subjectivity and abjection play out in experimental music, performance art, horror, neuroscience and philosophy?
 
(Cyber)feminist, non-essentialist transgender and queer daily radio shows using the formula of morning radio as an arch way of thinking about the scripted behaviour and controlled empathy of systematic care.
 
“Mackey composes realist-mythic layering of lyrical prose unlike anything being written today.” — New York Times. “Our greatest living epic poet…Mackey’s poetry and criticism have reinvented modernism for our time.”— LitHub
 
We commissioned Radu Malfatti to write a new piece for the 21-piece string section of the Northern Sinfonia: Music striving to discover the exact point at which sound resonates the clearest amidst long drawn out silences.
 
Heat-mapped bodies, found porn films, Korean psyche-folk, creepy police intrusion and self-defence.
 
Patented 60 cycle hums, static pops, and terse electron pinpricks mutated into perfect, post-techno grooves and synaesthesic video
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.
 
Introducing and setting intentions for a crip grief transformation and witness altar. A place to sit and breathe, remember our dead, wash our hands and leave offerings to and for loved ones we’ve lost – and for ourselves.
 
These simple, one-take videos, relate personal experiences to the current conflicts in the Middle East via the most basic of means (a hotel room, a camcorder, John’s personal thoughts, concerns and convictions).
 
NVA asked Arika to curate and programme the sound aspects of their 2007 Half-Life production in Kilmartin Glen. Arika worked with Toshiya Tsunoda, Lee Patterson, Rhodri Davies and Angharad Davies.
 
A temporary archive and research space tracing the ways in which sound and audition move through everyday life.
 
Simple maths and stringent scored instructions move precise frequencies and clicks to create a dense, fluctuating environment of standing waves and physical sound.