Arca repeatedly implores the listener to “speak for your self-states,” amidst an eruption of artillery fire and thundering kicks. “I’m asking for recognition that we have multiple selves without denying that there’s a singular unit,” she says, “I want to be seen as an ecosystem of minor self-states without being stripped of the dignity of being a whole.” For Arca, it’s about bringing together all of these different facets of (the) self and her work without having to feel beholden to any given one.
For the video of Nonbinary, Arca collaborated with visual artist Frederik Heyman.
Video credits:
Directed by Frederik Heyman
Concept and scenario by Frederik Heyman and Arca
Symbolic gestation by Alejandra Ghersi
A boundary-breaking musician, producer and visual artist, Alejandra Ghersi’s (b. 1989) work as Arca helped to define the cutting edges and intersections of those fields over the last decade. Her fluency in a range of media is echoed by the diversity of genres present in her music—from rhythmic influences of her native Venezuela to experimental hip-hop and IDM. Her work beyond music pushes towards a transhuman experience, exploring themes of mutation, the monstrous and challenging contemporary conceptions of beauty.
She has contributed production work to artists such as Björk, Kanye West, FKA twigs, Kelela, and Frank Ocean, and released four studio albums. Her latest album KiCk i, 2020, features contributions from SOPHIE, Rosalía and Björk. Arca has performed at multiple venues, including MoMA PS1, New York, jointly with visual artist Jesse Kanda, and The Shed’s Griffin Theater, New York. Arca lives and works in Barcelona.
Technology and the human body are the protagonists of Frederik Heyman’s (b. 1984) work. In his meticulously arranged compositions, he brings together a broad array of multimedia practices, mostly presented as installation or video in digitally altered environments. Using photogrammetry and 3D scanning that represent the passage of time for the artist, he explores duration, memory and the desire to transcend the limitations of humanity.
His cryptic digital creations and daring ideas of beauty have placed him at the forefront of computer-generated aesthetics of the human form beyond mortal existence. Heyman lives and works in Antwerp.
Arca and Frederik Heyman have collaborated in multiple projects since 2019, with an extraordinary new endeavour to be unveiled in summer 2021.