Episode 8: Refuse Powers’ Grasp
Over 3 days Episode 8 celebrates all the unruly ways we escape attempts to constrain us, tear down the walls of normative culture and build joy in flight.
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.
Over 3 days Episode 8 celebrates all the unruly ways we escape attempts to constrain us, tear down the walls of normative culture and build joy in flight.
Cardboard boxes, metal guitar, critical homage, attempts to describe things you can’t describe. A one-man Grand Guignol school play.
African American history, avant-garde jazz riffs and activism intertwine in experimental verse of extraordinary and affecting beauty that has to be heard.
Akio Suzuki and John Butcher performing in a large multi chambered industrial ice house.
Save the dates for Episode 12.
Wednesday 11 – Sunday 15 November 2026
One of the great experimental films. A 60 minute, three part riddle that maybe approximates our intellectual development by moving from imageless words to the recognition of silent images and the learning of simple tasks and finally a serenity and acceptance of death.
What’s the best way to spend time with a musician when they visit a city to perform? And when the musician in question has a great deal to say, what sort of concert do you organise to do justice to that?
Like walking through the abstracted amalgamation of 30 or so storms, trays of water shaken by thunder, light bouncing off pools.
Akio Suzuki and John Butcher performing by the Stones of Stenness, instead of the Ring of Brodgar, because of bad weather.
Christian Bök‘s work spans thrillingly conceptual poetry to body-shaking vocal performances.
Part old-fashioned Renaissance man, part hardcore avant-gardist, the Canadian painter-photographer-filmmaker-musician gives full vent to his genius in the exhilarating perceptual vaudeville, named after the ‘central region’ of tissue that acts as a conduit between the brain’s two hemispheres.
Listening to people listening to their own homes. Musicians and actors will listen back to recordings made in local peoples homes on headphones, and interpret/ translate what they are hearing.