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 confrontational and somehow shamanic stance; introspective silences shattered by savage jabs at the strings, whirlwind strums dying into spartan chords
Whether drawing their own fractured, abstract narrative, or re-contextualising, chewing up and spitting out someone else’s, each of the films here take a dramatic arc as their starting point and throw it to the wind.
Real-time video feedback loops submerged in laminal sheets of sound soaked in gauzy timbral detail and multi-valenced, buzzing overtones.
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.
Three speakers play back pre-recorded sounds, Marc listens and responds: “What is played is the imperfect witness of what I listen to (or maybe better, how I listen).”
Polly Shang Kuan Band coven leader and Sick Head’s psychedelic shaman Nackt Insecten make hex ritual to birth a new astral being….. Smack Insecten.
Joan La Barbara presents works exploring the colour spectrum of a single pitch resonating in her skull, an evocation of bird song and circular singing.
Hijokaidan rapidly built a following due to the overwhelmingly physical intensity of their live performances, often involving destructive onstage rituals of vomit, urine, mangled guitars and ear shredding volume.
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.
Sound and image slipping out of synch and into discord, the programme includes (in London at least) a very special version of Hollis Frampton’s masterful (nostalgia) with a live narration by Michael Snow.
Paper Piece: Secrets is a performance for and with the whole audience, using paper, text, secrets, being in the crowd
Paul Sharits one of the great experimental, sometimes called structuralist / materialist, filmmakers of the 20th Century.
