Press Release: CIRCA Presents Arca, Untitled
CIRCA PRESENTS ARCA’S WARPED BEAUTY
(London, Piccadilly Circus) 1 January 2022 ➳ The ground-breaking experimental artist, Arca invites audiences to enter into a sci-fi playground for Untitled, CIRCA’s new commission which will premiere on Piccadilly Lights in London and on a global network of screens in Los Angeles, Milan, Melbourne, New York, Seoul and Tokyo on New Year’s Day and throughout January 2022 daily at 20:22.
Blurring the line between art and technology, Arca trained an algorithm with 31 images of her mixed media paintings, allowing these material real-world artworks to transcend the physical realm to debut her emergence as a visual artist on the global stage.
Arca said: “I hope you are compelled by these interpolated paintings of mine to take a moment and let the visual ASMR produce pleasure, allow for a moment of respite and solace, the experience of warped beauty.”
Alejandra Ghersi Rodríguez, known professionally as Arca, is one of the most prolific and visionary artists of her generation. She has released eight studio albums, including Arca (2017), and the Kick quintet, starting with Kick (2020). She has contributed production work to artists such as Björk, Kanye West, FKA twigs and Kelela. Arca’s fluency in different media is defined by the limitless growth of her practice from a musician, producer and performer to a truly multi-disciplinary artist.
Comprising twelve revolutionary acts of imagination, CIRCA 2022 draws inspiration from the fiction of Ursula K. Le Guin, Octavia Butler and the theory of bells hooks, and a new history of humanity by David Graeber and David Wengrow to imagine new realities that remind us all of our collective potential to remake the world we inhabit.
Josef O’Connor, Artistic Director, CIRCA, comments: “Arca’s constant forward momentum has resulted in some of the decade’s most progressive and culturally significant work. A true polymath, I am moved by her courage and honoured to present this collaboration fusing art with technology to generate new possibilities and launch the beginning of CIRCA 2022 – a year of world-building.”
PUBLISHED BY CIRCA
This January, Arca has created five new prints:
Published by CIRCA on the occasion of Untitled (2022), Yōkai Destrudo brings together the physical and digital dimensions of Arca’s expansive artistic practice. Derived directly from one of the artist’s original mixed-media paintings, the work captures a moment in which painting, language, technology and mythology converge, reflecting Arca’s ongoing exploration of transformation, mutation and becoming.
The title combines two distinct concepts. Yōkai, drawn from Japanese folklore, refers to supernatural beings, spirits and shapeshifting entities that exist between worlds. Destrudo, a term introduced by psychoanalyst Edoardo Weiss in 1935, describes the energy associated with the death instinct. Together, these ideas form a poetic tension between creation and destruction, attraction and dissolution, reflecting the dualities that frequently inhabit Arca’s work. Across the surface of the image, the phrase Yōkai Destrudo is spray-painted over a richly layered composition, preserving traces of the artist’s original gestures, materials and interventions.
Released alongside Arca’s New Year commission for CIRCA, the print formed part of a wider project exploring the relationship between human creativity and machine intelligence. For Untitled, an algorithm was trained using thirty-one of Arca’s paintings, generating a continuously evolving sequence of images that transformed physical artworks into new digital forms. Broadcast across public screens in London, Los Angeles, Melbourne, Milan, New York, Seoul and Tokyo, the commission marked Arca’s emergence as a visual artist on the global stage while extending her practice beyond music, performance and production into new territories of image-making and world-building.
Also published by CIRCA on the occasion of Untitled (2022), this time-limited series of four hand-signed editions emerges from Arca’s groundbreaking exploration of the space between painting, technology and imagination. Created using StyleGAN, a machine learning process trained on thirty-one of the artist’s original mixed-media paintings, the works transform physical gestures and materials into entirely new visual forms, occupying a territory between the handmade and the algorithmic.
For Arca, technology is not a tool of replication but one of transformation. By allowing an artificial intelligence system to interpret and interpolate her paintings, the artist generates images that are neither wholly human nor wholly machine-made. The resulting compositions exist in a state of perpetual mutation, reflecting themes that run throughout her wider practice: fluidity, hybridity, emergence and the continual reinvention of identity.
Released alongside Arca’s New Year commission for CIRCA, the editions formed part of a wider public artwork broadcast across London, Los Angeles, Melbourne, Milan, New York, Seoul and Tokyo. Created in collaboration with CIRCA x Dazed Class of 2021 finalist, Christina Anagnostou, who trained the algorithm using Arca’s paintings, Untitled marked the artist’s emergence as a visual artist on the global stage. Simultaneously intimate and expansive, the series invites viewers into a speculative world where art and technology converge to generate new possibilities for image-making and perception.
NOTES TO EDITORS
SCREENING GLOBALLY
Untitled by Arca can be viewed 1-31 January 2022 at the following times and locations worldwide:
- 20:22 BST – London, Piccadilly Lights
- 20:22 CET – Los Angeles, Pendry Hotel
- 20:22 CET – Berlin, Limes, Kurfürstendamm
- 20:22 AEDT – Melbourne, Fed Square
- 20:22 UTC – Milan, Luxottica, Piazzale Cadorna
- 20:22 EST – New York, Luxottica, Times Square
- 20:22 KST – Seoul, COEX K-Pop Square
- 20:22 JPY – Tokyo, Shibuya Crossing, Neo Shibuya TV
ABOUT ARCA
Arca is one of the most visionary and genre-defying artists of her generation. Working across music, performance, visual art and technology, she has built a practice that challenges conventional ideas of identity, authorship and transformation. Through works that blur the boundaries between the physical and digital, the human and machine, the intimate and the monumental, Arca has become a defining voice in contemporary culture.
Born Alejandra Ghersi in Caracas, Venezuela, Arca first emerged as a groundbreaking producer and musician whose radical approach to sound reshaped the landscape of experimental and popular music alike. Her collaborations with artists including Björk, Rosalía, FKA twigs and Kanye West established her as one of the most influential creative figures working today, while her own albums expanded the possibilities of electronic music through a deeply personal exploration of gender, embodiment and self-invention.
ABOUT CIRCA
CIRCA is a digital art and culture platform with purpose. We stop the clock on global media spaces every evening at 20:22 and mobilise the world’s greatest creative minds to broadcast unique works that consider our world today, circa 2022. The funds we generate from artist print sales drive the #CIRCAECONOMY – a circular model that supports our free public art programme and creates life-changing opportunities for the art & culture community.
Since launching in October 2020 on London’s iconic Piccadilly Lights, CIRCA has commissioned new work from rising and established artists including Ai Weiwei, Cauleen Smith, Eddie Peake, Anne Imhof, Patti Smith, Tony Cokes, Emma Talbot, Vivienne Westwood, James Barnor, David Hockney, and more.
CIRCA SUPPORTERS
CIRCA has been made possible by Landsec, landlord of Piccadilly Lights, who have kindly donated media space, as a helpful boost to the cultural scene in London’s West End. We are grateful to Piccadilly Lights, Ocean Outdoor, Yunika Vision, CJ Powercast, Luxottica, Fed Square, Pendry West Hollywood for their support this month in supporting our free public art programme.
SOCIAL MEDIA
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PRESS OFFICE
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