Turner Bursary
Tate Britain announced the ten recipients of their Turner Bursaries, which in 2020, have been awarded in place of the Turner Prize. Arika is one of them!
This comes as a total surprise! We are extremely grateful for the award and for this moment of recognition and acknowledgment and to be sharing this platform with our fellow bursary recipients, whom we also congratulate.
This Turner Bursary recognises Arika’s work as a whole, and in particular Episode 10: A Means Without End. Episodes are festivals of performance, dance, music and film; discussion, debate and spaces of learning together. They investigate interlinked social themes and contradictions, which develop from one Episode to the next. Episode 10 emerged from the Institute of Physical Sociality, an open, collective study group exploring ideas in maths and physics as analogies for the desires and struggles of social life and existence, and as poetic indicators of the ethical impossibility of continuing with the dominant ways society understands existence.
The award comes with a £10,000 bursary. We’ll re-distribute this to the radical grassroots community groups we’re in longstanding relationships with—relationships that ground what we do, even though those collaborations are not always particularly visible. With that in mind, we’d like to take this moment to highlight their crucial work, they are: Ubuntu Women Shelter; migrant-led groups The Unity Centre, LGBT Unity & Unity Sisters; and sex worker-led organisations SCOT-PEP, SWARM (Sex Workers Advocacy and Resistance Movement) & Umbrella Lane.
In exploring and supporting how communities practice a more just future in the present, Episodes will continue to be hosted in solidarity with movements that seek to abolish ableism, borders, colonialism, homophobia, prisons, racism, transphobia, sexism and white supremacy, and transform society to be based on co-operation, sharing of power and mutual aid. The current coronavirus crisis and the global Black Lives Matter uprisings prove—if proof were needed—that prevailing structures can and must be replaced.
Examples of upcoming projects initiated out of these solidarities include:
A four-year movement building project using artwork and popular education that speaks to a multiplicity of sex worker experiences; intersects with sex worker rights; and connects with broader social, labour and movement struggles. Led by organisers and artists from SWARM (Sex Worker Advocacy and Resistance Movement), in partnership with Arika and supported by the ICA. Selected artists include: Yarli Allison, Khaleb Brooks, Chi Chi Castillo + Semaj, Cory Cocktail, Hannah Hill, Liad Hussein Kontorowicz, Letizia Miro, Aisha Mirza, Annie Mok and Danica Uskert. Funded by Open Society Foundation and the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung.
Artists Harry Josephine Giles and Sasha Saben Callaghan are bringing together contributions to a new manifesto for what the arts in Scotland could and should be like for disabled artists in the post pandemic era. Produced by Collective and commissioned and supported by: Arika, Artlink, CCA, Collective, DCA, Glasgow School of Art Exhibitions, Project Ability and the Scottish Sculpture Workshop. Funded by Creative Scotland and Engage.
Revolution is not a one-time event
Revolution is not a one-time event is an abolitionist programme organised by Che Gossett, Lola Olufemi and Sarah Shin in collaboration with Arika and hosted by Silver Press.
Abolition is a perennial and open invitation to take seriously the potential of revolutionary love opposed to carcerality. Over four weeks in August 2020, activists, academics and artists including Saidiya Hartman, Christina Sharpe, Sondra Perry, Ceyenne Doroshow, adrienne maree brown and Tourmaline reflect on the horizon, practices and perspectives of abolition and its connections to gender, poetry, technology, performance, speculation, aesthetics and care. The online series of events commemorates Black August and is for anyone who wishes to answer the abolitionist call to action and thought.
For more about our Episodes go here. For more about Local Organising go here. We have an extensive Archive of documentation from our events here.
THANKS
Thanks to all those who worked to make Episode 10: A Means Without End a reality – Alaya Ang, Barry Esson, Joanna Helfer, Jim Hutchison, Nosheen Khwaja, Emma Macleod, Duncan McCormick, Bryony McIntyre, Cloudberry MacLean, Ahmed Mesto, Nick Miller, Raman Mundair, Saerlaith Robyn McQuaid-O’Dwyer, Ash Reid, Alex Woodward and Jack Wrigley, and everyone at Tramway.
And thanks to all artists and participants at Episode 10 who shared their fire with us all – Jay Bernard, boychild, Dhanveer Brar, Mijke van der Drift, Denise Ferreira da Silva, Edward George, James Goodwin, Laura Harris, Nathaniel Mackey, Alexander Moll, Fred Moten, Arjuna Neuman, Nat Raha, Nisha Ramayya, Wu Tsang, every member of Ueinzz, Jackie Wang & Fernando Zalamea. Thanks to everyone who came along and took part, and who made the spaces together with us. And thanks also to all the artists and participants from all previous Episodes and the projects before them.
Thanks everyone who has been part of Arika over the years, including – Kamal Ackerie, Dan Adams, Alice Black, Jason Brogan, Jon Clarke, Ruari Cormack, Neil Davidson, Chris Dennis, Alex Fleming, Agnieszka Habraschka, Avalon Hernandez, Andrew Houston, Ben Kamps, Matt Lloyd, Erin McElhinney, Alex McNutt, Kenny Macleod, Emilia Muller-Ginorio, Chris Nelms, Anna Pearce, Jana Robert, Emily Roff, Tourmaline, Glen Thomson, Jo Shaw, Lesley Young and Yihang Hu. And also to Studio Julia and their Episode design work and Coob who built our website.
Thanks to everyone in the informal and ever evolving physics and maths study group The Institute of Physical Sociality, which to date has included boychild, Karen Barad, Gabriel Catren, Valentina Desideri, Denise Ferreira da Silva, Laura Harris, Fred Moten, Marielle Pelissero, Sondra Perry, Emily Roff, Wu Tsang, Hypatia Vourloumis, Beckett Warzer, Fernando Zalamea amongst others.
Thanks also to everyone at the venues who host our events and partner with us, most recently Tramway (Glasgow), Performance Space New York and The Whitney Museum of American Art (New York).
Finally, thanks to past and present staff at Creative Scotland for their continued and deepening support over the last 18 years.