Hotel Diaries 1-8
John Smith
These simple, one-take videos, relate personal experiences to the current conflicts in the Middle East via the most basic of means (a hotel room, a camcorder, John’s personal thoughts, concerns and convictions).
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.
These simple, one-take videos, relate personal experiences to the current conflicts in the Middle East via the most basic of means (a hotel room, a camcorder, John’s personal thoughts, concerns and convictions).
“The miracle of Herman Melville is this: that a hundred years ago in Moby Dick…he painted a picture of the world in which we live, which is to this day unsurpassed.” – C. L. R. James
The program of composed music including Feldman’s Instruments III, Ligeti’s piece for 100 Metronomes Poeme Sympathetique, and Rebonds B by Iannis Xenakis.
Rather than asking the state for services, what kinds of change are made possible when we prioritise people supporting each other?
Paper Piece: Secrets is a performance for and with the whole audience, using paper, text, secrets, being in the crowd
A kind of performed installation of searing noise and silence, where we’re not sure who the performer is, when it starts or ends or even who it’s for.
A community of those without community, for a community to come. A schizo-scenic video-collage of the disturbing ‘normality’ of Moby Dick.
An assembly to try and provide some experiential and theoretical resources for the renewal of a certain affective, extra-political sociality, in the face of one of our great adversaries; the forces of colonial, imperial, genocidal denial.
A drone installation populated by flourescent strip lights working in complicity with analogue radios – “all the lights just do their thing”.
NVA asked Arika to curate and programme the sound aspects of their 2007 Half-Life production in Kilmartin Glen. Arika worked with Toshiya Tsunoda, Lee Patterson, Rhodri Davies and Angharad Davies.
Is there a link between the ways we’re caged and exiled by the prison-industrial complex and the ways people’s bodies are violently categorised and segregated by race, class, gender or ability?