Experimental music producer and artist, Alejandro Ghersi, also often known as Arca, creates otherworldly and yet intimate music. Dissonant and distorting, the previous child star from Venezuela first gained attention back in 2014 together with his album Xen – a critical success that was followed up by the 2015 Mutant. The addition of his vocals to his self-titled third album released last 12 months (and chosen by Dazed as one of the best album of 2017) brought a good looking human element to his signature harshness. Visually Arca plays with and pushes against the boundaries of normative gender, often donning high heels not only in his performances and music videos, but in on a regular basis life. Skirts, lipstick, and corsets are all a part of Arca’s visual language, in addition to fetish gear, latex outfits and bondage. Intensely sexual, Arca’s art can also be injected with elements of horror and violence, often coming from collaboration with long-time friend and Dazed Beauty Community member, Jesse Kanda.

It’s Arca’s attraction to the perverse, and his ability to seek out the sweetness in it, that has long appealed to 26-year-old British author Charlie Fox, who wrote in praise of Arca in his recent book, This Young Monster. Championed by heavyweights equivalent to John Waters and Hilton Als, This Young Monster is a celebration of the ugly, the weird, and the transgressive. After publishing it, Charlie sent a replica to Arca, who by this point was still a stranger. We arranged for the 2 self-confessed outsiders to satisfy on Skype. That is what happened.

“Being an incurable mutant, I never had the ‘normal’ response to Arca’s records or videos. Yup, I am going ‘Wow’ and feel sick and horny but that just means I feel at home, as if he’s stomping around inside my very own brain. He takes stuff condemned as perverse, warped or frightening and rips it open to disclose something so beautiful it breaks your heart. It’s a magic trick and it’s about love. That’s my whole thing, too (in the event you touch the scary monster, something magical will occur) so we talked.  Ages ago, I sent him a replica of my book, This Young Monster, with a quote by Selina Kyle (a.k.a. Catwoman) from Tim Burton’s masterpiece Batman Returns scribbled on a ripped birthday card and snuck between the pic of a werewolf holding a severed head and a few kids on Halloween: “Sickos never scare me,” she purrs, “at the least they’re committed…” I Skyped him in my South East London bedroom on a dismal Friday afternoon. We discussed panic attacks, being grotesque, nightmare eagles and X-Men. I forgot to ask him if he’d ever cover Madonna’s ‘Justify My Love’. Perhaps for Xmas? He had the book in his hands and, to interrupt the virtual ice, I took a screenshot of him licking it.

Arca: That scene modified my life.

Charlie Fox: Those early Tim Burton movies mean a lot to me. Like, I just desired to have that scary power and be Catwoman.

Arca: Yeah, you might be, girl! The Eartha Kitt one was legend, too, but that scene where she opens up the closet and starts cutting up all the lovable t-shirts is so symbolic. It’s sort of sad because [Catwoman’s life] is about empowerment at the associated fee of affection.

Charlie Fox: I just still wanna be that. I still wanna have— (making hands jagged and catlike)

Arca: (pawing on the screen): Claws!

Charlie Fox:  Yeah! I just desired to experience the darkness, having fun with every little thing you’re not allowed to do. Spray every little thing black.

Arca: It’s not possible to exorcise the darkness out of you. We are able to pretend it’s not there until something bursts. We would like to be rigid and be only this one thing so I’m good, I’m not dirty.

Charlie Fox:  Shame is a waste of time.

Arca: It will probably be window to explore as long as you don’t get into compulsion. Compulsion is a behaviour that short-circuits you out of feeling ashamed and you then feel triple-ashamed afterwards. You get that with every kind of self-harm.

Charlie Fox: And it comes out of curiosity, too. If you’ve gotten an odd relationship to your body, you simply wanna know what’s occurring inside there.

Arca: Once I was really young, I got this kids book on the mind. One part was about blindspots in our vision and after I got here into contact with the undeniable fact that [we had] blindspots, it blew my mind. One other chapter was about lucid dreaming…

Charlie Fox: I had a very strange dream the opposite night. I used to be in bed with this eagle and it began clawing the back of my neck. It was a beautiful bird but it surely really hurt. Once I woke up, I could still feel the scarring and pain from this eagle on the back of my neck. I used to be really into it.

Arca: That seems like the eagle in bed is you. And the you-in-bed is one other you, and the eagle’s attempting to say ‘Hi!’ and wake you up.

Charlie Fox: Yes! That’s what it’s! [Laughs]

Arca: We attempt to banish whole inner realms. Sometimes you’ve gotten to the touch the thing inside you’re most afraid of and see what happens while you touch it quite than look away from it on a regular basis.

Charlie Fox: That’s what I attempt to do on a regular basis. Lick the eagle. Attempt to empathise with things that I’d think are repulsive or wanna withdraw from or whatever. I wanna get inside them and allow them to ooze throughout me.

Arca: Beautiful.

Charlie Fox: And that’s all the time scary.

Arca: Fucking terrifying! But we get too bogged down in language and rationality.

Charlie Fox: I used to be super depressed as a baby after I learnt I couldn’t turn into an animal. I could never grow fur…

Arca: You would get fur implanted! We are able to change our bodies. Fuck the folks that would find that an issue. We’re not answerable for determining why something feels good because that feels eerily just like feeling guilty about something, quite than simply feeling it. Like kids are only creating ways to perceive and express themselves on the earth before we predict up all these dumb-ass rules.

Charlie Fox:  The time after I feel most comfortable is when there’s some element of costume or transformation that I can apply to myself and I don’t see that artifice as bad or inauthentic.

Arca: Any individual fucking tell me what ‘authentic’ is to my face! Explain it. And as they stumble of their words, they’d just realise they’re talking about words, not experience or sensuality. There’s blood and violent imagery in my videos. I don’t know why. It’s… mystical, right? That word is corny.

Charlie Fox: But it surely’s right. Another thing makes that stuff come out. I never understand why I wanna make my things. Why did I wanna transform into a lady within the book? Grotesque thoughts fire me up.

Arca: It’s grotesque to consider the body we inhabit we wish to inhabit 24/7.

Charlie Fox: Yeah!

Arca: But [at the same time] I like grotesque, it’s a compliment.

Charlie Fox: It’s the most well liked thing.

Arca: You’re identifying a vector of how something’s alleged to move and moving antagonistically inside it. It’s beautiful but confusing, too, it causes anxiety. You only must behold the thrash metal solo of the universe. Like if you’ve gotten a panic attack and you possibly can’t tell in the event you’re respiration or not.

Charlie Fox: Oh, the air gets solid. It’s horridly sensual. It animates every a part of your body and sets it on fire.

Arca: I like that you just don’t rush to pathologise it but make it sensual. You possibly can swerve a panic attack but she’s gonna have a cigarette and are available back.

Charlie Fox: It’s all the time coming. I remember one where I felt like I used to be only a head. A suffocating head that never knew breathe.

Arca: Wow, that’s hard.

Charlie Fox: That’s why after I’m working I wanna have demonic fun: making things melt, making things grow where they shouldn’t.

Arca: You grow to be the darkness and it recognises you as one among your personal. A monster is an aberration. Perhaps it didn’t wanna be bad but when it gets poked and prodded, it shockwaves.

Charlie Fox: And I all the time recognised myself far more in those characters. I used to be like, ‘That’s me!’

Arca: Like Psylocke from X-Men, she knew every little thing about fashion and she or he shot pink energy out of her hands.

Charlie Fox:  I liked the Beast. He was a thinker but he had this deep rage and I used to be so indignant as a child. Being scary is a weapon.

Arca: Like in Coco, the Pixar movie, where there’s one death, you go to the Land of the Dead, and there’s the ultimate death where you’re forgotten. It’s chilling.

Charlie Fox: That’s one of the best feeling when it’s something you possibly can’t name. A shiver.

Arca: Yes! I’m pretty good at moving into states of fear and sadness, let me try something else. It’s a game I’m playing in my head, feeling around at the hours of darkness and I can find what’s soft and as a substitute of retreating from that to something sharp which may cut me the fuck up, I can go along with the soft thing.

Charlie Fox: Let it cover you.

Arca: I like skincare loads. The acidity of the ecosystem that lives in our face. This one queen on the pharmacist was like, Do this, it’s really good for stains. I went, (mock-horrified): ‘Stains?!’

Charlie Fox: Witch!

Arca: Like in The Sixth Sense with the mom who poisons her daughter. That film scared the living shit out of me.

Charlie Fox: So scary because there’s no quarantine between the size: the dead persons are just there.

Arca: Yes! OK, let’s meet next time I’m in London.

Charlie Fox: Yeah, howl for me. Once I was a baby, I might stand outside, howling like a wolf within the suburbs. All the youngsters that I never saw all the time howled back like this weird chorus.

Arca: Oh my god, that’s so beautiful, I’m gagging.

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