All of this was typical for Arca, the professional name of Alejandra Ghersi, a Venezuelan musician who has built her reputation through glitchy, ambient, and reggaeton-inspired production work for artists like Kanye West, FKA Twigs, and Rosalía. Then came her own rise through inventive, artistic performances—like the five-album KiCk cycle (2020–2021)—which went hand in hand with performative artistry, as evidenced in her Instagram’s flurry of techno-punk memes and frank discussions of her evolving gender identity.
What wound up happening during Mutant;Destrudo, in the Armory’s cavernous Drill Hall, was more or less a typical (if phenomenally calibrated) concert performance—yet its very existence in that very traditional mode paradoxically pushed it further into performance art. In its review, the New York Times called Arca a “Schrödinger’s diva, simultaneously performing stardom and deconstructing it.” It’s a good way to put it since, even after experiencing her show firsthand, I had some questions.
Photo: Annie Forrest
Because, while she performed some of her best-known songs, like “Reverie” and “Mequetrefe,” the two-hour show was anything but ordinary. Otherworldly lullabies turned to four-on-the-floor bangers turned to breathy descriptions of the new technologies the show was using, told in an excitable flurry so intimate that it verged on the conspiratorial. Some of these innovations emerged without explanation, suggesting a finished-stage showcase of Arca’s artistry; others seemed to be purposely presented as works in progress. The talent on display was never in doubt, though, her vocals as ethereal or city-slick as she demanded they be.
The bare stage was flanked by two extensions: one featuring an “augmented piano,” on which magnets created a electromagnetic field that amplified the keys’ sensitivity, causing them to react before even being touched, and a sort of jungle gym on which she spun vertically on gymnastic rings; the other a Moog synthesizer suspended on four chains, like something you’d see in a mad scientist’s lab. A giant screen on the center wall overlooked a catwalk and the accessible audience risers dividing the hall. At one point, she wore what she referred to as “MIDI heels,” which created, then distorted, sound with her every step. When one of these stopped working, she tapped her headpiece mic and asked her sound guy for more beats in her ears, ushering the production’s behind-the-scenes elements front and center. After taking the heels off, she led the mostly standing audience around the floor in a Catholic pageant of adulation.