Arika
For more information on venues, artists and what to expect go to
www.arika.org.uk
What's it all about?
There are places in the towns and cities where you live that exist not by planned design, but by circumstance.
Their elusive ambience attracts those with nowhere else to go, and those who wish to go elsewhere.
overlooked bypassed unwatched detached unconsidered shadowed
They offer respites from society and routine.
They are found by necessity, by those driven by desire, more than destination.
Shadowed Spaces is a tour of nooks and crannies like these, in your towns and cities: forgotten steps that lead nowhere, alleyways, old railway tunnels.
We'll place musical performances in these spaces that will hopefully help us to think about the continued need for a sense of privacy in public.
A bit more info on what this is all about
In the mid 70s academic and (amongst other things) the architecture critic of The Village Voice, Michael Sorkin, collected an influential series of essays under the title 'Indefensible Space'. In it, he discussed the move towards an approach to town planning that attempted to design-out spaces in which furtive activities could be fostered; a kind of architecture of security, you might say.
In response to this trend, Denis Wood (at the time a recently graduated geographer, or more particularly psycho-geographer) wrote an impassioned retort, titled 'Shadowed Spaces'. It was an ardent and poetic defense of our need to feel a sense of privacy in public, and the subsequent need for places where one might take refuge, or engage in transgressions which we may be unwilling to share with a wider public, but which are important to our lives and development, to our needs and desires.
The essay Shadowed Spaces has never been published, but exists in a sort of parallel way to the kinds of spaces it discusses, handed around and sought out by people who maybe need to find it. And it's served as a loose inspiration to a clutch of artists and musicians who are also drawn to these kinds of spaces, and to a desire to perform there, in a kind of artistic parallel to that need for privacy in public: 'cause isn't a musical performance just that, a private thing done publicly?
Our tour brings together 3 incredible experimental musicians from the USA and Japan, as well as Denis Wood, and takes them to some of our favourite, secret spaces, where collectively perhaps we can share in something hidden from the eyes of those keepers of the norm.
I hope you can join us.
Where will the tour visit?
Aberdeen - Friday 6th July
Dundee - Sunday 8th July
Easterhouse - Tuesday 10th July
Newcastle - Thursday 12th july
Cumbernauld - Saturday 14th July
Edinburgh - Sunday 15th July
A bus service may be available from central Glasgow to the Easterhouse and Cumbernauld performances. Please register your interest in this service when you call the relevant box office.
What will it be like?
We're interested in these spaces because of some elusive quality they have, and because we enjoyed wandering about, trying to find them. We want to pass this elusiveness onto your experience of the performance too. Hence the secrecy.
Once you've booked your ticket we will tell you a time and a location in which to meet up. The box office will need your phone and email details.
The rendezvous location won't be too far from the spaces in your town that we'll be interested in – a short walk. Typically we'll ask you to meet up in a city centre location in the early evening.
Once we're all gathered we'll wander over, down or around to the spot we think might be interesting. On route, or once we get there, you'll be introduced to Denis Wood, our resident psycho-geographer, who will give you some food for thought, before the performances start.
In some towns we'll move on to another space for the second performance, in some the first space is too good to pass up lingering there a while.
All in all, each event will include 2 musical performances, and a chat with Denis. It should take no more than 90 minutes in total.
Also, the tour visits specific spaces tucked away within our cities and towns. So, not being normal venues, they don't have all the facilities a normal venue might have: there's no toilets, most are outdoors, so wear something sensible if you're coming along.
Meet the artists
Sean Meehan + Tamio Shiraishi
Sean Meehan is an NYC based drummer who has gradually pared down his kit to a single snare. From it he conjures held pitches of astonishing purity by placing cymbals on the drumhead and gently sounding their surfaces, or maybe he conjures his tones via some form of alchemy; god knows as it certainly doesn't sound anything like a snare drum. This might sound highly technical I guess, and it is; but more importantly, I think Sean's work is some of the most radical and beautiful music you could experience: brave, spartan, a slow motion ritual of intensity and concentration.
Tamio Shiraishi is a Japanese sax player, now based in NYC. An original member of Keiji Haino's ferocious Fushitsusha project, where he played drums and synth, Shiraishi's drift towards the sax sits way outside most free or avant garde conceptions; instead of loud iron lung blasts of noise, Tamio bites down hard and coaxes tones that resemble the internal head-rush of breath on a cold morning, the far off gurgling of streams, or piercing bird calls, that seem to emanate from between your ears. Tamio has often played in unusual outdoor locations, in Berlin and Tokyo as well as in the USA.
Ikuro Takahashi
Ikuro Takahashi might be a familiar name to some for his role as drummer/percussionist with many of the most notable Japanese underground acts of the past 25 years (High Rise, Kosokuya, Fushitsusha, Maher Shalal Hash Baz, LSD March to name but a few). On Domori to Sanshu he presents another look into his long running work with electronics. The two tracks on the CD consist of a live performance for oscillators and percussion followed by a computer composition in which Takahashi uses techniques of layering, looping and stretching sources to create immersive fields of sound. The live piece adds some space defining percussion for a brief temporal anchor before enveloping you once again in the high end chatter of up to 100 tiny oscillators. The computer piece by contrast offers no such reference points, instead leaving the listener submerged in a low end organic rumble that manages by turns to be both soothing and disorienting.
Denis Wood
Denis Wood is a geographer and map theoretician. His early work was in psycho-geography as developed by geographers and city planners in New England in the 1960s. His path-breaking dissertation was called I Don't Want To, But I Will (1973). It was during this time that he wrote the papers “Shadowed Spaces” and “In Defense of Indefensible Space.” Later he taught at the College of Design at North Carolina State University and at Duke University. He's now best known for The Power of Maps which demystified maps (1992); Home Rules, about culture, family, and living rooms (1994); Five Billion Years of Global Change (2004); Seeing Through Maps (2001, 2006); and Making Maps (2005).
How to Book
Tickets can be booked through the DCA box office: 01382 909 900
For Easterhouse tickets call The Bridge: number TBC
To make these events accessible and easy to attend, we've made them ticketed but free.
Each location is different, but places are very limited, so if you don't want to be disappointed please call the box office to reserve your place. Tickets can be collected at the rendezvous location 30mins before each show.
Give your phone and email details to the box office so we can inform you of the rendezvous location and time.
If you think you might not be able to make it along after having reserved a ticket, then please call the box office so that so someone else can take your place. Please do this by the morning of the performance date.
The access to most of the performances spaces involve stairs. If you have any particular access requirements and would like to know if any of the performances are suitable for you, then please call the box office.