Urban Peasants
Ken Jacobs
Do almost nothing: re-present (unaltered and arranged by chance) silent family home movies handed down to Flo, (Ken’s wife) and follow them with a “teach yourself Yiddish” cassette tape.
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 almost nothing: re-present (unaltered and arranged by chance) silent family home movies handed down to Flo, (Ken’s wife) and follow them with a “teach yourself Yiddish” cassette tape.
Blissed-out sun-dappled drone ragas of the highest order, with a metal-tinged signature sound of plucked and bowed strings.
Stripping back the domesticated ‘meaning’ of (everyday, mundane, kitchen) tools to reveal “a lexicon of rage and frustration.” Plus an allegorical use of mundane, everyday things as an examination of how meaning is constructed in film.
Three workshops lead up to an open invitation to improvise with the festival as concert. The last four hours of the Sunday 14 at Instal 10 were devoted to presentations devised during the three workshops. The material conditions (time, space, facilities…) were the instruments. From there anything could happen.
With lo-fi dreams and high-def humor, Bande brings MC vibes to the day. Interluding music with spoken performance, the live extimacy of Bande’s presence reaches out via emo-techno-bridges.
A silent collage of found film footage partially layered with computer graphics to provide a framework in which live music can develop.
Elizabeth’s writing pulls apart toxic settler colonialism and the worldview used to justify it; working towards an alternative distribution of powers, so that ways of being otherwise can endure.
An extravagant debauch of huge pianos, plush toys, cognac and ritual.
One of the most influential groups in improvised music, with the collective understanding that comes from listening keenly to each other for decades
Ken presents his Nervous Magic Lantern, wherein film itself is forsaken for an investigation of hypnotic and trancelike crystaline forms. Eric La Casa works with recordings of everyday occurrences: the background hum of place.
This programme takes human subjects as the focus for sound and image construction. And it includes a couple of masterpieces of experimental film: Paul Sharits’ deeply empathetic interpretation of epilepsy and Peter Kubelka’s Webern inspired abstract portrait of Arnulf Rainer.
A somehow hyper-modern, ancient and folkloric lip-synced, made-up, fashioned performance.