
Episode 4: Freedom is a Constant Struggle
Do art forms like black radical poetry, free jazz and improvisation create a space for the performance of freedom? Did they ever? And can they still do so now?
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.
Do art forms like black radical poetry, free jazz and improvisation create a space for the performance of freedom? Did they ever? And can they still do so now?
Former street performer, organist, performance artist, circus performer, harpist, accordion player, tree surgeon and tricyclist performing solo.
TEST is a collective creative improvising quartet based out of the NYC Underground (figuratively and literally). Their street-hardened, spatial Jazz is riotous and intense: is also makes us think about collective organization, and different ideas of responsibility and liberty.
How can we imagine bodies not as an end in themselves, but as a medium through which we can become one another’s means?
We wanted to ask a bunch of the best high-energy-improvisers around; can musical form really taking shape via a group energy? Can individual concentration lead to a group consciousness?
Adamantly analogue, inspiring and frequently chaotic in performance, Metamkine draw no distinction between image and sound; during their intuitively improvised performances music and images are created simultaneously and equitably.
Harrowing but musical confrontations with the very real, physical and aural trauma of a woman screaming.
Each organ is unique. The project is to find out what makes it unique.
A discussion about what is at stake in the performance of realness and the practice of passing, and how they are both acts of survival and resistance.
Four perspectives from people involved in different anti-capitalist and anti-racist struggles, considering how ideas of ‘ending’ have shaped their political thinking and praxis.
Sound as it is endured by space and the body: 15 participants lie face down and pound the floor with a microphone one thousand times, each person choosing their own rhythm and intensity.
When we look, how do we objectify the body; how can we reflect on our (self) image as a construction?