Two Dots over a Vowel
Christian Bök
Christian Bök‘s work spans thrillingly conceptual poetry to body-shaking vocal performances.
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.
Christian Bök‘s work spans thrillingly conceptual poetry to body-shaking vocal performances.
Politicised fan-fiction chronicling working class gay urban space and fantasy.
One of the great experimental films. A 60 minute, three part riddle that maybe approximates our intellectual development by moving from imageless words to the recognition of silent images and the learning of simple tasks and finally a serenity and acceptance of death.
An immersive live performance for multiple 16mm film and bass clarinet, taking in the whole gallery, submerging the audience.
A performance for dry ice and four specially constructed steel tables, each one heated by a single candle until searingly hot.
Are artists powerless in the face of technology? These often whimsical and amusing films are minimal technological interventions and appropriations but maybe also rigorous takes on the role of popular media and culture in our hyper-technological world.
The club as a community and a site for performed politics: deep/ queer house, vogue femme, lipsync and ballroom.
Our favourite Lancashire-born autodictact asks what’s political about the tension between the individual and the collective in free jazz.
The first INSTAL festival (programmed by Barry Esson of Arika and Tiernan Kelly) featured a line-up including Robert Lippock, Philip Jeck, Fennesz, Paragon Ensemble, Icebreaker International, Defaalt and Rhomboi.
A beautifully crisp, slowly evolving duo for cello and projected images. Abstract but still figurative; change only noticeable after the fact.
Whether drawing their own fractured, abstract narrative, or re-contextualising, chewing up and spitting out someone else’s, each of the films here take a dramatic arc as their starting point and throw it to the wind.
The pieces in the programme switch between silent film/ imageless sound, but we wanted to have a think about how ideas can take up residency on either side of the sound/ image border, without having to inhabit both at the same time.