Arca & Jesse Kanda played Brooklyn Steel (pics & videos -- some NSFW)
Arca has been playing a few shows with visual artist and frequent collaborator Jesse Kanda (who also often works with FKA twigs). Last night’s (7/6) was at Brooklyn Steel, where after an opening set from DJ Freedom, Kanda projected visuals onto a screen behind him, while Arca sang, paced, and writhed on a catwalk jutting out into the crowd. Crack Magazine attended the Roundhouse London show in April, and they wrote:
Kanda’s input is as crucial as Arca’s. At times he displayed images that were just generally beguiling — including what resembled a firework exploding in slow motion underwater — but usually they existed somewhere between the beautiful and the grotesque. Be it the slow, ugly sensuality of snakes writhing in a pool of shallow tank water or the alien figure accompanying Sad Bitch, dancing slowly with its back to the audience, his focus was on physicality. Kanda’s visuals allowed Arca’s on-stage performance to reach a fever pitch he may have struggled to otherwise, culminating in a graphic depiction of anal fisting, a vivid realisation of his BDSM inspirations and fearless expressions of queerness.
Arca made a series of seamless costume changes and spent the majority of the performance with most of his body exposed, surrounded on all sides by his audience. He looked at home like that, at once the most powerful and the most vulnerable person in the room, an impression that was cemented on the many occasions he laid his voice bear on album tracks such as Desafío and Piel, a world away from the pitch bending vocals he’d deployed on previous albums.
Pictures from last night’s show (some are NSFW) are in the gallery above, and you can watch a few video clips below.
Arca goes on to play Pitchfork Festival and FYF Fest, the latter both on his own and as a member of Bjork’s band.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BWP_TPSjiUN/
https://www.instagram.com/p/BWP5x7HhtG1/
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most photos by Amanda Hatfield
