Ruins & Ian Halliwell
Ian Helliwell
Giants of the Japanese avant-rock scene Ruins are a hardcore prog rock bass + drums duo led by drummer extraordinaire Tatsuya Yoshida and joined in Dundee by Sasaki Hisashi.
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.
Giants of the Japanese avant-rock scene Ruins are a hardcore prog rock bass + drums duo led by drummer extraordinaire Tatsuya Yoshida and joined in Dundee by Sasaki Hisashi.
Equal parts spectacle, installation and performance, his set for us is a specially developed work, ‘turning’, which features an orchestra of multiple turntables, 4 projections and a collection of old, and, quite probably, misfiring analogue kit.
The first INSTAL festival (programmed by Barry Esson of Arika and Tiernan Kelly) featured a line-up including Robert Lippock, Philip Jeck, Fennesz, Paragon Ensemble, Icebreaker International, Defaalt and Rhomboi.
Real-time video feedback loops submerged in laminal sheets of sound soaked in gauzy timbral detail and multi-valenced, buzzing overtones.
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?
AVVA sees the internal feedback of Toshi’s no-input mixing desk is fed to Billy, and transformed into bright and variegated patters, striations and blooming colour, before being fed back to Toshi and manipulated on route to the PA.
What kind of listening and acknowledging do we offer each other? What is it to listen to an ‘elsewhere’, and do we ever do anything else when we listen to music?
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).
Los Glissandinos work with clarinet and sine tones beating and thrumming in your middle ear, all beautifully paced and serene, but with just enough steely menace broiling under the surface to keep you on edge.
In a moment of social exhaustion, we want to ask how we might care for each other differently. We Can’t Live Without Our Lives is a 5-day exploration of care as a form of struggle and resistance, with communities who embody it.
Includes: tamed TV snow, video feedback of racing particles, a remake of a polish photogram film destroyed in WWII, a visual and aural representation of Gestalt theory, hole-punched film and Guy Sherwin’s Cycles 3 double-projection.
A full-blooded, emotional attempt to reinvigorate improvisation from a musically inclined philosopher and two philosophically inclined improvisers.