
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?
A performed film lecture exploring how the ‘Rumberas’ of Caribbean cinema of the 40’s and 50’s subverted demeaning images of themselves through dance, sound and a sociality that insisted on blackness as being a cultural performance, not simply due to skin colour.
“Beginning where you and me ends, where we don’t so much come but are already here.” Join James and Nisha to talk about breath, erotics and flesh, about our social, poetic cosubstantiality.
A crash-course in pre-figurative, radical, queer, anti-racist, anti-police, anti-prison, anti-deportation abolitionist politics and trans-resistance.
A series of events organised by the Vogue’ology collective from the House Ballroom community in New York grounded in the scenes history of autonomous, self-organised struggle and a shared investment in collective art practices and how those intersect with the multiple and often divergent struggles for freedom.
Smith/Stewart set up allegorical situations over which they often have little to no control, but which instigate explorations of dependence and trust, the body, sex and death.
A film installation as both allegory and investigation of The Rockridge Institute and their research into ‘framing’ and the use of metaphor within political discourse.
Coming to us from Taipei, Yo-Yo sends us elsewhere while bringing us back with her to the timezone of tomorrow. A dancer, media artist, and choreographer who makes multi-dimensions and realms, Lin’s amplification of energies and connections across bodies devolves the separations we are taught to abide.
A poetic multi-screen performance about “the inadequacy of the arbitrary passing moment and the impossibility of permanence”. About time and change.
Simple maths and stringent scored instructions move precise frequencies and clicks to create a dense, fluctuating environment of standing waves and physical sound.
First in a series of workshops for workers and non-workers who care. Does work that asks us to be attentive to the needs of others force us to sell our capacity for kindness?
We’ll look at the language and politics of what gets ‘mental health’ and consider more holistic understandings of experiences that honour the connection between mind/body/soul, and that acknowledge social and political context.