Dreams are Colder than Death
Arthur Jafa
A landmark film on black life – a poetic filmic constellation of meditations, fragments and interviews on what it means to be black in America in the 21st century, from one of its great cinematographers.
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 landmark film on black life – a poetic filmic constellation of meditations, fragments and interviews on what it means to be black in America in the 21st century, from one of its great cinematographers.
Relative patterns of occlusion and exposure occupy two screens. Each exposure fires a stroboscopic flash of colour: yellow for one screen; blue for the other, filling the centre of both screens with colour, haloed with after-images.
A meditation on how all of us perform — sometimes reinforcing, sometimes subverting — the shifting categories of gender, sexuality and race.
CCI Sound system: a performance in which new material will be mixed and phased between two huge PA’s, one a precise Meyer system, the other a huge wall of Marshall amps
Is there a link between the ways we’re caged and exiled by the prison-industrial complex and the ways people’s bodies are violently categorised and segregated by race, class, gender or ability?
Long Stringed Instrument performance involving up to 100 wires strung in tension over a 40m arch.
“Mackey composes realist-mythic layering of lyrical prose unlike anything being written today.” — New York Times. “Our greatest living epic poet…Mackey’s poetry and criticism have reinvented modernism for our time.”— LitHub
No Wave, damaged garage jams and crazed instant vocal shrieks.
How might two of the great musicians working within contrasting traditions of freedom collaborate? What might this produce: musically, socially, allegorically?
Guitar and voice. Keening, droning and mourning. Be ready to release and bring your dis-ease.
A panel exploring the poetics of abolition. “Poetry is not only dream and vision; it is the skeleton architecture of our lives. It lays the foundations for a future of change.”
Black-clad with an ominous aura created by their distorted guitar epics, burnt-out ballads and raucous mantric jams.