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.
Can we use sound, repetition and difference to personally and collectively engage with space, time and labour?
These simple, one-take videos, relate personal experiences to the current conflicts in the Middle East via the most basic of means (a hotel room, a camcorder, John’s personal thoughts, concerns and convictions).
Formed as a means to realise William Bennett’s goal of “a sound that could bludgeon an audience into submission”
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.
An utterly deep introspection told in aching, weeping guitar lines; melodic, simple, always minimal but somehow entirely epic.
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.
A celebration of risk taking and adventure from some of the boldest pioneers of the past 40 years, melding avant garde and underground forms of music and moving image to create new experiments and experiences in sight and sound.
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.
Akio Suzuki and John Butcher performing in an old underground reservoir in Fife.
Quartet improvisation by Klaus Filip – laptop, Radu Malfatti – trombone, Sean Meehan – snare & cymbals, Taku Unami – rice and dish.
Ever changing coven of feedback worshipping witches led by Blood Stereo/ Smack Music 7 shrieker Karen Constance spit audio hexes through yr skulls.
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.”
