Cosmic Pessimism
Eugene Thacker
A chat with Eugene Thacker. Can we rethink the world as unthinkable, and without us?
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.
A chat with Eugene Thacker. Can we rethink the world as unthinkable, and without us?
‘Ten Pieces in the Form of Painful Variations’ for piano, an impossible score that looks like a grapeshot musical stave, a text of barbed loathing and doubt – an anti-composition.
A panel exploring the poetics of abolition. “Poetry is not only dream and vision; it is the skeleton architecture of our lives. It lays the foundations for a future of change.”
The mutability of the body and the mobility of identity: queered pop culture, drag, lip-sync and performance.
Cardboard boxes, metal guitar, critical homage, attempts to describe things you can’t describe. A one-man Grand Guignol school play.
A cast of pioneering spirits over an expanded three day festival including Jandek (one year on from his first ever show at INSTAL 04), JO-JO, Tetuzi Akiyama,Tom Bruno, Pauline Oliveros, a legendary Hijokaiden performance and Henri Chopin.
A riot of 60’s psychedelia, magick, ritual and tight black leather, this programme highlights underground innovators who use and subvert pop music for their own experimental ends; and be warned, in Anger, there’s real darkness.
Save the dates for Episode 12.
Wednesday 11 – Sunday 15 November 2026
Life and death dramas unfold in the snowy American North, using three-screen documentary footage and a soundtrack by KYTN favourite, vocalist Daniel Menche.
Hartmut led “a workshop in the old-fashioned way of discussion, mutual exploration of ideas and samples; trying out what can be shared and where the fault lines show.”
How do we gesture to the invisible, the trans or the obscure? A performative conversation between boychild and Fernando, a sharing of gestures, and a bodily back and forth between mathematician and dance artist.
Discussion with David Keenan: an author, critic and musician based in Glasgow, Scotland. He is best known for the reviews and features he has contributed to The Wire.