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?
UNINSTAL was a set of events at Tramway that tested out radical ideas with leading local and international artists. A collection of events (performances, films, installations, walks and talks) about sound and listening.
Ken presents his Nervous Magic Lantern, wherein film itself is forsaken for an investigation of hypnotic and trancelike crystaline forms. Eric La Casa works with recordings of everyday occurrences: the background hum of place.
Equal parts spectacle, installation and performance, his set for us is a specially developed work, ‘turning’, which features an orchestra of multiple turntables, 4 projections and a collection of old, and, quite probably, misfiring analogue kit.
Psychedelic and intense, and featuring some of the most visually stunning, mesmerizing and transcendent experiences you can imagine, batten down the hatches for some of the boldest, most immersive and abrasive works in experimental cinema.
A slowed down single tracking shot along a corridor as workers at the Bath Iron Works, (Maine, USA) take their lunch break.
Laser beam sine tones used to draw delicate, abstract patterns by vibrating charcoal, placed atop of a great strip of paper running through the gallery; beautiful, fragile sound-created autonomous drawing.
Sonic ‘observations’ of the world, through micro recordings on a tiny scale and transformed into something musically compelling.
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.
Akio Suzuki and John Butcher performing in a remote sea cave near Durness.
A prison abolitionist punk video-poetry-music mash up about our fucked-up dystopian society, RoboCop, kids toys and criminality.