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 festival hewn from passions for experimental music, film and visual art and for a passion in figuring out how they can relate to, cross-fertilise and inspire and each other.
In many ways, this Episode is our attempt to engage with Fred’s incredible writing: with his proposal that all black performance (culture, politics, sexuality, identity, and blackness itself) is improvisation.
Brain boiling duo improvisation by great Japanese no input mixing desk pioneer Toshi Nakamura and french organ philosopher Jean-Luc Guionnet.
An utterly deep introspection told in aching, weeping guitar lines; melodic, simple, always minimal but somehow entirely epic.
A recently reanimated Ascension, with mighty Leeds drum hero Paul Hession bringing a dense polyrhythmic torrent into play with Jaworzyn’s reinvigorated piercing guitar.
The final iteration of Arika’s INSTAL festivals, the 2010 edition was an experimental festival of experimental music – 3 days of events at the Tramway that explored un-average ideas about sound and music.
Glasgow. Low-end drone guitarage army in praise of the open chord.
Mirror and Phantom Engineer performing an improvised soundtrack to Benjamin Christensen’s 1922 horror film prototype, Haxan: Witchcraft through the Ages.
Each of these films addresses place, landscape or location and the personal reaction to their magical or concrete properties. Watch out for Kren’s structural, throbbing investigation of a forest and Baillie’s intimate and humble essay on a blind guitarist and the relationship between songs of Mexican revolutionaries and the people and places they looked to inspire.
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.
Droner responsible for Fordell Research Unit, Muscletusk’s murk manipulator and Metzian concrete-mixer cement international relations and yr heids.
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.
