Episode 4: Freedom is a Constant Struggle
Do art forms like black radical poetry, free jazz and improvisation create a space for the performance of freedom? Did they ever? And can they still do so now?
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.
Do art forms like black radical poetry, free jazz and improvisation create a space for the performance of freedom? Did they ever? And can they still do so now?
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.
Four perspectives from people involved in different anti-capitalist and anti-racist struggles, considering how ideas of ‘ending’ have shaped their political thinking and praxis.
Everyday objects and materials (rubber bands, paper, a sink, microphones) disabused of their inertia and made to speak for themselves in a kind of focusing in on the tiny, repetitive, almost unobserved (sonic/ visual) potential of everyday things put into motion.
Jandek’s first ever live performance. Unannounced, the performance was a total surprise for everybody at the festival.
Freeform Super 8mm documentation of Sunday at Instal 06 by filmmaker Matt Hulse.
A solo improvisation using just the situation of the concert: a space, a PA, Mattin’s own thoughts, you, the audience.
Hijokaidan rapidly built a following due to the overwhelmingly physical intensity of their live performances, often involving destructive onstage rituals of vomit, urine, mangled guitars and ear shredding volume.
“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
Edinburgh. Nigh-inaudible improv jams with disabled instruments from the makers of Giant Tank and Pizza Boy Delivery.
Conceived of as a dual publication, video cassette and booklet, to be presented as an installation. The content of the videotape is the artist watching television.
In Our Hands is a ten week programme of workshops facilitated by Lisa Fannen, Omikemi and Clay. The sessions explore radical approaches to health and collective care in the context of movement for liberation and social justice.