In Our Hands 2025
In Our Hands is a nine week programme of workshops exploring radical approaches to health and collective care in the movement for liberation and social justice.
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.
In Our Hands is a nine week programme of workshops exploring radical approaches to health and collective care in the movement for liberation and social justice.
Originally billed as a duo of Ingar Zach and Derek Bailey, John Butcher stood in for Bailey at the last minute.
Leading language/ action/ sound poet performed his groundbreaking concrete poem, a dizzying mandala of text, symbols and rubber stamps; a kind of book as reading machine.
How do communities formed under the duress of violent othering and the joy of solidarity – such as ballroom culture, Black diasporas, Zapatistas – reform bonds of kinship?
Smith/Stewart set up allegorical situations over which they often have little to no control, but which instigate explorations of dependence and trust, the body, sex and death.
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.
As opposed to suggesting soundtrack’s to Brakhage’s works [which are almost entirely silent] Text of Light use his works to stimulate improvisation, enveloping them into the structure of the group much like an additional musician.
A silent performance of (musical) reverberation.
‘Ten Pieces in the Form of Painful Variations’ for piano, an impossible score that looks like a grapeshot musical stave, a text of barbed loathing and doubt – an anti-composition.
The practice of North African Indigenous revolutionary love, in the face of European capitalist violence and settler colonialism, with one of the most vital anti-colonial thinkers in Europe.
Disused railway turning circle at east end of Union Terrace Gardens, a historically public space at the centre of a regeneration land-grab for the private gain of a local petro-chemical magnate.
Noise music for the eyes. A 6 screen 16mm projection performance of intense audio and visual stimulus.