 
Zong!
M. NourbeSe Philip
Can a collective performance of NourbeSe’s poem of black life as it exceeds containment enact alternative forms of selfhood that emerge in and out of African diasporic experience?
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.
 
Can a collective performance of NourbeSe’s poem of black life as it exceeds containment enact alternative forms of selfhood that emerge in and out of African diasporic experience?
 
Argument is a provocative, multi-layered film essay, a trenchant analysis of the media and remains a critically relevant and critically inflammatory tract.
 
Somewhere between performance, stripped down theatre and an intense kind of public learning or maybe even a public hearing.
 
Guy Sherwin gives a kind of annotated, chat through his optical sound films
 
Veterans of the psych-infused UK free noise scene, the Vibracathedral Orchestra is a hypnotic ur-drone group hailing from Leeds.
 
Free Jazz group comprising Matt Lavelle, Matt Heyner (TEST, No-Neck Blues Band) and Ryan Sawyer (Tall Firs).
 
Nikos played every note that it’s possible to play on the cello, all played back as a one hour drone, while the cello was turned to powder and bottled.
 
Thuja specialise in a unique and abstract folk music, a devoutly organic tapestry deeply rooted in the sway and bow of nature.
 
Joan La Barbara presents works exploring the colour spectrum of a single pitch resonating in her skull, an evocation of bird song and circular singing.
 
How do we gesture to the invisible, the trans or the obscure? A performative conversation between boychild and Fernando, a sharing of gestures, and a bodily back and forth between mathematician and dance artist.
 
Jarrod Fowler creates a social space where layered one-to-one live encounters with the audience become sonic material.
 
A speculative narrative film informed by poetry and theories of quantum entanglement across diasporic distance. An intimate exploration of grief and resistance in shifting landscapes of loss, from the streets to the bed.