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.
The Songspiels take on a mode of musical theatre developed by playwright Bertolt Brecht and composer Kurt Weill in the early twentieth century, presenting political and social concerns through the accessible and (often funny) form of song.
Taking a scalpel to the relationship between performer and audience: cutting something out to see what’s left, a drastic subtraction and shift of emphasis.
John Butcher plays and manipulates a feeding back saxophone. Benedict Drew on electronics, broken cables and standing waves.
Mirror and Phantom Engineer performing an improvised soundtrack to Benjamin Christensen’s 1922 horror film prototype, Haxan: Witchcraft through the Ages.
Sonic ‘observations’ of the world, through micro recordings on a tiny scale and transformed into something musically compelling.
Seven women recite monologues composed from texts from the vibrant years of the Weimar Republic. A kind of cultural echo: an experience of histories brought to the present.
Philip Jeck creates slowly evolving symphonies that are as much about the crackling hiss of old vinyl as the actual ‘musical’ material.
Out holler/ howl of English pukenoise posterboys exploded by incessant insect chatter of Northern fug dweller.
A voice that can vault from an elegantly whispered insinuation to asphyxiated and murderous barks or squalls in a heartbeat.
A testimony to poverty from Chris’s own experiences, and an invitation to engage with an all too typical situation and context through a kind of imaginary listening.
A collaborative social justice project that uses art, activism and awareness to combat the systemic oppression facing young, trans, queer & gender nonconforming people of colour.
A double bill of A (imageless) film of nothing but a sound recording and its transcription and a found film of news interviews about Malcolm X’s assasination, where the filmmaker decided to add nothing to it, except our attention.
