Zong!
M. NourbeSe Philip
Can a collective performance of NourbeSe’s poem of black life as it exceeds containment enact alternative forms of selfhood that emerge in and out of African diasporic experience?
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.
Can a collective performance of NourbeSe’s poem of black life as it exceeds containment enact alternative forms of selfhood that emerge in and out of African diasporic experience?
The first of two short film programmes featuring works that blur the boundaries between music and film from artists who cross and redefine those long held divisions. This programme focuses on the forebearers of filmic and musical innovation over the last 70 years.
Like walking through the abstracted amalgamation of 30 or so storms, trays of water shaken by thunder, light bouncing off pools.
The practice of North African Indigenous revolutionary love, in the face of European capitalist violence and settler colonialism, with one of the most vital anti-colonial thinkers in Europe.
John Butcher plays and manipulates a feeding back saxophone. Benedict Drew on electronics, broken cables and standing waves.
An extravagant debauch of huge pianos, plush toys, cognac and ritual.
Three intense solo performances for drums (both played and screamed through), cymbal, voice, credit card, bird whistle, and guitar amplifier/leads.
A queer black operatic requiem for piano and voice that asks us to stay in the hold of the slave ship, that tries to understand the connection from the slave ship to the prison.
A performance for projectionist, musicians and audience, which plays with references to Oscar Levant and Gershwin: apparently a series of small doses of chaos.
A simple hands on workshop with micro-radio theorist and pioneer Kogawa.
A programme of discontinuity between narration, text and image. Including Manual Saiz’s employment of John Malkovich’s Spanish dubbing double and Peter Rose’s absurdly hilarious concrete poetry subtitling chaos.
A guitar solo of frugal wringing, of notes in the dark, an attitude of making everything count.