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.
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?
How might two of the great musicians working within contrasting traditions of freedom collaborate? What might this produce: musically, socially, allegorically?
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.
A saxophone. Handheld fans. Shrill squeaks. Splutters, gargling. An incredible diversity of sounds, intensely focused by an inventive musician.
A celebration of the release of four books written by members of, and focused on about the House and Ballroom scene.
An extravagant debauch of huge pianos, plush toys, cognac and ritual.
What does it mean to resist seeking assimilation or inclusion within, or let our demands be co-opted by the very systems we seek to dismantle?
Reading their letters to each other, and chatting about prefigurative politics as the practice of relentlessly building worlds through unspeakable violence and loss; of building worlds and living in them anyway.
A space to reflect on our own experiences with the police and explore more community and care-based ways of dealing with violence and difficulties in our lives.
A performed film lecture exploring how the ‘Rumberas’ of Caribbean cinema of the 40’s and 50’s subverted demeaning images of themselves through dance, sound and a sociality that insisted on blackness as being a cultural performance, not simply due to skin colour.
Poems are kisses, fists, and underground rivers. For all these reasons and many more, I am a poet.
