Coinciding with today’s release of her album KiCK i, Arca has surprised her fans with an extra little treat in the form of a mind-melting new music video for the single “Mequetrefe”. A derogatory term in her native Spanish for a silly or insignificant man, Arca uses “Mequetrefe” as the song’s title as a means of reclaiming its negative connotations; the lyrics follow a woman who in defiance of the verbal abuse she suffers in the streets, refuses to be cowed into taking a taxi to the club.
The woman is of course a proxy for Arca herself, though it’s important to note that being a trans woman means the insult – which deliberately uses a masculine word – has cruelly transphobic implications. It’s a testament to the Venezuelan producer that she not only withstands the attack, but belittles her abusers by wearing their slur as a badge of honour.
First made available to stream digitally on the 17th, NME reported that Arca considered “Mequetrefe” to be a manifesto in “the tenderness behind expressing who you are without shame, and the confidence and bravery it requires”. As with previous singles “Time” and “Nonbinary”, the song has now received visual treatment with a video co-directed by Arca and her partner Carlos Sáez.
Dreamt up and filmed by the two of them whilst isolating together, Arca and Sáez approached the Shanghai-based animator Kynan Puru Watt who fed close to 10,000 frames of Arca into a computer program to create the shifting, mutating face-to-face shots that make up the video. In an Instagram that was posted today, she called the production of the video “one of the most alchemical transformative processes I’ve ever experienced”, thanking the “vision, patience, boldness, and sensitivity” of her two collaborators.
Born in Caracas 31 years ago as Alejandro Ghersi, transition has been a recurring motif in Arca’s life. Moving from Connecticut back to Caracas during her childhood, the Venezuelan began to make a name for herself by producing avant-garde electropop from her bedroom, before returning to the US to study at the Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music at NYU. As her following grew, she gained high-profile production credits on Kanye West’s wildly experimental Yeezus album, as well as several early FKA twigs EPs. In 2014 she moved to Dalston in East London where she has since lived, and turned more heads by producing three of the songs on FKA twigs’ debut album, as well as much of the programming for Björk’s Vulnicura (who provides vocals on the KiCK i track “Afterwards”). In 2018, Arca came out as a trans woman, and has since been known privately by the feminine form of her name ‘Alejandra’.
KiCK i will be Arca’s first new album since her 2017 self-titled project, though earlier this month she released the hour long single “@@@@@” as well as the charity single “unconditional” with another guest on her new album, Shygirl. KiCK i is available to stream and download now, with a vinyl release coming next month via XL Recordings. Watch the video for “Mequetrefe” below:
