Introduction to Protactile Theory with John Lee Clark
John Lee Clark
“Introduction to Protactile Theory” is a legendary seminar that facilitator John Lee Clark has designed to bring diverse communities into conversation with the Protactile movement.
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.
“Introduction to Protactile Theory” is a legendary seminar that facilitator John Lee Clark has designed to bring diverse communities into conversation with the Protactile movement.
A dense, hard, immersive, chaotic spatial performance in sound: a momentary gap in consciousness, free of order or decision.
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.
A silent collage of found film footage partially layered with computer graphics to provide a framework in which live music can develop.
What is the radical concept at the core of ‘rhythm’, expanded from simply musical or mathematical notions to encompass personal, social, collective rhythms?
Stripping back the domesticated ‘meaning’ of (everyday, mundane, kitchen) tools to reveal “a lexicon of rage and frustration.” Plus an allegorical use of mundane, everyday things as an examination of how meaning is constructed in film.
Each film in this programme celebrates process; the decay of emulsion, the properties of dust and dirt, the manipulation of time. Post the dawn of the digital age, we reflect on our love of the film form, celluloid as an object, a medium and a physical entity.
Laser beam sine tones used to draw delicate, abstract patterns by vibrating charcoal, placed atop of a great strip of paper running through the gallery; beautiful, fragile sound-created autonomous drawing.
Our favourite Lancashire-born autodictact asks what’s political about the tension between the individual and the collective in free jazz.
A 101 panel on sex work in Scotland, hosted by National Ugly Mugs, Sex Workers Union, Scotland for Decrim (Decrim Now) host
Do almost nothing: re-present (unaltered and arranged by chance) silent family home movies handed down to Flo, (Ken’s wife) and follow them with a “teach yourself Yiddish” cassette tape.
A stroboscopic and intense sensory overload of flashing abstract forms, cut to ribbons by modified projectors.