
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”
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A performed lecture concerned with Renaissance occult (musical) thinkers of the cosmic who put forward the notion of the “disharmony of the world”
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.
A recording session for BBC Radio Scotland under the M74 ‘Ski Jump’ extension ramp, a secion of motorway that doesn’t go anywhere, one of several such structures that populate the motorway system in the centre of Glasgow.
The Echo project is an installation as audio guide for a crowd. And at the same time it’s a private conversation: with you, as one of 20 people in a room, a sort of public intimacy.
Jarrod Fowler and Christof Migone kick things off with performances involving edible plants, a saw, dandruff, and Christof responding to the prompt: “as far as you can for as long as you can.”
Dead Labour Process drool-tape farmer, squeaking/creaking Usurper brother and Peeesseye’s yodelling traps-man hold a real OUT splutter party.
Out holler/ howl of English pukenoise posterboys exploded by incessant insect chatter of Northern fug dweller.
The first INSTAL festival (programmed by Barry Esson of Arika and Tiernan Kelly) featured a line-up including Robert Lippock, Philip Jeck, Fennesz, Paragon Ensemble, Icebreaker International, Defaalt and Rhomboi.
The program of composed music including Feldman’s Instruments III, Ligeti’s piece for 100 Metronomes Poeme Sympathetique, and Rebonds B by Iannis Xenakis.
A solo improvisation using just the situation of the concert: a space, a PA, Mattin’s own thoughts, you, the audience.
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.
Dworkin asks: What would a non-expressive poetry look like? A poetry of intellect rather than emotion?