Episode 6: Make a Way Out of No Way

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Episode 6: Make a Way Out of No Way - working class American dance (Krumping, Flexing, Mutant, Voguing), black poetry, queer counter-publics, cultural history and theology, ballroom & house music. It is in conversation with communities who challenge the prison industrial complex and who organise in the face of multiple oppressions. It features a queer operatic requiem, the greatest film in the African-American canon, and counter canonical impulses at the dawn of a singular black cinema. It is about the noise of black and/or queer sociality. And it asks whether it is possible for communities, even while so constrained, to practice being somewhere else — practically, socially and aesthetically making a way out of what is at hand and rehearsing in anticipation of what is to come. Full programme details here [link - http://arika.org.uk/events/episode-6-make-a-way-out-of-no-way] Friday 26 Sept Waywardness — Saidiya Hartman A socio-poetic reading on wayward communities - The wayward create upheavals and incite tumult. They come and go as they please; they are riotous; they are itinerant and never settle; they are fugitive; they are excessive rather than efficient, they are in open rebellion against society… Killer of Sheep - Dir: Charles Burnett, USA, 1977, 87 mins Killer of Sheep is an undisputed masterpiece of African-American filmmaking and one of the most poetic, perceptive dramas ever made about family and community. - British Film Institute Make a Way Out of No Way: Club - MikeQ, Miss Prissy, Storyboard P and the Legendary Pony Zion Garçon — Stereo Is it possible to dance our way out of the hardened stances and identity prisons we are locked in? Inc a special 4-hour set by MikeQ: the ‘crown prince' of modern ballroom music and performances by three of the greatest performers of black working class dance in the USA. Saturday 27 Sept Fugitivity and Waywardness - Saidiya Hartman and Fred Moten An open conversation hosted by Saidiya Hartman and Fred Moten around ‘fugitivity' and ‘waywardness' and what it means to be in flight, excessive or ungovernable. Touching the Imperceptible - Kara Keeling and Arthur Jafa A performed filmic conversation on queer and black world making. Speculum Orum: Shackled to the Dead — M Lamar A queer black operatic requiem for piano and voice that asks us to stay in the hold of the slave ship, that tries to understand the connection from the slave ship to the prison. You've Never Seen Pain Expressed Like This - Miss Prissy, Storyboard P, the Legendary Pony Zion Garçon and Danielle Goldman A freestyle performed conversation for bodies and voices — on how Black, working class and queer dance is a way of moving in tight spaces and giving shape to oneself, of practicing and being ready for freedom. With the Queen of Krump, a dancer who has transcended Bruk Up, Mutant and Flexing, the master of Vogue Femme Dramatics and our favourite writer on dance as politics. Sunday 28 Sept Workshop with Miss Prissy and Glasgow Open Dance School A movement-based workshop on Krump and the politics of how we teach, learn and listen with our bodies. Move with us! Limited capacity, book a space by emailing emilia@arika.org.uk From Subjection to Subjection - Reina Gossett, Saidiya Hartman and Charlene Sinclair 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. Dreams Are Colder Than Death - Dir: Arthur Jafa, USA, 2014, 52 mins 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. Realness - Icon Ayana Christian, Legendary Co-Founder Michael Roberson Garçon, Reina Gossett, Fred Moten and Charlene Sinclair A discussion about what is at stake in the performance of realness and the practice of passing, and how they are both acts of survival and resistance. Mutual Instruments - Fred Moten and Storyboard P How is it that our favourite Vegas-born poet of prophetic blackness and a Crown Heights bodily animator of tarot cards and hieroglyphs think so similar. This latest kind of a festival or salon fizzed with an intellectual passion and political fervour - 17th in The List's Hot 100 of 2013. Arika are at the forefront of experientially rich, aesthetically demanding, and philosophically provoking curatorial practice. They are doing the finest and most original curatorial work around... - Jay Sanders, Curator, Whitney Museum of American Art, NYC