Talk by Alan Cummings: A personal history of the Japanese Underground
Alan Cummings
Talk charting the radical history of experimental music in Japan + the lowdown into the careers of many of the artists appearing at MLFC.
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.
Talk charting the radical history of experimental music in Japan + the lowdown into the careers of many of the artists appearing at MLFC.
Using violin and cello the duo map out a twilight sonic world that seems to tread the faultlines between improvisation and composition.
Three documentary films exploring diverse realities of sex workers around the world followed by a closing ceremony of the festival.
Writing that shows us that, even in struggle, there is light to be let in.
Do almost nothing: re-present (unaltered and arranged by chance) silent family home movies handed down to Flo, (Ken’s wife) and follow them with a “teach yourself Yiddish” cassette tape.
A 100 strong Feral Choir of people who’ve never improvised with their voices before, conducted by composer Phil Minton.
A performance by Storyboard P – one of the greatest Afrofuturist dancers on the planet.
A talk entitled ‘The Conquest of the Universe’: which delves into the connections between the underground filmmakers and musicians in New York in the early 1960s
A performance bearing witness to a struggle built upon patience and collective action from the great multi-instrumentalist and member of the AACM.
The Songspiels take on a mode of musical theatre developed by playwright Bertolt Brecht and composer Kurt Weill in the early twentieth century, presenting political and social concerns through the accessible and (often funny) form of song.
A chat, with examples (Zola, H. P. Lovecraft, Hammer Horror), about blackness and the sheer stupid thickness of what has no profundity whatsoever.
How do you know what you want? Should freedom be doing what you ought, not doing what you want? How might a philosopher and artist turn this thinking into an enabling condition in the context of noise and improvisation?