Mutant;Faith

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"**Mutant;Faith**" was a 4-day performance act by Venezuelan artist Arca. The acts compiled thru September 25-28th, 2019, and were hosted at the These events consisted of Arca doing stunts including interactive experiences, performing prior songs, inflicting objects, pole dancing, giving out speeches, and DJ'ing. All acts had a running time of 90 minutes, except the epilogue, Boundary, which ran for five hours.

## Background

On May 11th 2018, Arca had previously performed at The Shed for their evening show, "A Prelude to The Shed". Arca's show depicted her performing songs, mainly unreleased or from her amid new eponymous self-titled album, on an upside down car, a hospital bed, which depicted her bleeding out an fetus to her 2014 track "Sad Bitch", and her simply roaming around the audience's presence. In September 2019, The Shed collaborated with Arca to host her 4-day, 3 act performance show "Mutant;Faith". During these 4 days, Arca had resided in The Shed, in doing so, the performance show was also known as a "residency show". During the epilogue Boundary, Arca had filmed the music video for the second single of her fourth album, "Time". The event had a policy of no cell phones. All cell phones were locked in a Yondr case and if needed, the audience could unlock their phone in designated areas. However, one of the members of the audience had snuck in a phone, which was used to record and post a clip of Arca and Bjork performing "Afterwards", which at the time was unreleased.

According to the interview for *Vogue*, published on November 1st, 2019, “*At first it was an idea of self-immolation*,” Arca says of her original conceit for these performances. “*It then went through a lot of iterations*.” There were long silences at times, which Arca admits demanded much endurance from the audience. “*That was just my way of trying to let people know that I was present and that I was there, listening, and that I wasn’t on autopilot in any way, shape, or form.*”

Across four days of performances, Arca had worked to break down her process, her inner machinations, bring others into her world, get them to inhabit that space, and feed off one another's energy until the relationship between the two felt symbiotic.

According, to the *Paper* magazine, Mutant;Faith is a manifesto in progress — ever-evolving, adjusting, dissecting, and reconstructing a mode of performance that is by design ephemeral with lasting implications. The show was held together by delicious contradictions that left those who were lucky enough to bear witness irrevocably transformed and ultimately haunted.

## Stage

The Shed's Griffin Theater stage was adorned with Mars-like dirt, housing synthesizers, a baby grand piano, and a host of uncanny forms. A mass of black tendrils lay in the pit, another spread luxuriously across the piano. Each night, Arca reveled in this playground, scraped from the contours of her psyche. According to *Stereogum*, “*This place is my dream come true*,” she gushed, draped in the Venezuelan flag, wig like a gothic Hatsune Miku. A mechanical bull, noise music-emitting 9-foot stripper pole, used for dancing, and a cartoonish skeleton served as landmarks.

## Fashion

Working with stylist Natacha Voranger, Arca’s ever-changing onstage wardrobe mirrored the free-form nature of the show itself. While her show employed cutting-edge technology with all of the robotics and sensors, some of the pieces she wore onstage felt nostalgic by comparison. She brought back the mechanical legs by DigiLegs that Arca wore for her music video for “Reverie.” They were originally designed for cosplay — they can be outfitted in just about any material, including fur, prosthetic skin, and more — but Arca leaves them bare and wears them as stilts. “*They’re beautiful. I want to wear them until I die*,” she says to *Vogue*. Overall, the wardrobe for The Shed show almost charts Arca’s clothing archive over time. “*I don’t throw stuff away. Vivienne Westwood once said something about wearing stuff until it falls apart. I don’t want to abandon pieces — I want to keep them around and let them morph.*”

Also, Arca wore bullfighter’s jacket from the very same music video. She spray-painted it red during one of the performances, which adds yet another chapter to its storied history — it was a handmade piece from Mexico that stylist Akeem Smith originally commissioned for her. Smith and Arca then sent it out to London-based designer Asai, who distressed it, and then on the video shoot artist Jesse Kanda suggested that they treat it with a pearlescent glaze that prosthetics artist John Nolan uses. “*I didn’t identify publicly as a trans woman then, and bullfighting being such a gendered blood sport, it had a different connotation for me this time around. I was thinking a lot about Talk to Her, Hable con Ella, the Pedro Almodóvar film. It’s about someone that has to tape her bullfighter jacket up tight over her breasts*,” Arca says to *Vogue*.

In addition to these ever-changing classics, Arca wanted Voranger to help push her aesthetic limits even further. “*I always encourage her to bring accessories so we can propose a look based on many small pieces and not have too many statement pieces because the story I’m trying to tell is a battle-ready warrior princess in some ways. She’s kind of like Aeon Flux: She has a lot of skin exposed and she’s going through a battlefield.*” With the floor-length, ruffled Vaquera gown that Arca and Voranger paired with the very cyberpunk Ikeuchi helmut, though, Arca reshaped her stylistic conceptions of this character. “*I would never have chosen that because I’m always thinking about this form-fitted silhouette for this warrior princess. I really like that about working with Natcha — she shows me pieces I would have never thought to take off the rack to try on.*” The Venezuelan flag that Arca fashioned into a dress on the first night, too, was Voranger’s idea — Arca just requested the flag, but Voranger insisted that they turn it into a halter dress by installing a makeshift drawstring — and Voranger also introduced Gauntlett Cheng to Arca’s distinct universe, after which she wore one of their signature wrap dresses onstage. There were also pieces from designers that Arca already knew that she loved, including some custom GmbH garments and some from Wesley Berryman (she says she’s obsessed with the Maleficent-esque shoulder silhouettes that he creates).

## Acts

### Gestation

Gestation was the first act of Mutant;Faith. The act was performed on September 25th, 2019.

### Aftercare

Aftercare was the second act of Mutant;Faith. The act was performed on September 26th, 2019. Night two saw Arca perform three cuts off her self-titled album, "Piel," "Reverie," and "Desafío," respectively, before premiering a then-new pillowy pop ballad, "Time," while luxuriating atop the bull. When the track began, she expected it to be the studio cut, but went along with an instrumental, singing the material live for the first time. It sounded far from perfect, but Mutant;Faith was a show where errors became highlights.

This informality gave the shows a sense of intimacy, as if peeking over Arca's shoulder while she was on a creative tear through her studio, calling out instructions to members of the crew that followed her gravitational orbit around the set. All costume and makeup changes happened in real time on stage, adding another dimension of transparency to the whole performance.

One minute Daito Manabe would be running out to tweak a myoelectric sensor hooked up to her arm and the next Juan Alvear would be applying a new set of otherworldly nails, Evanie Frausto brushed Arca's wig as often as possible, but the way she performs — spinning, crashing, and terrorizing the stage — made it impossible to keep the mane in tact. Styled by Natacha Voranger, Arca wore looks from many independent designers like a blue and brown bandage dress from Gauntlett Cheng or a silver silk dress with exaggerated shoulders by Wesley Berryman. The performer/character Arca would repeatedly get stripped down and carefully rebuilt course of each show, only to be dusted with sand almost immediately afterward.

Nights "Gestation" and "Aftercare" both ended with Arca leading the crowd directly from her stage, out of the theater, down the street, and onto the Highline for an even more intimate hangout that further broke down any final barriers between artist and audience. One fan told her that *Mutant* helped him feel beautiful being HIV+, and another gifted her a custom tiara. Arca made everyone carefully listen to the sounds of a helicopter landing nearby. "Feel it through your body," she said, ever the fan of unconventional sounds and how they impact us.

### Ripples

Ripples was the third and final act of Mutant;Faith. The act was performed on September 27th, 2019. By night three, "Ripples," informal rapport between performer and viewer had spilled over into the show itself with Arca adding elements of audience participation throughout. She invited people on stage to dance with her, share their dreams into microphones that warped their vocals to cartoonish proportions, and even play around with one of the same electronic sensors she used to control the surrounding soundscape. There was so much going on that it was almost easy to overlook the fact that Björk, enveloped in a avant-garde dress that somewhat resembled a coffee filter, made a surprise appearance that same night to perform a new collaboration between the two.

## Epilogue

### Boundary

The final day of the residency was devoted to a music video shoot for the "Time," and felt like a distillation of the previous three nights' work. Over the course of five hours, each station on Arca's stage became a scene in her video. Still phoneless, the audience watched as camera operators changed lenses, makeup was touched up, and outfits were slowly changed. Still, there were dramatic moments; while shooting a scene on the pole, Arca's long spear-like fingernails got tangled in her massive extensions and were ripped out, leaving them dangling like a macabre wind chime from a single finger. It wasn't until the director yelled cut that the pain would register across Arca's face as crew members rushed in to tend to the eviscerated nail bed.

As the session moved along, the piped in audio of "Time" would in turn be replaced by freestyle sonic collages of dembow rhythms spliced with the sounds of glass shattering, bombs exploding, and garbled YouTube audio rips from Total Freedom, who throughout the whole performance series was never too far from a pair of CDJs. "Just shred something," Arca frequently invited all four days. As the shoot winded down, the energy in the room was deftly transmuted into an impromptu dance party with members of the audience gleefully being whisked onstage to dance with Carlos Sáez dressed as a devil who had minutes before been passionately making out with Arca on camera.

At last the distinction of performance had been dissolved; the audience and Arca had finally come to meet each other on the same level (or as close as security would let that be).

1. ↑ https://www.vogue.com/vogueworld/article/arca-mutant-faith-shed-performance-style-natacha-voranger
2. ↑ https://www.papermag.com/arca-mutant-faith-the-shed
3. ↑ https://www.stereogum.com/2059763/arca-mutant-faith-performance-the-shed-review/reviews/concert-review/
4. ↑ https://digilegs.com/