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.
What is happening when systems of repression try to grasp communities’ ways of being, living or surviving, applying laws of sexuality, gender or race to cast them as criminal?
The Songspiels take on a mode of musical theatre developed by playwright Bertolt Brecht and composer Kurt Weill in the early twentieth century, presenting political and social concerns through the accessible and (often funny) form of song.
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.
By focusing on the things that most people don’t notice or pass by uncaring – Steve Roden crafts gentle, sparse and metaphorically loaded compositions.
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.
Polly Shang Kuan Band coven leader and Sick Head’s psychedelic shaman Nackt Insecten make hex ritual to birth a new astral being….. Smack Insecten.
Disused railway turning circle at east end of Union Terrace Gardens, a historically public space at the centre of a regeneration land-grab for the private gain of a local petro-chemical magnate.
Three documentary films exploring diverse realities of sex workers around the world followed by a closing ceremony of the festival.
Has neoliberal capitalism locked down social experience? Are our seemingly subjective desires, our identities, pre-packaged by dominating social structures?
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?
How might two of the great musicians working within contrasting traditions of freedom collaborate? What might this produce: musically, socially, allegorically?
In Our Hands is a nine week programme of workshops exploring radical approaches to health and collective care in the movement for liberation and social justice.
