 
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?
 
A speculative narrative film informed by poetry and theories of quantum entanglement across diasporic distance. An intimate exploration of grief and resistance in shifting landscapes of loss, from the streets to the bed.
 
Location: Around and about the old public library in Easterhouse; disinvested in and left to rot by the council but which was shamelessly, hastily and superficially cleaned by them in expectation of our event.
 
Voguing, drag, clubbing, and the politics of communities making different performances of gender and sexuality visible.
 
Bleu Shut reveals, and allows us to enjoy, our gullibility within the pervasive absurdity of modern life.
 
From really simple, open instructions, An Unrhymed Chord creates a kind of half-way point between composition and improvisation.
 
How do we sense entanglement? Can the knotting of ropes according to a poem’s rhythm make the social pulse of language matter?
 
Rather than asking the state for services, what kinds of change are made possible when we prioritise people supporting each other?
 
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.
 
For musical chameleon Richard Youngs both his creative and family life are focused in the room that many of us consider the centre piece of our lives.
 
Is it possible to dance our way out of the hardened stances and identity prisons we are locked in?
 
Discussion: If we approach “care as an event” rather than as a “contract of exchange” then what becomes possible in how we know, care for, and appreciate each other?