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 historical narrative of the black and Latino/a transgender, bisexual, lesbian, and gay House and Ballroom Scene in relation to race, gender, sexuality and class oppressions.
Offering a crip grief transformation and witness altar. A place to sit and breathe, remember our dead, wash our hands and leave offerings to and for loved ones we’ve lost – and for ourselves. Expect fire and a little bit of smoke. Concluding with a D/deaf centered social space with conversational interpreters available for those who do not speak ASL.
A three-day celebration surveying all manner of diverse musical activities, which at their core share a basic kinship: one of exploration and the discovery of musical expresssion.
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.
A landmark film on black life – a poetic filmic constellation of meditations, fragments and interviews on what it means to be black in America in the 21st century, from one of its great cinematographers.
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
Beat poet Ira Cohen’s now infamous and wildly psychedelic film odyssey feeds one’s own seeing apparatus through beautifully warped and distorting mylar mirrors, resulting in a film dense and rich with visual arcana and poetry.
Julius’ “small music” features simple snatches of found sound, played back through small speakers, often set in bowls of pigment and dirt which shimmies in the vibrations.
A programme of discontinuity between narration, text and image. Including Manual Saiz’s employment of John Malkovich’s Spanish dubbing double and Peter Rose’s absurdly hilarious concrete poetry subtitling chaos.
A series of events organised by the Vogue’ology collective from the House Ballroom community in New York grounded in the scenes history of autonomous, self-organised struggle and a shared investment in collective art practices and how those intersect with the multiple and often divergent struggles for freedom.
This event honoured those individuals who achieved the status of Icon during the period of 1986-1990.
5 days of film, music, discussion and study of our collective incompleteness—arrayed against the colonial ordering of how we come to know the world—practicing how we might exist otherwise, right here and now. Can we start to know and practice the world to come?
