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.
Here we’re grouping documentation of the many performances of improvised music that have taken place at our festivals over the years but also work that tests out a hypothesis in real time. Current highlights from this collection include William Parker and Daniel Carter’s freewheeling duo exploration, John Tilbury and Wadada Leo Smith’s meeting across traditions and Howard Slater’s talk about individual and collective practices in free jazz.
Taku’s actions strip back musical performance to one of its original proposals: what is an action and how does it create a situation for spending time together, for paying attention?
Taking a scalpel to the relationship between performer and audience: cutting something out to see what’s left, a drastic subtraction and shift of emphasis.
Sachiko’s very simple, pure sine tones and structures. Otomo on double pianos. Filament’s music isn’t composed and it isn’t improvised: it’s a hybrid of the two.
Duo performance by two great French musique concrète improvisers using feedback, contact mics, tape, an old Revox tape machine, a vintage synth…
Usurper luddite twins’ disabled instruments play a game of pick-up-sticks with the deconstructed horn of a young Derby opponent.
Sean and Taku share an interest in structure, space and time. A spartan, abstract, considered and surprisingly musical set.
Two-parts Helhesten spit strangled shanties and cracked reeds from under a net of the Glasgow Improv Orchestra’s six-strings and one moustache.
Julius’ “small music” features simple snatches of found sound, played back through small speakers, often set in bowls of pigment and dirt which shimmies in the vibrations.
Droner responsible for Fordell Research Unit, Muscletusk’s murk manipulator and Metzian concrete-mixer cement international relations and yr heids.
A saxophone. Handheld fans. Shrill squeaks. Splutters, gargling. An incredible diversity of sounds, intensely focused by an inventive musician.
A 100 strong Feral Choir of people who’ve never improvised with their voices before, conducted by composer Phil Minton.
A trio of Tamio’s screaming and immovable slabs of sound; Mico’s dance/ performance/ piano; Fritz’s absurd, flailing percussion/ voice.