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.
Here we’re grouping documentation of the many performances of improvised music that have taken place at our festivals over the years but also work that tests out a hypothesis in real time. Current highlights from this collection include William Parker and Daniel Carter’s freewheeling duo exploration, John Tilbury and Wadada Leo Smith’s meeting across traditions and Howard Slater’s talk about individual and collective practices in free jazz.
Usurper jamming live in a skip at the site of Bud’s Neill’s Lobey Dosser statue on Woodlands Road.
NVA asked Arika to curate and programme the sound aspects of their 2007 Half-Life production in Kilmartin Glen. Arika worked with Toshiya Tsunoda, Lee Patterson, Rhodri Davies and Angharad Davies.
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.
A series of badly felted lock-ups and garages + multiple locations within the Megastructure – a purpose built town centre in one building, comprising (in the 50’s at least) of housing (never occupied), shops, apartments, a hotel, ice rink, police station and other amenities
A recording session for BBC Radio Scotland under the M74 ‘Ski Jump’ extension ramp, a secion of motorway that doesn’t go anywhere, one of several such structures that populate the motorway system in the centre of Glasgow.
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.
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.
Location: between: the abandoned site of Parker House (ex-council office building) that became a student accommodation regeneration project, off the Dudhope roundabout; Bell Street Car Park entrance ramp and; the awkward (and otherwise used/ used otherwise) space left over between the back of Tesco’s and DW Sports on the Murraygate.
Disused railway turning circle at east end of Union Terrace Gardens, a historically public space at the centre of a regeneration land-grab for the private gain of a local petro-chemical magnate.
Daniel Carter & Sabir Mateen’s trio with percussionist Andrew Barker; incessantly driving forward through sweat-drenched bursts of pure ecstatic freedom.
William cradles, hammers, and rains down blows, plucking and using 2 bows to attack the strings above and below the bridge, all in the service of a fiery and passionate creativity.
Acoustic turntable, engines, trumpet and accordion joined by Bassist Magarida Garcia: build long-form quietly detailed pieces that clatter and rumble, that expand and contract with the tension and release of deeply held breath.