 
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?
 
AVVA sees the internal feedback of Toshi’s no-input mixing desk is fed to Billy, and transformed into bright and variegated patters, striations and blooming colour, before being fed back to Toshi and manipulated on route to the PA.
 
Voguing, drag, clubbing, and the politics of communities making different performances of gender and sexuality visible.
 
The role of feelings in public life, (political) depression and creative survival.
 
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.
 
Investigate film as language, via the language of film reduced to the basic units of film and language. A film as text in which each frame is a single word.
 
A speculative narrative film informed by poetry and theories of quantum entanglement across diasporic distance. An intimate exploration of grief and resistance in shifting landscapes of loss, from the streets to the bed.
 
The most sophisticated synthetic music around: timbrally otherwise body music as sonified fictions and auditive sociograms.
 
A kind of audience activating, structured film guessing game in the manipulation of time, sound and image. “At 11:15, weiners. At 21:05, pornography. At 23:30, a duet. Watch the Clock.”
 
Inhabiting a different kind of energy, Ueinzz’s open rehearsals reveal a glimpse into their ongoing daily theatrical modes of caring – multiplying the ways in which their plays are meant to be felt, rather than understood.
 
A specially commissioned performance for organ. “The course of the stars were to be put to sound.”
 
What’s the best way to spend time with a musician when they visit a city to perform? And when the musician in question has a great deal to say, what sort of concert do you organise to do justice to that?