WATCH: Arca Is Hypnotizing in ‘Electra Rex’ & ‘Prada/Rakata’ Videos
Arca is back with new music videos for her latest singles “Prada/Rakata” and “Elektra Rex” from her KiCk ii album.
In a computer-generated music video, Arco presents “Prada/Rakata” singles together in a stunning feat. Viewers are treated to a visual experience that only the hyper-artistic mind behind “Anoche” and “Born Yesterday” could dream up.
The CGI renderings of Arca that appear throughout the video are increasingly intricate and mesmerizing building Arca up to a super deity. The opening shot portrays Arca as a statue come to life riding an animal before becoming a kind of science experiment you’d see in a government lab in a movie.
“‘Prada’ is about celebrating psychosexual versatility; a song explicitly about transness and nonbinary modes of relating the sexual energy of the collective subconscious as a celebration of life,” Arca said in a statement about the new single, according to Fader.
“Elektra Rex” features the singer with friends dressed in nonbinary, futuristic outfits dancing in front of Palaça dels Àngels in Barcelona. Directed by Carlota Guerrero, the music video takes ballroom-style walking and voguing to the plaza before turning into a writhing pile of nonbinary bodies for all to see.
“‘Electra Rex’ is a new archetype I propose in reference to commonly understood ideas of Freud regarding the oedipal complex: Oedipus Rex kills the father and unknowingly making love to the mother,” Arca explains in a statement. “Electra complex posits the binary opposite: killing the mother and unknowingly making love to the father. And so I am the first to propose a nonbinary psychosexual narrative to avoid falling into the same generational tragic blind spots.”
It is clear that Arca has taken her journey to discover her gender identity and turned it into incredible art. The representation that Arca provides to nonbinary and trans people in our communities is admirable and so important.