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?
We asked Christoph to come and give a sort of informal talk, raising some of his ideas about sound and image, and playing/ showing a few examples.
INSTAL’s third outing saw performances by AMM, Cosmos (Sachiko M & Ami Yoshida), Voreboms, Vibracathedral Orchestra with Matthew Bower and John Godbert, Paragon Ensemble, Merzbow and Ryoji Ikeda.
Cardboard boxes, metal guitar, critical homage, attempts to describe things you can’t describe. A one-man Grand Guignol school play.
Junko’s screaming vocal in a nuanced, piercing duo with Urabe’s fuming and convulsive saxophone, far removed from the codes of musical tradition.
Dundee. Progressive rhythmical guitar squall vs. post-highland discorporate dusk-jockey.
Daniel Carter & Sabir Mateen’s trio with percussionist Andrew Barker; incessantly driving forward through sweat-drenched bursts of pure ecstatic freedom.
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.
Former street performer, organist, performance artist, circus performer, harpist, accordion player, tree surgeon and tricyclist performing solo.
Sonic ‘observations’ of the world, through micro recordings on a tiny scale and transformed into something musically compelling.
Everyday objects and materials (rubber bands, paper, a sink, microphones) disabused of their inertia and made to speak for themselves in a kind of focusing in on the tiny, repetitive, almost unobserved (sonic/ visual) potential of everyday things put into motion.