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.
The first INSTAL festival (programmed by Barry Esson of Arika and Tiernan Kelly) featured a line-up including Robert Lippock, Philip Jeck, Fennesz, Paragon Ensemble, Icebreaker International, Defaalt and Rhomboi.
Jacobs’ pulsing and abstract 3D Nervous Magic Lantern performance grounded by Eric La Casa’s manipulated recordings of everyday locations.
The films in the programme take the essential and fundamental building blocks of cinema (combining sound and image through time) screw about with them, interrogate them and cast them anew.
The site of the former Abbeyhill Station on the 1903 Leith branch of the Edinburgh and Dalkeith railway, overgrown and leading to as yet un-regenerated ‘wasteland’; taxi’s for 80 people, each instructed to take different routes between locations and; a slice of land concealed behind corporate business park branding off the Wester Approach Rd, apparently of no conceivable use and named ‘Chateaux de Scum’ by those who use it anyway.
Performance of a Sudoko based graphic score giving rise to a process of self cancellation.
Acting at the minimum. Each film here substitutes one small thing for another, (ironically) transforming received meanings by the simplest of actions; often kind of funny too.
A somehow hyper-modern, ancient and folkloric lip-synced, made-up, fashioned performance.
A welcoming intermission between events, open to the public.
A conversation about the movement for prison abolition and refusing the logic of race and sex that underpins the criminalisation and mass incarceration of communities.
Work that focuses in on the static hiss and background noise of recording and pushes it to the fore.
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.
A short chat about what we (Arika) might be trying to do with our program for the Biennial.
