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?
Audio signals pass through light bulbs, causing the filaments of the bulbs to sing and crackle in a chorus of electronic static.
Out of a dark haze, shafts of light emerge, as the emulsion is scratched from the surface of the film. Simultaneously, out of the black silence, noise and audible scratches bloom into a bright drone.
Each film in this programme celebrates process; the decay of emulsion, the properties of dust and dirt, the manipulation of time. Post the dawn of the digital age, we reflect on our love of the film form, celluloid as an object, a medium and a physical entity.
By focusing on the things that most people don’t notice or pass by uncaring – Steve Roden crafts gentle, sparse and metaphorically loaded compositions.
Quasi-theatrical multiple-projector pieces play with the relationship between performers, art and audiences.
How do poetry and maths stitch together pictures of our fractured situation from its wreckage and relics, from the debris of hope and the well of residues that make us what we are?
Radu plays a trombone, Klaus creates pure sine waves: they sound on their own, or sometimes together and often with considerable space and silence.
A series of three short performed situations and statements to be examined or judged from the most interesting young musician in Glasgow (we think).
Work for cello, percussion, contra bassoon and cherbulum commissioned for Instal in collaboration with Paragon
Offering a crip grief transformation and witness altar. A place to sit and breathe, remember our dead, wash our hands and leave offerings to and for loved ones we’ve lost – and for ourselves. Expect fire and a little bit of smoke. Concluding with a D/deaf centered social space with conversational interpreters available for those who do not speak ASL.
How do we make the connections between the mutual aid practices of our daily lives and anti-capitalist efforts to dismantle wider systems of exploitation?