Cosmic Pessimism
Eugene Thacker
A chat with Eugene Thacker. Can we rethink the world as unthinkable, and without us?
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 chat with Eugene Thacker. Can we rethink the world as unthinkable, and without us?
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?
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?
Offering 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. Expect fire and a little bit of smoke. Concluding with a D/deaf centered social space with conversational interpreters available for those who do not speak ASL.
Mashed up queer fantasy of worker’s revolts, biblical demons and present-day hells, and dubbed out cyborg-electro.
Power-electronic klutz behaviour indecipherable blasphemies, cuts, bruises and broken microphones by Kovorox Sound head-honcho Lea Cummings.
Listening to people listening to their own homes. Musicians and actors will listen back to recordings made in local peoples homes on headphones, and interpret/ translate what they are hearing.
This set continues on from the Bud Neill inspired clatter using the contents of the Usurper twin’s pockets.
On the birthday of Marsha P. Johnson, this event brings together several elements that celebrate the radical care and kinship characteristic of the Trans revolutionary.
Trio vocal performance of a score by Achim Wollscheid with Aileen Campbell, Junko and Dylan Nyoukis.
Mirror and Phantom Engineer performing an improvised soundtrack to Benjamin Christensen’s 1922 horror film prototype, Haxan: Witchcraft through the Ages.
Guitar solo where inscrutable, minute electric sounds are excavated by palms that smother and strangle, that wring sound from the fretboard, from behind the bridge.