Criminal Queers
Chris Vargas Eric A Stanley
Criminal Queers visualises a radical trans/queer struggle against the prison industrial complex, working to abolish the multiple ways our hearts, genders, and desires are confined.
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.
Criminal Queers visualises a radical trans/queer struggle against the prison industrial complex, working to abolish the multiple ways our hearts, genders, and desires are confined.
“The miracle of Herman Melville is this: that a hundred years ago in Moby Dick…he painted a picture of the world in which we live, which is to this day unsurpassed.” – C. L. R. James
Taking our festivals south of the border to The Sage Gateshead we set out to offer a few cardinal pointers in the vast array of experimental music practices.
A concrete walkway ending in mid air, a ridiculously tight squeeze between three office buildings and various other sites of Labour politician and council leader T. Dan Smith’s modernist regeneration projects and ‘slum clearances’ of the 1950’s and 60’s.
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.
A recently reanimated Ascension, with mighty Leeds drum hero Paul Hession bringing a dense polyrhythmic torrent into play with Jaworzyn’s reinvigorated piercing guitar.
Equal parts spectacle, installation and performance, his set for us is a specially developed work, ‘turning’, which features an orchestra of multiple turntables, 4 projections and a collection of old, and, quite probably, misfiring analogue kit.
A live installation of the ‘Film Ist’: projected on 4 huge screens and an improvised soundtrack from 4 figureheads of the Austrian experimental music scene.
Screening of films by Duvet Brothers, David Critchley, David Hall, John Latham, Judith Goddard, Mike Leggett, Tony Sinden
A rare live performance which, although not a full installation, made use of the unique acoustic and spatial properties of the Arches to rattle the audience and help it locate its third ear.
A somehow hyper-modern, ancient and folkloric lip-synced, made-up, fashioned performance.
Experience a sense of being in the world, in a specific space and time. Including Jeanne Liotta’s recordings of the ionosphere and Walter Ruttmann’s radical 35mm precursor to musique concrète.