Arca, the Pandemic, and Deconstructing the Club with ‘KiCk i’

Arca has found her footing in club music, so it’s no surprise that the genderqueer musician continued the conversation about queerness with  club-reggaeton hits exploring trans identity in a deeply turbulent period — the COVID-19 pandemic.

Written by Zachary Bolash

Photo courtesy of David Hauser

Some club music serves merely as background music, a major contributing force to the fun and unabashed sleaze of the club scene. Remixes of 2000s pop classics and thumping house tracks soundtrack the dancing escapades of many young people. But, at the beginning of the 2020s, the pandemic left partygoers bereft of the club. .

In 2020, the Covid-19 virus turned the world upside down, which necessitated nationwide lockdowns. Austin’s popular gay club BT2 closed permanently after the pandemic. The pandemic denied nightlife lovers a vital third space on the dancefloor and instead sparked a nearly year-long period of reflection on identity and politics. The club ceased to exist as a physical space and retreated into the conceptual. This uncertain time offered an unexpected silver lining — it existed as the perfect moment for electronic record producer Arca to intellectualize club music and transform it into a profoundly challenging art form. With her 2020 album KiCk i, she deconstructed the typical nightlife routine and found nuggets of artistic merit often overshadowed by the functional and technical aspects of club music. 

Before the pandemic, however, Arca established herself as a prolific electronic musician. The artist’s earlier releases featured spellbinding electronic tracks, ranging from manic sound collages such as “Mutant” to tragic ballads like “Defasio.” Arca also worked as a producer to artists like Björk on Vulnicura and FKA Twigs on EP2.

On Apr. 30, 2020, Arca released "Nonbinary," the firestarter single of KiCk i. The song, even by 2020 social standards, deeply challenged conservatism and prudishness. From the provocative single cover art of Arca brandishing her crotch with a large iron knuckle to the literal deconstruction, or better yet, total destruction, of gender identity in her badass repartee: "I do what I wanna when I wanna do it" / "Bitch, I got that bags to prove it." With this track, Arca approached club music from a novel and transgressive angle. The song veers between Arca’s spoken word, where she affirms her nonbinary identity — hence the title track: “Ask me about my luck / Yeah, I've been lucky / And I've been unlucky / It's both / Don't put your shit on me.” The track then explodes, with industrial beats overtaking its slow, brooding tempo as Arca raps: “I can be sexy or I could be sad / Act bad just to be sweet / What a treat / It is to be / Nonbinary.” This track’s sonic jerkiness, paired with its grandiose ‘fuck you’ to gender norms, acts as a thesis to KiCk i's entire sound — transgressive and noisy. 

Less than a month later, the Venezuelan artist released the next single “Time,” sonically fitting the club's more psychedelic and ephemeral aspects. The song is an electronic ballad infused with the pulsations and thumps of classic club music. While Arca sensually belts, "I know you want it" / "Time to let it out," the glistening and sparkling synthesizers texturize the track: the type of slow, hypnotic atmospheric rhythms expectant of electronic music. However, this single also is an expression of unapologetic queerness. The music video features Arca, a trans woman, and her lover sensually traversing the city, an act of making queer love visible through sounds often associated with queerness: dance music. 

The other two singles of KiCk i fall squarely between the slow gyrations of "Time" and the mean snarl of "Nonbinary." The track "Mequetrefe" fuses sharp beats with hypnotic reggaeton sounds while transgressing gender norms in Arca's declaration that: "Ella vino caminando desde su casa / Ella no toma taxi / Que la vean, que la vean en las calles” (“She came walking from her house / She doesn't take a taxi / Let them see her / Let them see her in the streets”). Arca demands her deserved attention and space as a trans woman — an act of radical self-determination on the unorthodox background of club music and society’s virulent transphobia. The simple act of mentioning how she, as a trans woman, unapologetically presents herself in public” by refusing a taxi, claims space and bites back against the transphobic order that sics physical and emotional violence on trans women. 

"KLK" follows a similar thread, inspired by Latin music tradition with shimmering electronic tones, a sound similar to other tracks in the album fissions the joy of tracks like “Mequetrefe” and the cacophonous sound of “Nonbinary.” On this track, the bombastic producers of Arca and Cardopusher play a sonic tug-of-war with Spanish musician Rosalía. While the songstress croons over a fast-paced reggaeton beat, Arca undercuts the track’s softness with her sharp vocals and lyrical exclamations to: “Dime, qué lo, ah / Dime, ¿qué lo que” (“Tell me what / Tell me what”). Overall, this track fuses the transgressive sound of “Mequetrefe” but lacks the political bite of “Nonbinary.” Here, Arca takes a political stance in eschewing politics altogether — rejecting the politicization of queer bodies in favor of much lighter, euphoric sound. Queer philosopher Judith Butler suggests that queer terminology ultimately refers queer bodies back to broader political discourses. When this reference occurs, politics forces queer, and especially trans people, into situations wherein they must defend their identities. Therefore, Arca's not mentioning her identity in this track in an otherwise political album constitutes an act of protest and does not kowtow to a broader political order as the artist quietly refuses the notion that she must defend her existence.   

As a whole, the queerness of KiCk i made listeners dance — but also think. While DJs could spin any of KiCk i's high-energy tracks over the dance floor, one can also independently listen to the album as a challenging and transgressive art form. In the backdrop of many songs, Arca flaunts her identity as a trans woman and expresses the complex feelings and dynamics therein; in the "Time" music video, for instance, her boyfriend appears dressed as a devil, possibly suggesting how she reckoned with internalized transphobia in navigating romance.

Within the rich tapestry of KiCk i lies a timepiece — the full expression of a dynamic, politically liberal culture that began to bubble in response to the United States’ jerk to conservatism in the mid-2010s. On KiCk i, Arca represents the entire arc of this social transformation: a trans woman making transgressive club music during a period of great social upheaval. KiCk i, at its rawest, exists as club music without a physical space — a cerebral body of work that challenges and moves the needle on opposing social conventions. With simple splendor, Kick i uniquely exists as a progressive electronic album that queer people can dance to without fear or judgement.