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.
Could cruising and random public sex be the basis of an ethically organised society? A discussion with Jackie Wang, Samuel R. Delany and Huw Lemmey.
A landmark film on black life – a poetic filmic constellation of meditations, fragments and interviews on what it means to be black in America in the 21st century, from one of its great cinematographers.
Setting up a minimal procedure to explore the interaction between a person and the (documentary) film/ video process. What initially seems simple ends up contrarily distanced and intimate, public and private.
Do art forms like black radical poetry, free jazz and improvisation create a space for the performance of freedom? Did they ever? And can they still do so now?
Nikos played every note that it’s possible to play on the cello, all played back as a one hour drone, while the cello was turned to powder and bottled.
A panel exploring the poetics of abolition. “Poetry is not only dream and vision; it is the skeleton architecture of our lives. It lays the foundations for a future of change.”
A crash-course in pre-figurative, radical, queer, anti-racist, anti-police, anti-prison, anti-deportation abolitionist politics and trans-resistance.
What is the radical concept at the core of ‘rhythm’, expanded from simply musical or mathematical notions to encompass personal, social, collective rhythms?
The site of the former Abbeyhill Station on the 1903 Leith branch of the Edinburgh and Dalkeith railway, overgrown and leading to as yet un-regenerated ‘wasteland’; taxi’s for 80 people, each instructed to take different routes between locations and; a slice of land concealed behind corporate business park branding off the Wester Approach Rd, apparently of no conceivable use and named ‘Chateaux de Scum’ by those who use it anyway.
A conversation between influential figures thinking through Blackness and Indigeneity, asking: what if we took seriously the possibility that this world, as we know it, may be coming to an end? We dread the loss of this world, but have we begun to imagine the one to come?
Goofily deformed, deeply thought vocal jams: like the sound of your own breath rushing through your head.
A confrontational and somehow shamanic stance; introspective silences shattered by savage jabs at the strings, whirlwind strums dying into spartan chords
