Arca might just be the most important performer on the Manchester International Festival schedule. A collaborator of both Björk and FKA Twigs — the two other highlights of the season, as well as a producer for Kanye West, he is certainly one of the most important, relevant and vital artists in the world right now. The 25-year old Venezuelan devours musical styles and performative genders omnivorously to create a genre-defying live show that is surprising and electrifying.
Arca opened his set at Manchester International Festival with the sound of screaming monkeys, followed by pulsing industrial machine noises that blended seamlessly with Jesse Kanda‘s visuals. Were we inside of a beer glass as it fills? Or in the fat-catching bag of a liposuction machine perhaps? No; as the visuals expanded for greater perspective, it was revealed that we were progressing through a carwash, being powerwashed from all sides and licked clean by rows of flailing pink tongues. It was a perfect metaphor for the set, which flowed through intense periods of dense digital forestry into tender, sensual and cleansing sonic clearings.
In the Hallé St Peter’s, a Grade 2 listed Church more often used for Orchestral rehearsals, Arca’s classical keyboard work sounded epic, reverent even. We were worshipping in the church of the body, both human and alien, genderless and gyrating. At points, Arca stepped away from the decks to mirror Kanda’s visual of a dark figure facing away and dancing. In a high-waisted girdle, suspenders, thigh-high, laced-up black glitter boots and a Hood By Air padlock neck chain, Arca wound his body in a sensuous mirror image.
To a slamming, industrial gabber beat, Arca stormed to the end of the runway-shaped stage and delivered a vocal that chops between heavy metal and hip-hop, rapping seemingly in Spanish. Standing 7-feet-tall in his platforms, punching his arms in the air like a hip-hop star and dropping to the ground like a gogo dancer, Arca was a powerful, imposing figure. When he jumped down off the stage to rap directly into our faces, we stood there in awe, somewhere between terror and ecstasy.
The music reeled through distorted deep house beats and machine-like bleeps, into breathy soundscapes, electric crackles and stabbing synths, via steel drums, jazz horns and a multitude of evocative noises that are difficult to place or name. Kanda’s fleshy distortions, their Predator-like faces sitting atop writhing mercury bodies, were captivating and strange, seemingly playing with ideas of gaze, objectification and subversion.
It would be easy to label the performance as something like “an apocalyptic rave in the depths of a digital world,” but it was so much more–something genuinely new.
Credits
Text Charlotte Gush
Visual Jesse Kanda