 
Cosmic Pessimism
Eugene Thacker
A performed lecture concerned with Renaissance occult (musical) thinkers of the cosmic who put forward the notion of the “disharmony of the world”
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 performed lecture concerned with Renaissance occult (musical) thinkers of the cosmic who put forward the notion of the “disharmony of the world”
 
Kenneth Goldsmith reads extracts of his conceptual poetry and Achim Wollscheid manipulates mobile phone signals.
 
TEST is a collective creative improvising quartet based out of the NYC Underground (figuratively and literally). Their street-hardened, spatial Jazz is riotous and intense: is also makes us think about collective organization, and different ideas of responsibility and liberty.
 
A chat, with examples (Zola, H. P. Lovecraft, Hammer Horror), about blackness and the sheer stupid thickness of what has no profundity whatsoever.
 
A simple, gracefully bold set-up to allow Loïc to trace connections: of comments upon comments upon comments, of sounds next to sounds next to sounds.
 
A public walk from George Square to the Barras market bringing contributions from researchers, activists and artists in a form of live critical praxis
 
Underground movement legend boychild hosts this workshop—on improvisation, cosmetics, movement and lip-sync.
 
A meditation on how all of us perform — sometimes reinforcing, sometimes subverting — the shifting categories of gender, sexuality and race.
 
We commissioned Radu Malfatti to write a new piece for the 21-piece string section of the Northern Sinfonia: Music striving to discover the exact point at which sound resonates the clearest amidst long drawn out silences.
 
Ecstatic, intensely joyous experimental club music: like “the sound of our water ceremonies…40 bands playing their melodies at once to recreate the cacophony of the first aurora and the call of the morning star Venus”.
 
Ten short intimate one-on-one conversations with Robert Softley Gale – We all want to see ourselves reflected in the world around us—in society, in art, in culture… in porn?
 
Akio Suzuki and John Butcher performing in a large multi chambered industrial ice house.