Henri Chopin
Henri Chopin
Renouncing the bind of the written word, Chopin’s sound poetry is a magical evocation of the pure powers of the voices, stripped bare of language.
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.
Renouncing the bind of the written word, Chopin’s sound poetry is a magical evocation of the pure powers of the voices, stripped bare of language.
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.
Guitar solo where inscrutable, minute electric sounds are excavated by palms that smother and strangle, that wring sound from the fretboard, from behind the bridge.
A changing pool of people (40 or so at a time – artists, audiences, etc) talk for 90 minutes in a simultaneous series of open-ended round-table discussions, structured like speed dating, and mixed live as both a concert and for radio broadcast.
Duo performance by two great French musique concrète improvisers using feedback, contact mics, tape, an old Revox tape machine, a vintage synth…
The mutability of the body and the mobility of identity: queered pop culture, drag, lip-sync and performance.
A confrontational and somehow shamanic stance; introspective silences shattered by savage jabs at the strings, whirlwind strums dying into spartan chords
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.
Ex-Decaer Pinga and CKDH rodeo queens; regular ladynoise hoedown gets gatecrashed by sonic chunder-huffing remedial clatter boys.
Includes: solar flares, insect fireworks, a new film from Ian Helliwell, pulsating glaciers, an apple being eaten alive, sea ravaged stock, crushed blackberries and film that has literally risen from the grave.
A testimony to poverty from Chris’s own experiences, and an invitation to engage with an all too typical situation and context through a kind of imaginary listening.
Work for cello, percussion, contra bassoon and cherbulum commissioned for Instal in collaboration with Paragon