
Speculum Orum
M Lamar
A queer black operatic requiem for piano and voice that asks us to stay in the hold of the slave ship, that tries to understand the connection from the slave ship to the prison.
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 queer black operatic requiem for piano and voice that asks us to stay in the hold of the slave ship, that tries to understand the connection from the slave ship to the prison.
Audio signals pass through light bulbs, causing the filaments of the bulbs to sing and crackle in a chorus of electronic static.
Smith/Stewart set up allegorical situations over which they often have little to no control, but which instigate explorations of dependence and trust, the body, sex and death.
Like walking through the abstracted amalgamation of 30 or so storms, trays of water shaken by thunder, light bouncing off pools.
Stripping back the domesticated ‘meaning’ of (everyday, mundane, kitchen) tools to reveal “a lexicon of rage and frustration.” Plus an allegorical use of mundane, everyday things as an examination of how meaning is constructed in film.
One of the most compelling Indigenous voices of her generation discusses practices of Indigenous Resurgence drawn from Nishnaabeg poetic knowledge.
Voguing, drag, clubbing, and the politics of communities making different performances of gender and sexuality visible.
Includes: a polish counting lesson, around NYC with D A Pennebaker, a portrait of a tower block, a man with a spade, at home with KYTN regular Guy Sherwin, a cinematic Blair Witchish cut-up and a song for some swings.
Autobiographical detail becomes a lens to reflect and refract the deepest aspects of personal and social life in Delany’s ground-breaking non-fiction writing.
A double bill. A simple first person, Dundee-specific tracking shot that approaches the cinema/ screen/ space the film will eventually be shown in and in Brazilian opera house, a fixed camera gazes at a local audience from the stage: a choir, hidden in the orchestra pit, sings and gradually fades to silence.
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.
Psychedelic and intense, and featuring some of the most visually stunning, mesmerizing and transcendent experiences you can imagine, batten down the hatches for some of the boldest, most immersive and abrasive works in experimental cinema.