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.
Our favourite Lancashire-born autodictact asks what’s political about the tension between the individual and the collective in free jazz.
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.
In many ways, this Episode is our attempt to engage with Fred’s incredible writing: with his proposal that all black performance (culture, politics, sexuality, identity, and blackness itself) is improvisation.
Edinburgh. Cask-strength electrohypnol and shroom damaged folk croonings by Lapsed Electronics empire builder.
“Mackey composes realist-mythic layering of lyrical prose unlike anything being written today.” — New York Times. “Our greatest living epic poet…Mackey’s poetry and criticism have reinvented modernism for our time.”— LitHub
Boston duo of saxophonist Bhob Rainey and trumpeter Greg Kelley approach their improvisations with a slew if extended techniques and pregnant silences.
A tour with John Butcher and Akio Suzuki that set out to allow the audience to experience (and to listen to) the enviroment around them in different way.
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.
An improvisation that may or may not involve (typical) improvisation.
Freeform Super 8mm documentation of Friday at Instal 06 by filmmaker Matt Hulse.
An extravagant debauch of plush toys and ritual. Palestine performed a version of Strumming Music, a trance inducing investigation into overtone systems achievable on a Bosendorfer Imperial Piano.
Julius Eastman’s Evil Nigger for 4 pianos performed by Joe Kubera, Kate Thompson, David Murray, Alan Fearon and Simon Passmore.
