The World As We Know it: Arika announce 2024 programme

Arika, the Turner Bursary-winning radical art collective, have revealed details of their latest programme. Episode 11: To End The World As We Know It is an exploration of the relationship between artistic practice, critical thought and political organising. Over five days at Tramway in Glasgow’s southside, Arika will unveil film, performance, music and discussion and study groups that addresses the question of ‘how we might exist otherwise, right here and now.’

This year, Arika has created a special music programme in collaboration with Glasgow-based experimental music festival Counterflows, which will feature artists including Chuquimamani Condori, Rashad Becker and Sunik Kim. There's also a collaborative project by poet and author Nat Raha and musician Ailie Ormston titled aquasomatics, which will bring together thinking around the history of racial capitalism, bodies of water and violent histories of expropriation and ecocide. Following on from last year’s programme – Episode 10: A Means Without End – this year’s ‘episode’ poses audiences and artists the following questions:

Is this world coming to an end, brought about by the ecological and social devastations of a capitalistic, colonial and imperialist worldview that has been obliterating other worlds for over 400 years?

Can we start to know and practice the world to come?

Here are The Skinny’s highlights from Arika’s programe, taking place at Tramway from 13-17 November...

For Ever Gaza: Ayreen Anastas & Rene Gabri

Wed 13 Nov, 8.15pm

'The film to be screened has not yet been seen by its makers nor those who have invited it. It will be seen for the first time on the occasion of its making, as an unfolding, unworking of a form and its dis/contents.'

This new work from experimental film-performance duo Ayreen Anastas and Rene Gabri blurs the lines between performance and documentary, audience and artist and looks to deconstruct our notion of what film is and can be. As Anastas and Gabri put it: "It is a film that tries to wrestle away the destiny of cinema and by association all art from the practitioners of denial and the facilitators of genocide." 

Bring a Witness: Sadia Shirazi & Mezna Qato

Thu 14 Nov, 1.30pm

Sadia Shirazi and Mezna Qato share their 7 SCORES & THE PMK project, which draws from archives of prayer books and religious manuals in English, Urdu and Arabic to connect art, activism and faith. It reflects on Muslim social life and collectivity and asks not so much "what is to be done?" as "what do we already do?"

BARRUNTO: Emilia Beatriz

Thu 14 Nov, 6pm

This film by 2020 Margaret Tait Award winner Emilia Beatriz centres on the Puerto Rican concept of barrunto – a foresight into the future gleaned through signals in the environment. The film itself is a mixture of digital, 16mm and archive footage, and an exploration of grief and resistance in sites of displacement, nuclear contamination, and military occupation from Scotland to Puerto Rico.    

Intifada! Revolution! An anti-imperialist resource for young people: Hussein Mitha

Fri 15 Nov, 4pm

This workshop by Glasgow-based educator and artist Hussein Mitha, aimed at young people and those working in youth education, looks at the effects and reverberations of Palestinian resistance, and explores what anti-imperialism can look like for those living in one of the biggest cities of Britain's former empire.

More than Perfect: Ailton Krenak, Denise Ferreira da Silva, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson & Geni Núñez 

Fri 15 Nov, 9pm

This conversation brings together a group of radical indigenous voices from around the world to discuss one of Episode 11's central provocations: "What if we took seriously the possibility that this world, as we know it, may be coming to an end? We dread the loss of this world, but have we begun to imagine the one to come? How to imagine it collaboratively?"

Denise Ferreira da Silva – contributor to a number of past Arika episodes – is joined by Brazilian indigenous leader Ailton Krenak, indigenous Guarani and queer activist Geni Núñez, and Mississauga Nishnaabeg writer, activist and scholar Leanne Betasamosake Simpson. 

The We of revolutionary love: Houria Bouteldja

Sat 16 Nov, 11am

Writer and activist Houria Bouteldja shares thoughts on North African Indigenous revolutionary love in the face of European capitalist violence and settler colonialism in this free talk and workshop.

The Ancestral Present: Karrabing Film Collective

Sat 16 Nov, 7.30pm

The Karrabing Film Collective are a grassroots group of Indigenous people from lands in northern Australia, using filmmaking to share stories, preserve their ancestral present, and share alternatives to the racist, colonial present in which we find ourselves. Three of the Collective's films screen at Arika, alongside an in-person conversation with four members of Karrabing.

Toward Nakba as a Planetary Process: Ayreen Anastas, Rene Gabri & Houria Bouteldja with Françoise Vergès & Amirah Silmi

Sun 17 Nov, 1.30pm

Filmmakers Ayreen Anastas and Rene Gabri bring together allies and collaborators from art, philosophy and activism in an attempt to "perceive the enormity of what we are confronted with in the current resistance to genocide in Palestine." Contributors include the aforementioned Houria Bouteldja, Amirah Silmi, assistant professor in Women's Studies at Birzeit University in the West Bank, and Françoise Vergès, author of A Decolonial Feminism.

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Arika, Episode 11: To End The World As We Know It runs at Tramway, Glasgow, 13-17 Nov

arika.org.uk