Hide and Seek (Arika@Tramway)

Our languages, habits, desires; our race, sexuality and gender: none of these originate from within our selves so much as they're prescribed by social norms.

First page of the booklet promoting Arika Episode 5 (Hidden in Plain Sight).

Having done Marxism, experimental music, Black Power and so on and so forth, Arika are aiming for gender politics of the most bracing nature. If the history of experimental art in the twentieth century was an energetic breaking and blending of boundaries (and it might have been), does this make the collision of gender identity and feminism the most experimental of all art forms, to the extent that it is barely recognised as art?

I can remember a time when I would shout "heteronormative" every so often, just to prove my loyalty to queer politics.

Arika's shift away from a series of experimental music festivals to a series of experimental festivals has taken in art forms that are more comfortably aligned with choreography or Live Art. The twin curators of Arika (who both shy away from the job description and publicity) have shown an influence not so much in the aesthetics of contemporary art but the communities that surround it. Episode 5 has a look at various communities that are not so much defined by what they are, but what they are not.

"You know how the LGBTQ movement is preoccupied with visibility?" he replied. "Here's a little irony when it comes to the T and Q. Visibility might not be the issue. Some trans persons are trying to pass, and that makes visibility the last thing on their mind."

In coverage of a recent court case, the headline used the phrase "transwoman" when the subject was a  "transman."

What is the relationship between the idea of visibility in these two statements?

The Friday Night at Episode 5 might well be the highlight. It slaps together two of the USA's most intriguing dance movements of the 1960s: voguing ballrooms and the post-modern choreography centred around The Judson Church. On the one hand, a populist social dance; on the other, a specialised deconstruction of high art dance.

Are the flames from the fires lit in the 1960s still licking at the heels of the contemporary artist?

Episode 5: Hidden in Plain Sight (Tramway 24 – 26 May & Stereo club night 24 May) 

Events: £14 Festival Pass / £6 Day Pass 

Full programme.