Bjork Moma 2015 PDF

Introduction || Klaus Biesenbach
Bad Taste Records is formed; Björk, Sigtryggur Baldursson, Einar Melax, Þor Eldon, Einar Örn Benediktsson, and Bragi Ólafsson start The Sugarcubes Receives the Order of the Falcon, awarded by the President of Iceland Receives the Q Inspiration Award from Robert Wyatt
Named Best International Female at the BRITs for a third time Receives Qwartz honor at the Qwartz Electronic Music Awards
Sugarcubes sign to ex-Flux of Pink Indians Derek Birkett’s independent label, One Little Indian Wins Best Female at the MTV Music Awards Awarded the Polar Music Prize
Wins BRITs Best International Female for the second time Receives two Golden Globe nominations: Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama, and Best Original Song for “I’ve Seen It All” MTV O Music Awards presents Björk with the Digital Genius Award
Kukl join Chumbawamba and Flux of Pink Indians on a miners’ strike benefit tour in the UK Receives six MTV Music Award nominations; “It’s Oh So Quiet” wins Best Choreography in a Video Surrounded: all albums re-mastered for Dolby Digital and surround sound
Releases Surrounded: Wins Webby Artist of the Year
“Wanderlust” video, directed by Encyclopedia Pictura, receives three awards at the UK Music Video Awards:
“Bachelorette” receives award for Best Art Direction at the MTV Video Music Awards Best Art Direction in a Video, Best Indie/Alternative Video, and Video of the Year
Wins Best International Female and Best International Newcomer at the BRIT Awards and performs at the ceremony with PJ Harvey
“All is Full of Love” video, directed by Chris Cunningham, wins Breakthrough Video and Best Special Effects in a Video at the VMAs The Academy of AIM (Association of Independent Music) honors Björk with Outstanding Contribution to Music Award
Receives Best Actress award at the Cannes Film Festival; the film also wins the Palme d’Or Releases Voltaic,, a double CD and DVD encompassing the best of the tours’ live performances
Releases Receives the National Order of Merit awarded by the President of the French Republic and a recorded live session at Olympic Studios, London
Björk moves to London Contributes exclusive instrumental soundtrack to Nick Knight and Alexander McQueen’s installation Angel for “La Beauté en Avignon” exhibition
“I’ve Seen It All” is nominated for Best Original Song at the Oscars
First single, “Human Behaviour,” is accompanied by a Michel Gondry video
Releases
Releases Includes a studio album, apps, new website, educational workshops for children to learn
First single is “Hidden Place,” with a video directed by Inez van Lamsweerde & Vinoodh Matadin and M/M (Paris) about music, nature, and science, and live shows (three-year world tour of month-long residencies in eight cities)
Joins Kukl (meaning “sorcery”) with friends Einar Örn Benediktsson, Sigtryggur Baldursson, Einar Melax, Birgir Mogensen, and Guðlaugur Óttarsson Releases Releases Selmasongs
Selmasongs, soundtrack to the film Dancer in the Dark with Björk using apps to play custom-built musical instruments
Vespertine tour launches at the Grand Rex in Paris with the Novecento Orchestra conducted by Simon Lee, the group Matmos, Zeena Parkins, and an Inuit women’s choir
Releases remix album, Telegram Björk and John Tavener’s collaboration “A Prayer of the Heart” premieres as an accompaniment to Nan Goldin’s Heartbeat photo exhibition at the Pompidou Centre, Paris
First single, “Army of Me,” is accompanied by a Michel Gondry video
Björk attends Oscars in “Swan” dress by Marjan Pejoski, and later performs
Biophilia receives a Grammy for Best Recording Package sleeve, designed by Björk and M/M (Paris)
Releases Releases
preceded by a mini-tour of European clubs produced by Björk, Mark Bell, Timbaland, and Danja Björk, Peter Strickland, and Nick Fenton
First single is “Jóga,” and Michel Gondry directs the video “Earth Intruders” is the first single, with a video directed by Michel Ocelot present Biophilia Live concert film at Tribeca Film Festival
Releases Drawing Restraint soundtrack to the Drawing Restraint 9 film directed by Matthew Barney
Interviews composer Arvo Pärt for the BBC program Modern Minimalists 9,, directed by Matthew Barney
Release of Drawing Restraint 9 Releases “Comet Song,” recorded for the soundtrack of the animated film Moomins and the Comet Chase
Tappi Tíkarrass release their first 5-song EP Sings “Gloomy Sunday” at Alexander McQueen’s memorial in London;
later releases “Trance” as the backing track to a short film made by Nick Knight, titled “To Lee, with Love,” as a tribute to McQueen
Releases Performs a duet, “Flétta,” with Antony and the Johnsons on the release Swanlights
Sugarcubes release their first album, Life’s Too Good,, to critical acclaim in UK and US an a cappella album featuring only voices Björk vocals appear on Death Grips release “The Powers That B”
Releases Greatest Hits and Family Tree
Tree,, with sleeve artwork by artist Gabríela Friðriksdóttir Releases the Biophilia Remix Series 1–7
 Aged twelve, releases a self-titled album, Björk Kukl release The Eye on British anarchist record label, Crass Sugarcubes release second album, Here Today, Tomorrow Next Week! Launches Greatest Hits tour at London Hammersmith Apollo Announces new commission and accompanying retrospective
Releases Live Box set, featuring four CDs, one from each album, and a DVD of live performances of the past ten years at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, curated by Klaus Biesenbach
 Joins punk band Tappi Tíkarrass, whose name translates as “Cork the Bitch’s Ass” Sugarcubes tour the US for the first time and appear on Saturday Night Live Releases Bastards,, a compilation of remixes from Biophilia
Charity compilation of twenty remixes of “Army of Me” released in aid of UNICEF Biophilia Live presented as the Sonic Gala at the 58th BFI London Film Festival
Björk records jazz album Gling-Gló with Trio Guðmundar Ingólfssonar in one day; it goes platinum in Iceland Tetralogia soundtrack composed in collaboration with Gabríela Friðriksdóttir for the latter’s work at the Venice Biennale Nordic Council funds Biophilia Educational Program initiative
Performs at Live8 Tokyo to bring the curriculum to Nordic countries’ schools.
Records two tracks with 808 State, which are released on the group’s Ex:El album First single is “Crystalline” and has a Michel Gondry video
Performs live at the Royal Opera House in London, the first ever contemporary pop artist to do so Biophilia app acquired by Museum of Modern Art, New York,
the first app in the museum’s collection
Accompanied by the Brodsky Quartet in a filmed a cappella performance at the Union Chapel, London
Performs with Dirty Projectors at the Housing Work Bookstore, New York, to raise money for homeless New Yorkers with HIV/AIDS
Cast alongside Catherine Deneuve in Dancer in the Dark Dark,, directed by Lars von Trier Sugarcubes re-form for a one-off concert in their hometown of Reykjavík Joins Darren Aronofsky and Patti Smith
for “Stopp – Let’s Protect the Park” charity concert in Iceland
Björk writes, illustrates, and publishes a short fairytale titled Um Úrnat Performs Schöenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire with conductor Kent Nagano, the Opera Orchestra of Lyon, and musical director Murray Hipkin “Náttúra” featuring vocals from Thom Yorke is released as a stand-alone single with all proceeds going towards the Náttúra Foundation
Meets and interviews Karlheinz Stockhausen for Dazed & Confused magazine
Performs alongside Sigur Rós at Náttúra concert to raise awareness of the destruction of Iceland’s landscape through increased aluminum smelting
Records Live at Shepherds Bush Empire
Empire;; tickets are distributed for free to fan club Performs at the inaugural Fashion Rocks, pairing with Alexander McQueen
Sugarcubes’ Stick Around for Joy is released; the band play their final show before splitting on November 17 at the Limelight, New York Mount Wittenberg Orca is released—a collaboration between the Dirty Projectors and Björk
Performs “Oceania” at the Opening Ceremony of the Olympics in Greece with all digital sales proceeds donated to the National Geographic Society Oceans Initiatives
Release of “When Björk Met Attenborough” documentary
 Enrols in a local children’s music school, where she studies musicology, flute, and recorder Speaks with Jefferson Hack at WIRED conference, London
Performs songs from Debut on MTV Unplugged Björk lends her voice to Anna in the animated film Anna and the Moods
Björk lends her vocals to “Surrender,” a track on Ólöf Arnald’s album Innundir Skinni
                                    
Björk gives birth to her first child, son Sindri Eldon Björk gives birth to her second child, daughter Isadora Bjarkardóttir Barney
COPYRIGHT MATERIAL FOR REFERENCE ONLY

Björk Guðmundsdóttir is born on November 21, in Reykjavík, Iceland, to parents Hildur Hauksdóttir and Guðmundur Gunnarsson I
1 moma klaus cover_UK.indd 1-6 14/11/2014 17:18

Klaus Biesenbach Introduction

in 2015, The Museum of Modern Art in New York dedicated Roots During her teens, from 1980 to 1984, Björk was involved
a large-scale retrospective to Björk, and commissioned a new with a surrealist poetry, painting, and photography collective
work by her, considering her to be one of the defining artistic in 1944, after six hundred years of Danish rule, Iceland in Reykjavík which went by the name of Medúsa. The group
practitioners of our times. At the heart of Björk’s work as declared independence, establishing a new and sovereign members have remained important friends and collaborators,
a seminal composer, singer, and writer is the ongoing creation republic. Björk’s parents were born shortly after the founding including Sjón, Matthías Magnússon, Ólafur Engilbertsson,
of relevant new content, expressed not solely as music, of the republic, and both grew into strong activists and civil Einar Melax, and þór Eldon, to whom Björk was married for
but also as innovative forms that cross all channels of our leaders. Björk’s generation, born twenty years later, were five years and who is the father of her son Sindri. The collective
media-driven society. the children of the first free-born Icelanders. This generation opened Björk up to new ideas, and she began reading Story
were naturally connected to native Icelandic tradition, but also of the Eye by Georges Bataille and The Demon Flower by Jo Imog,
Artists work with the images, sounds, and forms that had an openness to international exchange and opportunities which, she says, “basically became part of my DNA.” 1
surround them in daily life. Younger generations, in particular, to travel. Culturally, for native Icelanders, pagan tradition,
are not only inspired and shaped by work that fits into a frame folkloristic storytelling, and the universal mass-media society Björk was also in the bands Spit and Snot, Exodus, Tappi
or onto a pedestal. Music, images, film, video, words, and sounds collided at an accelerated pace. Tíkarrass, and most notably the punk and orchestral group Kukl
are experienced in real-life social settings such as museums, (1982–1984) and The Sugarcubes (1986–1992), meeting several
galleries, concert halls, and theatres, but also online and After her parents separated when she was a year old, important musicians and collaborators, among them Eldon,
in the media. Björk is a groundbreaking pioneer in connecting Björk was raised in a bohemian environment of creative people Einar Örn Benediktsson, Sigtryggur Baldursson, Einar Melax,
many different creative practices in and around her work. on her mother’s side and responsible craftsmen and later union Birgir Mogensen, Guðlaugur Óttarsson, and Bragi Ólafsson.
An uncompromisingly original and highly accomplished auteur activists on her father’s. Her mother was, as Björk describes Ásmundur Jónsson and Einar Örn Benediktsson were in addition
and solo artist in her composing, singing, and music, she is her, a “dreamer,” who took her out of traditional patriarchy members of a group called Gramm, who owned an Icelandic
notably open to collaboration and interpretation of her output, to live in a commune of musicians and artists on the outskirts indie shop from 1979 to 1985, dealing with music, poetry, and
extending even into education and audience participation. of Reykjavík, a setting which Björk now describes as “a fairy literature, and functioning as a meeting place. Gramm, Kukl
Björk, aged one month.
Over the decades she has developed a highly collaborative tale.” Her paternal grandmother was an abstract painter, who and Medúsa came together to create an indie label called Bad
practice in order to visualize her music and lyrics. Working with took the young Björk to museums. Björk was inspired very early Taste in 1986, which went on to represent The Sugarcubes. While
photographers, film- and video-makers, designers, architects, on to be both the wild, liberal spirit in the more traditional/ Björk was with the band she met Derek Birkett, who at the time
craftsmen, and inventors, she crosses over into all categories of conservative/bourgeois paternal family, while at the same time was the bass guitar player in a British punk band, Flux of Pink
high and low culture, digital and analog, in most creative fields. acting as the responsible “wake-up call” for her mother’s more Indians, and who has been a collaborator, co-conspirator, and
liberal way of life. For the first five years of her life she lived close friend ever since.
With her music itself she bridges the classical and the in the commune as an only child, but then acquired one half-
experimental, the folkloric and the popular, the rural and brother on her mother’s side and three half-brothers and three Musically, Björk broke with the traditions of Beethoven and
the metropolitan, the visceral and the technological, the pagan half-sisters on her father’s. Mozart and with the history of guitar rock while still in music
and ancient with the futuristic and new; she even bridges the school. She wanted to do something more organic and embraced
gaps between man and machine, living beings and dead material. Björk’s musical talent and open nature were evident from Messiaen and Mahler, as well as the chord structures of Kate
a young age. When she was still at school, she would ride Bush and Joni Mitchell as female role models. When Björk was
Björk herself seems to be composed of binaries: aggressively the bus and sing in front of anybody who happened to be sixteen, she traveled to London for the first time and purchased
vulnerable, bold and fragile, wild and sensitive, little girl and on it. She would also sing and improvise while walking to and with saved-up money several albums at a Virgin record store.
femme fatale, innocent creature of nature and romantic mountain from school. She liked to help the teachers distribute food Of the ten to twelve albums she recalls buying, she notes Brian
hiker on the one hand and urban highflyer and metropolitan and snacks to the other schoolchildren, rather than being part Eno and Robert Fripp’s Evening Star, Eno and David Byrne’s
nightlife animal on the other. Driven by instinct and intuition, of the group being cared for. From the ages of five to fifteen, My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, a Kate Bush album, and an album
but at the same time methodical and almost scientific in her in addition to regular school, she attended a specialized music by a band named Hybrid Kids.
ways of exploring new form and content, she creates work school. Several days a week she studied the theory and practice
that is highly personal as well as poetic, and often political and of music, and received a classical music education on the flute Björk’s time with Kukl, The Sugarcubes, and other bands
activist. She is the melancholic, suffering dancer in the dark, and recorder. While in music school, it was clear to Björk that provided her with the opportunity to work on covers, videos,
and at the same time the “violently happy” character singing she was fascinated by the study of musicology—the structure and other visualizations within the protection of the group
“all is full of love.” and composition of songs—which in many ways was one of environment. She often took on the task of communicating and
the important educational principles of her album Biophilia, working with art directors, video directors, and photographers.
As an era-defining artist, she has also been a catalyst released in 2011. At the age of twenty, while pregnant with her first child,
and inspiration for a wider culture. As a woman from she posed with three bananas hanging around her neck for
a geographically peripheral country—Iceland, with its mere In early 1977, when Björk was eleven, she recorded the cover of an Icelandic women’s magazine, and considers this
320,000 inhabitants—she can simultaneously be eccentric her first album, and it made her a national celebrity. Bearing to be the first mature visualization she worked on.
and take center-stage, be experimental and open the Olympic in mind Iceland’s small population—with most living in
games, be alternative and nominated for an Academy Award her home town of Reykjavík—she was not yet comfortable In 1992, Björk moved to London, and she released her
(and shock at the Oscar ceremonies with her radical sense becoming a recognized public figure. Having lost her anonymity, solo album, Debut, the following year. By the mid-1990s, she had
of sartorial expression). she refrained from composing and releasing a second solo album. become a world-famous pop icon. She had lost her anonymity
Instead, she dived into the group dynamics of an art collective again and experienced the commitment of a large fan base that
Over the last 22 years Björk has created an exemplary and several different bands. In so doing, she was working were in the overwhelming majority dedicated and knowledgeable
body of work that is grounded in seven seminal albums. For collaboratively on her creative process, but much less visibly music lovers, though there were exceptions.
each album she has created a complex, multifaceted character, than if acting as a solo artist. It took her until she turned
creating striking visual images that express and embody her twenty-seven to appear on the cover of a solo album again.
music. These characters form the heart of this exploration.

1
Author interview with the artist, May 2014.
2 Klaus Biesenbach Introduction

There were two incidents at airports in Thailand and New When the internet became popular in the 1990s, people In Björk’s work, this motif is perhaps most prominently
Zealand, in which photographers harassed her and her young created fictitious email addresses, such as spiderman@hotmail. featured in the video for “All is Full of Love,” in which robots,
son until she was forced to intervene. Then in 1996, a disturbed It didn’t occur to users in the ’90s that it was a direct address, like despite being electrical machines, are having sensual wet
fan sent her a letter bomb and tragically committed suicide, a phone number; a name recorded in a passport, like a traceable intercourse, with bodily liquids flowing voluptuously without
which he documented and videotaped. Public visibility had identity—one to one. In the pre-Google internet era one would causing any visible shortcircuits. The video, a collaboration
become a double-edged sword. create a character that would not be immediately identifiable. with director Chris Cunningham, was presented in many art
exhibitions of the 1990s, projected and on an auto-repeat loop.
Early on Björk developed strong visual identities; Parallel Worlds The repetitive playing of video art in galleries and listening
recognizable personas that she adopted without hiding herself to a song on a CD in a Discman became like theme songs for
behind them. She developed various creative strategies, among björk—globally popular and recognizable, yet at the same time certain moments. “All is Full of Love” was widely exhibited
them outfitting her characters with sets of signs, traits, and artistically uncompromised and incredibly precise in her practice in the contemporary art context in the same time period as
exterior skeletons, and she worked with numerous designers to of finding form—has continued to experiment with identity, Doug Aitken’s multi-channel installation “Electric Earth.”
create “masks” that would give her characters a distinctive look. simultaneously and often in parallel with the visual arts of her While Cunningham and Björk found a sculptural creation in
time. In the following thoughts, parallel practices and strategies the electronic robot as the point of departure for their video,
Masks are exemplified that contextualize her in a productive dialogue Aitken searched for sounds and rhythms of nocturnal urban life
with popular culture and the visual arts of her generation. as music to visualize our world as “electric.”
the symbol of the mask has been thematized throughout
the ages. In the plays of antiquity, actors went on stage with The title of the Buggles’ 1979 hit song “Video Killed If the music video is the link between the visual arts
a mask, thus simultaneously embodying a person and a persona, the Radio Star” implied that in the future all music would have gallery, music television, and YouTube, there has also been
a living and a dead body. By the sixteenth century, the mask to be visual, as it would be perceived through television. It took an ongoing use and placement of sound as a sculptural element
had disappeared, as actors felt the need to express the individual a while for video to become the common “golden” frame of both in contemporary artistic practice. Both space and time can
emotions behind their roles. The face as mask became the actor’s visual arts and popular music, but it is now one of the most be defined by a sound and by the audience’s perception. For
Photo shoot for Volta, 2007,
instrument. The voice, the accent, the diction were also part prominent contemporary artistic practices, merging film-making, example, in Janet Cardiff’s looped “Forty Piece Motet,” there by Bernhard Kristinn.
of the role. In engaging with readable signs—in adopting music, popular culture, fashion, and lifestyle. Music television is a three-minute break between performances of an eleven-
different masks—the actor could convey different characters. was one of the identifying mediums for new generations, and minute piece of music, sung by a forty-person choir, played on
there were huge production budgets that made this one of the forty speakers installed in the exact spatial configuration of
As an artist, Björk has adopted many visually compelling most fertile art sites and laboratories of the 1990s. Long before the singers of the choir when the piece was recorded. The singers
personas. She has worn some of the most experimental head- iTunes, downloading, and Napster changed the music industry, seem not to know that they are being recorded before and
coverings, including wigs, veils, diamond-studded surfaces, music television was a dominant force in the cultural landscape. after their singing. They can be heard coughing, clearing their
feather ear-pieces, and extreme sculptural dandelion-like throats, whispering, and so on before they focus on their artistry.
head-dresses designed by Maiko Takeda. But the mask is only It was also a catalyst in crossing the boundaries of They mutate from being individual, private members of the
one palpable, tangible embodiment of the idea of a character. the museum and the pop world. Visual artists were quick choir carrying out worldly profane actions to embodying perfect
Björk also created distinct, semi-fictitious characters to evoke to seize upon the territory of the music video, both anticipating artificial singing voices when they each become a persona
and perform the author/actor/singer/protagonist/heroine/role it and appropriating it, while musicians and film directors readily of the forty-voiced choir singing the motet. Björk’s personal,
of each album, channeling the creative energies of a musical embraced the aesthetics of experimental video art and film- visceral, and non-artificial singing style also relates to intimacy
period and galvanizing a mask to reflect the art and artist making. In 1996, Pipilotti Rist, who performed as a member and a break between the natural voice and the highly trained
simultaneously. She made each character a highly detailed, of the feminist punk band Les Reines Prochaines, created her voice. Her singing goes from intimate whisper into the listener’s
stylized, accomplished, almost sculpted visual construct, seminal work “Sip My Ocean,” an immersive video and sound ear, as if she were almost touching the recording microphone
being one with the music and acting as its imago. installation, which involved the viewer walking into a room filled with her lips, to loud screaming that competes with wind and
with colored light and music, and diving into an ocean being other forces of nature.
Visual artists have long been preoccupied with masks, projected while listening to a karaoke version of Chris Isaak’s
Björk wearing a wig by Eugene Souleiman
characters, and signifiers. In portrait painting, artifacts love hymn “Wicked Games,” sung by Rist herself. Claiming the Interference of organic human and inorganic technology and a dress by Iris van Herpen,
of personal existence became symbolic objects, often reflecting male pop star’s voice and appropriating one of the most romantic has been a marker of the times. Standing in a club or at performing on the Biophilia live tour, 2011.
the subject’s place in life. In recent times, Hiroshi Sugimoto tunes of the decade, Rist created a polymorphous whole-body a concert next to the speakers, the body can feel a vibration
made photographs of historical figures by photographing their experience in her installation. In her work “Mutaflor,” also that resonates, either through sound waves or through direct
Madame Tussaud wax figures, thereby creating the uncanny from 1996, Rist hungrily looks at the camera then swallows contact if one is leaning against the box. Even if one steps away,
illusion that people who had been dead for centuries were an endoscopic camera, which, after a passage through her body, the resonance remains in the body. As a physical phenomenon,
“undead.” The American artist Cindy Sherman has used her pops out of her anus, only to be swallowed again. The action this induced the body to dance. The 1990s saw an emerging
own face, make-up, wigs, and costumes to echo the presence is endlessly looped, like playing a single track on auto-repeat. electro and techno scene in clubs all over the world, as well
of historical figures for her work. as nightlife-like levels of sound and dance at daytime raves.
In the 1990s, music audiences were able to hear and see The Love Parade was the Woodstock of the ’90s generation.
The creation and display of an outward identity is Björk’s work on the hardware that was current at the time
a pronounced characteristic of contemporary life. As 3D of each album’s release, whether that meant watching her on Clubs proved to be an experimental site for music, popular
scanning and printing become more commonplace, people a box TV set or listening to a CD playing on a Discman while culture, performance, fashion, photography, and moving
will have the ability to access their own 3D portraits with ease. jogging or in the bath. The tension between the wet and the dry, images to intersect and inspire club kids, the artists themselves,
In the meantime, the idea of the selfie has produced millions the living body and the increasingly mobile prosthetic electronic and a wider audience. Sometimes they were simply the location
of self-portraits that have found an audience on the internet. devices created danger. The panic of electronics potentially for people to meet and talk and expand horizons and states
With social media such as Facebook and Instagram, the online falling in the bathtub, harming the body or the electronics, of mind; at other times they were the occasion for presentation
person and persona are easily blended: document with fiction. was reflected in Marilouise and Arthur Kroker’s discussion and performance, collaboration, provocation and pioneering
Or users can adopt avatars and completely falsify their identity. of the phenomenon of male hysteria and angst of bodily liquids creations that couldn’t be ignored, even in the mainstream.

in the era when everything seemed to become electric.

Many of Björk’s contemporaries either “met” her on music While the face mask in Wolfson’s kinetic sculpture gives Was hearing the famous song translated into Chinese
television or experienced her work as the sound of music that away the view of artificial glass eyes with cameras, in Pierre such a displacement that it caught my full attention? No, that
you would dance to, that would be sampled and played over and Huyghe’s recent film work Human Mask (2014), based on a real- was not all I was hearing. In the background, behind a curtain,
over again in the ’90s club scene. In parallel to music television, life situation, a monkey was trained as a waitress and wore Björk was tuning her voice, exercising the width and capacity
the club scene was a porous membrane and interfaced with a human mask over its face. The viewer can see the animal’s eyes of her vocal spectrum, before leaving the trailer clad in a dress
popular culture into the visual arts and other practices. Leigh through the slits in the dead object of the human mask. A wig made out of a woven copper wire fabric to sing in a freezing,
Bowery was a strong presence and fixture on the London covers the monkey’s head, but the small dress it is wearing does water-dripping cave. The camera crew and director were covered
scene when Björk moved to the city in the early 1990s. He was not cover its hairy body. The lines between the living and the in layers of coats, but Björk was doing take after take, standing
one of the most prominent artists of the 1980s and early ’90s dead body, animal and human, object and subject are blurred in her bare feet on cold wet sand. For each take there was no
whose practice was truly collaborative. Blurring the boundaries in a highly disorienting, disturbing way. The works by Wolfson lip-synching; she sang live, loud, and real.
between author and muse, fashion designer and model, club and Huyghe further the dialogue with Björk’s recognizable robot
kid and performance artist, provocateur and seminal innovator, face mask in “All is Full of Love.” Watching the video allows Outside the cave, the prep trailer, the set, walking
he became famous for creating costumes that covered his viewers to see Björk’s own eyes, behind or through the opening through the lava fields of Iceland, you are as a human being
monumental body, including his feet, hands, and most of the robot’s mask portrait—a portrait of Björk of herself. by far the tallest living object. There are no trees, no large
importantly face. He disguised and disfigured himself with animals, just moss and very low-growing vegetation. Coming
Scotch tape, safety pins, experimental make-up, and masks, Marina Abramović and Ulay pioneered new ideas of across rocks feels like the only encounter of an equal volume,
and he made himself even taller by wearing platform shoes. autobiography as part of an artist’s work. They called their living another object standing across from you, the human being.
He turned himself from a recognizable person, a human being, together in a truck, driving around Europe from performance All of a sudden it becomes clear that for all of her career Björk
into a sign, an object like a state of being, which would be to performance, “art vital,” claiming that life was art and art has created a body of work that could be described within
alienating and disturbing in an everyday environment. During was life. The pair merged their personal and love lives with their the theory of Object-Oriented Ontology, in which the landscape
this time he posed for the painter Lucian Freud. He also artistic practice. Until the 1980s and early ’90s many pop stars around her, she herself, and the landscape inside of her—her
collaborated with Charles Atlas and Michael Clark on videos had a personal life that was completely at odds with their public blood, her organs, the sounds made by her and perceived
and choreography. In a city which—ever since the “Freeze” persona (George Michael, for example, singing heterosexual by her—are all one universe of objects and subjects, subjects
exhibition of 1988, organized by Damien Hirst—had been love songs with a playboy image). Björk, meanwhile, was always and objects, robots and humans, plants and animals, stone
at the forefront of the new Young British Artist scene, Leigh very authentic both on and off the stage. While her work and volcanoes and oceans at the same time.
Bowery had a potent effect on popular culture and left contains elements of fiction and poetry, it seems nonetheless—
a highly influential oeuvre. like Abramović’s work—to be essentially true to her real life. According to Nicola Dibben’s 2009 book Björk, the singer’s
music “naturalizes technology rather than technologizes nature.” 2
In the 1990s Paris scene, relational aesthetics and For the 2015 exhibition at MoMA, Björk created the work Dibben further notes that “Björk’s music imitates physical sounds
post-conceptual approaches gave Björk a different context. “Black Lake,” which was filmed on location in Iceland during of nature…as a unification of the human and the natural.” 3 Yet
In 1999, Philippe Parreno and Pierre Huyghe bought the rights the summer of 2014. She conceived the song’s visualization it is not only about the humanization of technology; it is also
to a Japanese anime character, which they named “Annlee” with director Andrew Thomas Huang, with whom she had its feminization.
(a.k.a. Ann Lee). They invited other artists, including Dominique previously worked on the video for “Mutual Core.” “Black
Gonzalez-Foerster and Björk’s longtime collaborators M/M, Lake” is an eleven-minute-long looped composition that deals Björk’s voice sounds at the same time like that of a child
to devise artworks based around the figure. Videos, works with the expression of the pain that Björk went through and that of a seductive woman: visceral and guttural, a highly
on paper, and even performance pieces were created within during her separation from artist Matthew Barney; a cathartic personal, easily recognizable voice, with rolling r’s and a heavy
this framework. Ann Lee was a fictitious character born out acknowledgment of this pain, as if only dying to be reborn. accent—practically the opposite of the cleaned-up artifice of
of collaborative imagination; artist Jordan Wolfson’s female For the video she worked with choreographer Erna Ómarsdóttir a classically trained singer. Often her singing includes inhalations
figure, on the other hand, was modeled after a real person, on expressive, dance-like movements, through which she palpably and exhalations and other sounds made by the respiratory tract.
Lady Gaga. Wolfson created a cyborg robot wearing a mask, exorcised her pain, resonating with viewers and listeners, but also She often shouts and screams out into nature or the city, as if
simultaneously portraying and disguising a famous pop star. making the growth, reincarnation, and rebirth of her character she were speaking with and fighting and loving it.
The robot appears to interact with one person at a time, a necessary and natural outcome of the process.
claiming itself to be not an object but a subject, seducing, In Björk’s world, entities such as rocks and mountains,
and blurring the lines between human being and machine, I sat in the prep trailer during the filming of “Black technology such as factory machinery and running trains,
technology and emotion. Wolfson’s female figure is also Lake” in the Icelandic landscape. All of a sudden I found and living beings such as plants, animals, and humans are all
an important continuation of Björk’s robots in her “All is Full myself listening to some music that sounded otherworldly; objects in the same realm. They are equal to each other, having
of Love” video. But here it is not a question of two robots visceral and at the same time ephemeral; very real and rooted, a duration of existence and a rhythm, and often making sounds.
interacting with each other in front of a large TV audience; but nonetheless ethereal. “What’s that?” I asked. “Do you all They breathe, pulse, tick, oscillate, hum; she might even include
it is more the embodiment of a live character interacting hear that?” James Merry, Björk’s personal assistant and close the sound of a compact disk skipping at its final loop. Dibben
with an audience. The jump from the 1990s perception collaborator, who was instrumental in the visual identity notes that “the rhythmic regularities of machines and everyday
of performance as recorded video has materialized into of the video, answered, “That’s the artist Fatima al Qadiri. sounds are a means of transition into musical numbers and
a one-on-one encounter, reflecting the paradigm shift that, She included a Chinese singer interpreting Sinead O’Connor’s thereby into a fantasy world.” For the album Medúlla, Björk
today, participation is the proof of performativity. ‘Nothing Compares 2 U’ on her new album.” created the sounds of different instruments purely by using
the human voice, thus highlighting the instrumental quality
of the voice and its ability to mimic sounds.
Stills from “Black Lake,” commissioned
by The Museum of Modern Art, New York,
and directed by Andrew Thomas Huang, 2015.
2
Nicola Dibben, Björk (Indiana University Press), 2009, p. 98.

3
Ibid. p. 99.

Her singing juxtaposes the pagan and folkloric storytelling In Björk’s work, being at one with an expanded, endless The video “Alarm Call,” directed by Alexander McQueen,
and traditional music of her native Iceland with her classical world means identifying with the smallest and the biggest is also about surfaces, the underwater surface, the forest, the
music training. Her music seems to come from an authentic objects in existence; with being inverted and catapulted into meadow. It is like having sex with the world as a polymorphous
and intimate inner place. It might erupt as a spontaneous urge a weightless universe. In her visualization of her music, perverted character that is stimulated by being in touch
to sing and express emotions out loud while riding in a friend’s the camera, the gaze, becomes an optical instrument—a tool with all the surfaces of her body and everything she encounters
pick-up truck, or while hiking in Iceland near her cottage. It with which to examine the world. It can either be macroscopic (interestingly, independent from his collaborations with Björk,
speaks of a primal, unquestioned directness of creating while or microscopic. It could be a telescope from a satellite from McQueen’s work was so much about surfaces that his celebrated
doing; composing by singing. somewhere in the universe that is zooming in and zooming out exhibition, “Savage Beauty,” had a different surface in each
from the smallest atomic, molecular, cellular structure, to human- of the exhibition rooms; and it was an almost fetishistic look
In Björk’s music, and in her lyrics and videos, there is sized entities, to planetary-sized entities, to the biggest universal at the detail that allowed the visitor to get close to his practice).
curiosity and surprise; a sense of wonderment and mystery, order. Sometimes her characters are seen under water or above
both in everyday life and in extreme situations. This sense water, and this draws attention to the scale of objects: sometimes In another motif, drawings on Björk’s face become a veil,
of immediacy—a touching, a looking, a listening—seems Planet Earth is tiny, sometimes there might be a gigantic worm and this mask adds a layer of content to her face, making
to be present in whatever she encounters, be it the ocean behind her. In her video “It’s in Our Hands,” she wanders it a work of art. Similarly, her clothing often functions like body
or a landscape, a machine or another human being. All in dark environments as a night-view camera captures images armature, like architecture fitted exactly around the body, like
the encounters seem to be equal, whether with a stranger or of gigantic flowers, grasshoppers, stingrays, and ferns, and with a perfectly molded shell; a sometimes porous, sometimes solid
lover, an animal or mountain, a cloud or the flashing lights wide eyes Björk sees what otherwise is hidden at night. Videos membrane between her and the world. In the video “Who Is It?”
of the big city. And everything leads to music: motors run, are often set in an environment like a doll’s house or a stage she wears Alexander McQueen’s bell dress, the bells looking
clocks tick, lungs breathe, a train provides a rhythm, the tide set—a little too small or a little too big; somehow displaced, like like barnacles; she becomes the bell, while Iceland appears
or a waterfall sets the pace. caricatures or exaggerations of houses. In the video to “Triumph like a moonscape. On the cover of Volta Björk wore a piece by
of a Heart,” Björk’s partner is a cat, and their home is a little Bernhard Willhelm, which resembled a carved-out empty shell
Björk’s attitude to life could perhaps be described house in the vast, remote, rural landscape. of a cartoon figure, and the dresses designed by Iris van Herpen
as an “oceanic feeling”: the need to get out of the house, to go for Biophilia created a body armor-like shield around the artist.
towards the sea, hike up a mountain, and feel the romantic, The matryoshka-like structure of “Bachelorette,” filmed The white coat in “Jóga” almost becomes an astronaut’s moon
unthreatening, pre-religious ecstasy of being at one with in 1997, could be regarded as a metaphor for, or premonition of, suit before the vast, tectonic, volcanic, black landscapes of
the world, in love with the world, part of the world. “Jóga,” Björk’s further artistic life to come; in a way, as an anticipation Iceland, and in her first music video, “Human Behaviour,”
“All is Full of Love,” and “Wanderlust” are all odes to the joy of her show at MoMA—a retrospective that unfolded in her work Björk literally wears a space suit with a clear helmet on
of loving the world. “Jóga” is a declaration of love for the wild through a script that was a self-fulfilling vision in its artifice and her interplanetary journey.
natural landscape of Björk’s home country. The video opens in its character of a vision of a memory in a vision of a memory
From the album cover shoot for Volta, 2007,
with her lying on black sand on the seashore and ends with in a vision of a memory. Collaborations photographed by Nick Knight, with a costume inspired
her standing on a peak overlooking everything beneath her. by Luigi Ontani and designed by Bernhard Willhelm.
She opens her body and her interior is full of rocks like a cave. In her videos and when photographed, Björk is often when i was first in regular contact with Björk, from the
The Chilean film-maker and writer Alejandro Jodorowsky notes depicted as non-human. She can appear like a drawing, year 2000 on, popular culture and the art world were more
that all humans are equal on the inside: you cut the human body or a cartoon, or a manga character, or a wax figure, turning disconnected than they are now. In the early 2000s, it would
open and we are all liquid and red, all full of blood. In a way into a sign or symbol. She appears geisha-like on the cover have been almost impossible to create an exhibition that was
the planet earth is like this, and it is most tangible in a country of Homogenic. Her constant morphing between her own shaved authentic to her work in the context of an art museum. However,
like Iceland, where the earth’s surface is often heated by the head and a digital animation of a polar bear in “Hunter” projects such as 1999’s “All is Full of Love” and 2011’s Biophilia
volcanic activity underground. Wherever you cut into the surface, is a predecessor of her embodying an object, like the robot have paved the way for a synthetic presentation of Björk’s work.
you will end up with a red, liquid bath of lava. Tectonic rifts in “All is Full of Love.” In “The Dull Flame of Desire,” Antony
are like wounds in the body of the planet, where the hot liquid Hegarty and Björk morph into one face: both strong, vulnerable As the idea of a collaboration progressed, it became
inside can get to the surface. feminists who are superimposed into a single person. In “All is clear that Björk likes to work organically, with ideas being
Full of Love” and “Wanderlust,” Björk is doubled: she is her own discussed, revisited, and researched on a daily basis, in a very
However, the metropolitan city also offers a polymorphous counterpart robot in “All is Full of Love,” and in “Wanderlust” exploratory way, incorporating life and work, reading, writing,
environment that can stimulate. There are city lights, moving she carries a clay body double in her backpack. In the video talking, and listening. When we began seriously to discuss
traffic, and urban heartbeats. In many videos, Björk is either for “Hidden Place,” a small Björk can be seen in her mouth when an exhibition proposal, one of the first things she did was send
moving vertically or horizontally through the canyons of she opens it. Often there is a fluid transition between two- and me short descriptions of the defining character traits of the seven
the city or the canyons of the countryside. For her, both the city three-dimensional images, drawings, photographs, and objects. characters of the seven albums that she had produced.
and nature are backgrounds and foregrounds, protagonists and
extras, objects and subjects, as part of an artistic practice that With differing degrees of obsession, Björk plays with her Ideas were further concretized at a workshop meeting
tries to touch it all, breathing it in, breathing it out, shouting and own being. In “Hidden Place,” there is an extremely magnified between myself, Björk, James Merry, and Michael Amzalag and
screaming and laughing at it, until it screams and laughs back. shot of her hair, in which every strand can be seen moving, and Mathias Augustyniak of M/M. Ongoing work was inspired by
then every pore in the skin of her face: this is as close as it gets Björk’s interest in Timothy Morton’s ideas about Object-Oriented
Certain motifs reappear throughout the work. The embrace to staying on the surface. In “Pagan Poetry,” there is a shift from Ontology, which broadly speaking proposes the abandonment of
of urban life shown by dancing on a moving truck in “Big Time an abstract graphic and abstract image to a close-up view of differentiation between objects and subjects, taking humans out
Sensuality” is juxtaposed with the dancing on a train moving her face, then to parts of her skin and nipples being pierced and of an anthropocentric world and equalizing them with animals,
through the countryside in “I’ve Seen it All” from Dancer bleeding. In the video for “Cocoon,” she wears an asexual white plants, dead material, poems, songs, magnetic forces, telepathy,
in the Dark. Both “Big Time Sensuality” and “Hyperballad” body suit, and red strings squirt from her breasts. energies, and images. In an email conversation between Morton
are welcome songs of the artist greeting the big city. and Björk included later in this publication, they playfully come
up with expressions to describe the fact that, in Björk’s work
and Morton’s philosophy, sometimes the relationships between

Artwork painted by Isaiah Saxon for the
objects are more important than the objects themselves. production of the video to “Wanderlust,” 2008.

The finished exhibition sought to highlight the Graham Massey was another early musical partner, One of Björk’s first video collaborators was film director
groundbreaking importance and innovation of Björk’s music. remixing “Violently Happy” from Debut, and co-writing “Army Michel Gondry. He has directed more videos with Björk
At the same time the focus was on the unique collaborative of Me” and “Modern Things” on Post. The musician Talvin than any other director, and their important and prolific
nature of her body of work. The exhibition also aimed Singh contributed to Debut, playing the tabla and directing collaborations have been both popular and critically successful.
to broaden the canon of what contemporary museums exhibit the string compositions on the album. His video for “Human Behaviour” (1993), the first single and
and collect, while also raising questions about the longevity video from Debut, along with “Isobel” (1995) and “Bachelorette”
of pop music, a genre that is evolving and has not proven its The Iranian-born recording artist, producer, and DJ (1997), comprise a trilogy of related videos that Björk and
classic timelessness. Can a work of popular culture achieve Leila Arab and Björk started their close collaboration in 1993, Gondry created, telling the story of the character Isobel and
“eternal truth and beauty” when it is independent and removed when Arab worked on the Debut tour as keyboard player. Arab her journey from the forest to the city and back. The figure
from its broader cultural context? How relevant will the concept recounts that she wanted to learn live mixing and Björk hired of “Isobel” is Björk’s way of introducing herself as the singer/
of multiple and collaborative authorship be, especially after her for the Post tour in 1995 to do just that on stage. Arab, Aphex songwriter character telling her tale. As Timothy Morton points
Still from the video for “Isobel,”
directed by Michel Gondry, 1995. relational aesthetics in the 1990s? Twin, Björk, and Chris Cunningham were at the heart of a circle out in his conversation with Björk, making herself into this
of friends in London in the mid- to late ’90s that created some character is her way of making herself a third person, an object
When it comes to her music, Björk is very much a solo of their generation’s most inspiring music and video work. among other equally important objects.
artist. She even considers herself to be “like a tyrant” at times,
and only involves collaborators to add to, vary and on occasion In order to visualize her characters, Björk has worked with Björk had long wanted to do a video or project that took
work with her to write lyrics for her own existing compositions. many different photographers throughout her career, creating on the idea of a classic musical, a genre she had loved as a child.
She works by herself until she has something refined enough portraits that appear on album covers and liners, as well as In her first collaboration with director Spike Jonze, they took
to share and to be given context, colors, images and shapes. other images that appear in magazines, books, and promotional inspiration from musicals of the 1960s for the hugely successful
On the other hand, she is extremely collaborative when it comes materials. Juergen Teller, who was starting out in London video for “It’s Oh So Quiet” (1995). Jonze went on to direct
to visualizing the characters that inhabit her albums and singles. at the same time as Björk, was an important early collaborator. two other music videos, “It’s in our Hands” (2002) and “Triumph
Through her thoughtful, coherent, tightly woven concepts Together they worked on the image for the cover of the single of a Heart” (2005). While their original idea of working on
and experimental forms, she motivates those around her. “Big Time Sensuality.” The video for the single was directed by a feature-length musical was later realized by another director,
Her openness with collaborators, in terms of personality and Stéphane Sédnaoui, who at the time worked very closely with Lars von Trier, Jonze and Björk continue a very vivid, productive
Still from “Army of Me,” 1995,
a song co-written by Graham Massey.
dialogue, helps push co-creators to go further and further into Björk, and also on later videos and photo shoots, including discussion and exchange ideas on an ongoing basis.
a direction that she has envisioned but which they might not the image that appears on the cover of her second album, Post.
have come up with by themselves. She is a muse, but also During her years in London, Björk also worked with Japanese Björk has collaborated with producer and mixing engineer
a midwife; a co-artist/catalyst who is clear in her vision and photographer Nobuyoshi Araki, who photographed her for Mike “Spike” Stent since his work on Post’s “Army of Me”
yet invitingly vague as to the exact visual form it will take. the cover and inner sleeve of her 1997 remix album, Telegram. in 1995. They worked together on several albums, and Stent did
the mix for both the 2000 album Selmasongs and 2007’s Medúlla.
While the music carries her signature alone, collaborations Since the early 1990s Björk has had an ongoing dialogue Electronic musician Matthew Herbert has been an important
with designers, photographers, and film-makers are signed by with Jefferson Hack. He asked Björk to interview Karlheinz collaborator with Björk since he began working on songs
multiple co-authors, a notion that Björk embraced early on. Stockhausen, and she was featured in Hack’s publication Dazed for Vespertine in 2001. Matmos, the electronic duo of M. C.
Her music videos have become some of the most creative ways & Confused. He introduced her to many contacts from his sphere, (Martin) Schmidt and Drew Daniel have done official remixes
for her to visualize each album’s characters, and have also been including Alexander McQueen, Katy England, and Marjan of several singles; they also worked closely on Vespertine.
the site for some of her most notable collaborations. For each Pejoski. In Hack’s own words, Björk is like a “live wire” and
video she works closely with the director on the concept and an open source who absorbs, connects and provides “leaps Guy Sigsworth, a keyboard player, has worked with Björk
execution, and over the course of her career she has often worked of thoughts to bring forward new ideas.” 5 since Post. He played the clavichord and organ on several songs
with the same collaborators on multiple projects. and has also done remixes of “Venus as a Boy” and “All is
Since her time in London, Björk has embraced fashion Full of Love.” The Icelandic String Octet that Björk began
Though Björk’s music is much more a solo act than as a manifestation of her expressions. She has worked closely working with on Homogenic continued to work with the artist
her visual manifestations of each album, she also works with with designers and stylists on each of her albums and for in live performances and on tours. In 2001, Björk began
musicians, composers, writers, and artists to explore and expand magazine shoots and public appearances. On the cover of Post, working with Zeena Parkins, a harp and accordion player.
the scope of her music. Many of these musical collaborations she wore a jacket made by Hussein Chalayan, one of her first Parkins contributed to both the Vespertine album and tour, and
have resulted in long-term partnerships over several albums. close fashion friends, who, like her, had come to London to Biophilia. Björk and pianist Jónas Sen have worked together
as an immigrant. Together the pair would brainstorm. Post’s since 2007, when he joined her world tour to play keyboard;
When Björk moved to London in 1992, during the early “Airmail” jacket, made of washable, malleable synthetic paper, for Biophilia he also played the pipe organ and gameleste.
stages of Debut, she teamed up with composer and producer reflected her character’s embrace of a cosmopolitan urbanity.
Nellee Hooper whose lifestyle, social and work spheres were Jeremy Scott would later create outfits for Björk’s Homogenic Founder of the pioneering electronic group LFO, Mark
a definitive force in the Bristol and London scenes of that time, tour in 1997–98, and has created other garments she has worn Bell was another longtime music producer, writer, and close
centered around Tricky and Massive Attack and bands like at events and in public. friend working with Björk from Homogenic on. He contributed
Rip Rig + Panic. He nurtured and brought confidence to to Selmasongs, Medúlla, Volta, and Biophilia, and was part
the artists he worked with. Hooper went on to produce nine of the tours for both Homogenic and Volta.
songs on the album and worked with Björk on Post. Björk notes
that he “mirrored back to me what I was at the time and what
you could become.” 4

4 5
Björk performing with music producer Mark Bell Author interview with the artist, May, 2014. Author interview with Jefferson Hack, October, 2014.
on the Volta tour, 2007.

Alexander McQueen was one of Björk’s most important Working with Björk, M/M would spend a lot of time Matthew Barney and Björk are two artists who have,
collaborators. Starting with his art direction for the cover getting to know her moodboards and compositions, and would in a highly detailed and sophisticated way, created characters
of Homogenic, he went on to work with Björk on numerous then externalize her visions on a more conceptual and poetry- in their respective bodies of work. With Barney, those characters
pieces. He directed the video for “Alarm Call,” in which Björk based level. For the cover of Vespertine, for example, Björk seem to be more fictitious and literature-based, whereas the
wore a dress custom-designed by him. They were more than brought Marjan Pejoski’s infamous “Swan” dress to the shoot, characters Björk expresses are at the same time fictitious
just collaborators: like many others who work with Björk and as a result the cover of the album was inspired by a drawing and autobiographical. Björk and Barney lived together for
repeatedly, they were also close friends, and Björk performed of Sigmund Freud’s, in which a swan was portrayed on top thirteen years. In 2002, their daughter Isadora was born, and
at his memorial service in London in 2011, wearing an angel- of a Madonna. One of M/M’s images for Vespertine was plastered until 2013 they commuted between Iceland and New York,
winged dress by the late designer. all over the streets of Paris. Whenever she toured, Björk’s poster besides other shorter-term residencies. At times their two artistic
campaigns made her face a sign in the urban fabric. practices merged, most notably in the major work Drawing
The music video for “All is Full of Love” was directed by Restraint 9 (2005), a cinematic piece by Barney, for which Björk
Björk’s dear friend Chris Cunningham in 1999 and is their only Since the release of Vespertine, Björk has continued composed the soundtrack and acted. The film ended with
music video collaboration to date, although it was a landmark to work closely with Van Lamsweerde and Matadin. They have a symbolic mutilation of the two lovers, morphing into
in her practice and marked an important shift in her work. helped to create some of the most recognizable visualizations sea mammals.
The video shows the naturalization of technology: the robots of her characters, collaborating on album artwork for Vespertine,
in the video are both machine-like and highly emotional Medúlla, Volta, and Biophilia, as well as editorials and books. For Björk, an important inspiration and friend has been
beings. The video’s sci-fi setting reflects Cunningham’s past Antony Hegarty. In addition to collaborating vocally, the
work in the genre, as well as his ongoing interest in robotics “Pagan Poetry” (2001), from Vespertine, was the first music singer and composer and Björk share concerns about ecological
and computer graphics. New technology, software, and special video collaboration between Björk and photographer Nick challenges, and they have an ongoing interest in feminism.
effects are also featured in the video, seen in the seamless Knight, although the two had previously worked together They first worked together on the 2007 duet “The Dull Flame
Bernhard Willhelm and Björk
projection of Björk’s facial features onto the robots—another on photo shoots, notably for the cover image of Homogenic, and of Desire,” and Hegarty is prominently featured in the song’s in Iceland, 2006.
example of her identification with objects, machines, and also for the cover of the Vespertine Live album and for the Volta music video. The friends have performed together in London,
all manner of non-humans. image of Björk wearing the large Bernhard Willhelm costume. Iceland, and New York.
The video, which was controversial at the time of its release,
One of the most important, innovative and influential embraces themes of the physical body, union, and sexuality. During Björk’s New York years, ASFOUR, who later
collaborations in Björk’s artistic practice has been her It incorporates three different sections: a video of piercings, became ThreeASFOUR, also had an inspiring artistic friendship
longstanding relationship with M/M, the Paris-based art a private video shot on a handheld camera by Björk, and a film with her that led to numerous mutual inspirations, as did
and design partnership founded by Mathias Augustyniak shoot of Björk performing the song. the ongoing dialogue with her Icelandic friend Hrafnhildur
and Michael Amzalag, renowned for their use of signs and Arnardóttir, also known as Shoplifter, who created the hairpiece
images. M/M started working with Björk in 1999 and have Björk collaborated with Japanese artist, art director, featured on the cover of Medúlla. In 2005, Björk collaborated
continued their collaboration to the present day. Their first and costume and graphic designer Eiko Ishioka on the music with Icelandic artist Gabríela Friðriksdóttir on her Venice
collaboration, for Björk’s compilation of videos, Volumen, was video for “Cocoon” (2002), a work which, like “Pagan Poetry” Biennale pavilion work; Friðriksdóttir also directed Björk’s
composed of a cover for pictures, black and white characters, before it, was met with some controversy for its evocative video for “Where is the Line” and designed the album cover
good and evil, creating characters that were in between album imagery. Wearing a nude body suit, Björk performs the song art for her Greatest Hits release in 2002.
characters. According to M/M, the conversation was like as red threads emit from her breasts, slowly enveloping her entire
“reading tarot cards together,” while creating a set of their body, from foot to face, until she is completely cocooned. The multitalented German-born designer Bernhard
signature multifaceted signifiers. Their next collaborative project Willhelm worked closely with Björk on designs for Volta.
was working with Björk on her first comprehensive artist book. For Dancer in the Dark (released in 2000), director Lars He created the large sculptural costume for the cover of
This was released in 2001, at the same time as her album von Trier approached Björk about acting in and composing the album—a small-scale piece of architecture like an exterior
Vespertine. M/M have gone on to create, visualize, and help music for the film—a story he had written with her in mind. skeleton that Björk inhabits—based on a work by the Italian
The cover to Selmasongs,
form the characters in Björk’s subsequent albums. She initially resisted composing and in addition taking on artist Luigi Ontani. Willhelm also created other costumes worn
released in 2000 as the soundtrack to the film
the lead role. However, she eventually agreed to compose, and by Björk during the Volta tour, many of which were made Dancer in the Dark, in which Björk starred.
M/M have also worked on videos with Björk, notably afterwards to play the main character, Selma. She fought for of brightly colored fabrics. These were complimented by DIY
“Hidden Place,” for which they collaborated with the Dutch artistic control, so that her part and her music could not be cut crocheted and knitted activist masks by the Icelandic Love
fashion photographers Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh or changed without her agreement. Through her compositions Corporation.
Matadin. Their work on “Hidden Place” was influenced Björk made the story of Selma a true portrayal and the film more
by a conversation the designers had with artist François Curlet, of a true collaboration. One of Björk’s more prominent collaborations from Volta
who described a kind of sexual trick from nineteenth-century was with Encyclopedia Pictura. Their video for “Wanderlust” was
French brothels called “Poisson Nageur,” in which a woman Björk’s song from the film, “I’ve Seen it All,” was shot in stereoscopic 3D, and used a mix of live action, computer-
enjoys oral sex and remits the man’s bodily fluids through nominated for the 2001 Academy Award for Best Original Song. generated graphics, miniatures, and large-scale puppets such
her nose. This was the inspiration for the substance flowing That year she famously wore the “Swan” dress to the Oscar as the 3D yak and river god, all crafted by the video directors.
into and out of Björk’s body, creating an incredible sense award ceremony, walking down the runway dropping “eggs”
of intimacy; the untouchable icon getting wet and dirty, while as she went. The swan motif was an important element
remaining beautiful. of Vespertine, and Björk wore the dress again on the cover of
the album. During the Vespertine tour, she wore at least two
other versions of the dress, both made with crystals. Although
her appearance at the Oscars was widely publicized, the swan
motif is something that permeated other parts of her work
during this time.
Björk with her friend and collaborator

Antony Hegarty on Marina Abramović’s
60th birthday, 2006.

The multidisciplinary nature of 2011’s Biophilia led Björk “Black Lake,” which premiered at MoMA, focused above all
to fresh collaborators, embracing science and technology on the sound and projection of visuals, positioning the work as
in innovative ways. Björk worked with the television presenter the basis of the whole exhibition. Definitive traits are the freezes
David Attenborough on the Biophilia education programs, and between the verses, which resonate in the body of the listener.
with James Merry and Scott Snibbe on the development of The finished work includes motifs from the Icelandic landscape,
the Biophilia app. This was worked on by several programmers its flora, and the changes of states of matter from liquid to solid,
and designers, including Max Weisel, who was then in his as well as the ideas of pain, perishing, rebirth, and regenerating
teens. The app was released just after the iPad came out. Björk’s new energies. For this groundbreaking piece, filmed in a cave
integration of music, design, and digital technology was a and a ravine during an especially cold period of summer,
landmark, and the app was subsequently acquired by MoMA’s Icelandic rain is captured in the video’s imagery, illustrating
Department of Architecture and Design, the first in the museum’s the narrative of going through pain and arriving at a clearing.
permanent collection. Importantly, the app channels the album’s
music and the custom instruments that helped to create the
songs. Björk worked with DIY scientists and creatives on the
instruments, including gravity harps made by Andy Cavatorta;
Björk photographed for Biophilia the gameleste made by Björgvin Tómasson and Matt Nolan;
by Inez van Lamsweerde & Vinoodh Matadin, 2011. the pipe organ, also made by Tómasson; and the Sharpsichord,
made by Henry Dagg. This was not the first time that Björk had
utilized new instrument technology. The reactable, an electronic
musical instrument, was featured on Volta. Its flat table top
is activated with different objects or tangibles which create
sounds and music that can be manipulated by the instrument’s
player. An Icelandic female choir and their conductor Jon
Stefansson joined Björk on her Biophilia tour at this time.
For Biophilia, Björk collaborated with Iris van Herpen,

who designed the dress she wore on the cover of the album
and several pieces that she wore during the tour. These dresses,
for which Van Herpen uses plastic, metal, and 3D printing,
seem almost impenetrable, a kind of colorful body armor.
The collaboration has continued into Björk’s next character,
with Van Herpen designing dresses worn in the “Black Lake”
installation (a version of the song appears on Björk’s eighth
solo studio album).
The MoMA exhibition design embraced the ambition

to make Björk’s music the Museum visitor’s central experience,
while also presenting the broad spectrum of her collaborative
and educational work. The final detailed conceptual and
practical realization in the physical spaces of the Museum was
another collaborative endeavor between Björk, her consultant Björk was born during the four-year volcanic eruption that A still from “Black Lake,” 2015, featuring
the producer Sam Gainsbury, myself and an incredible team caused the formation of the Icelandic island Surtsey. Red-hot a dress designed by Iris van Herpen.
at MoMA. flowing lava formed a rocky island that was soon colonized by
seeds that were washed ashore. These seeds brought the dead
island into the cycles of life. At the end of filming “Black Lake,”
the Icelandic volcano Bárðarbunga erupted under a glacier,
again bringing together scorching liquid with centuries-old
glacier ice and generating new rocks out of the cooling magma.
This publication and exhibition cement Björk’s singular

place in contemporary practice and celebrate her highly
original and significant music, compositions, performances
and visual presentations. As an artist whose work has been
felt across many disciplines, Björk will undoubtedly continue
to expand the boundaries of music, art, and our understanding
of the world—connecting, influencing, and inspiring. ||
Details of the groundbreaking Biophilia app,
released in 2011 and subsequently acquired
by The Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Klaus Biesenbach is Chief Curator at Large at The Museum Page 2 — Photo courtesy of Hildur Hauksdóttir.
of Modern Art and Director of MoMA PS1, New York. Page 5, above — Photo courtesy of Bernhard Kristinn.
Page 5, below — Photo courtesy of Julieta Cervantes.
He co-founded Kunst-Werke (KW) Institute for Contemporary Page 6 — Video stills courtesy of Wellhart and One Little Indian.
Art in Berlin in 1991, as well as the Berlin Biennale in 1996. Page 9, above — Photo courtesy of Nick Knight.
In 2006, he was named founding Chief Curator of MoMA’s Page 9, below — Painting courtesy of Isaiah Saxon of Encyclopedia Pictura.
Page 10, above and center — Video stills courtesy of Wellhart and One Little Indian.
newly formed Department of Media, and in 2009 founding Chief Page 10, below — Photo courtesy of Mathias Augustyniak and M/M (Paris).
of the Department of Media and Performance Art. In 2010, Page 13, above — Photo courtesy of Carmen Freudenthal & Elle Verhagen.
he became Director of MoMA PS1 and Chief Curator at Large Page 13, center — Image courtesy of Paul White / Me Company.
Page 13, below — Photo courtesy of Patrick McMullan.
at MoMA, where he organized the Björk exhibition. Page 14, above — Photo courtesy of Inez van Lamsweerde & Vinoodh Matadin.
Page 14, below — App images courtesy of Wellhart and One Little Indian;
app creative directors Björk and James Merry;
software engineer, creative director, and technical director Max Weisel.
Page 15 — Video still courtesy of Wellhart and One Little Indian.

16
Page 19, above — Photo courtesy of Stephan Flad. PAGAN POETRY || Words & music by Björk || for harpsichord Beyond Delta: The Many Streams of Björk || Alex Ross Alex Ross is the music critic of The New Yorker and the
Page 19, below — Photo courtesy author of the books The Rest Is Noise and Listen to This.
of Inez van Lamsweerde & Vinoodh Matadin.
Page 21, left — Photo courtesy of Benni Valsson.
Page 21, above right — Photo courtesy
of Inez van Lamsweerde & Vinoodh Matadin.
Page 21, below right — Photo courtesy of Juergen Teller.
Page 23, above and below — Photos courtesy of Hildur Hauksdóttir.
Page 25, left — Photo courtesy of Stephanie Pfriender Stylander.
Page 25, right — Photo courtesy of
Warren du Preez and Nick Thornton Jones.
Page 27, above — Photo courtesy of Petter Oftedal.
Page 27, below — Photo courtesy of Mick Hutson.
Page 29, above left — Photo courtesy
of Warren du Preez and Nick Thornton Jones.
Page 29, top right and centre right — Photos courtesy of Carsten Windhorst.
Page 29, below — Photo courtesy of Jói Kjartans.
Page 31, above — Photo courtesy of Jói Kjartans.
Page 31, centre and below — Photos courtesy of Carsten Windhorst.

II
2 moma_ross_cover.indd 1-5 14/11/2014 13:49

Alex Ross Beyond Delta: The Many Streams of Björk

Prelude: on Genre and Fusion
a few years ago, for a feature on a music blog, I asked Björk The possibility of such a consensus now seems remote.
to make a selection of her favorite records. Her list included The musical landscape teems with genres: classical, jazz,
Mahler’s Tenth Symphony; Alban Berg’s Lulu; Steve Reich’s folk, blues, gospel, country, Latin, R&B, funk, soul, hip-hop,
Tehillim; a collection of Thai pop, entitled Siamese Soul, Volume 2; rock, metal, punk, pop, and dozens of national and regional
Alim Qasimov’s Azerbaijan: The Art of the Mugham; Joni Mitchell’s varieties. Recording technology has surely fueled this explosion
Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter; Kate Bush’s The Dreaming; Nico’s of typologies: once a piece of music becomes a circulating
Desertshore; Public Enemy’s It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold commodity, it requires classification, so that one can know what
Us Back; Aphex Twin’s Drukqs; the Panasonic EP; Black Dog section of the record store to put it in, or, in latter-day terms,
Productions’ Bytes; and James Blake’s debut album, James Blake. 1 what tag to place in its metadata. Furthermore, each genre
has its own subgenres and ideological schisms. Popular music
What’s striking about the list is not just the breadth is regularly riven by debates between acolytes of classic
of Björk’s taste—this is no surprise, given her chronic curiosity guitar rock and devotees of latter-day pop genres that make
about every corner of the musical world—but also the animated sophisticated use of digital manipulation. Contemporary
map of genres that materializes in the background. It is as classical music exhibits a long-running conflict between tonally
though, in a reversal of tectonic drift, isolated land-masses oriented composers and those who still pursue Schoenberg’s
of taste were reforming as a supercontinent. A grandiose howl high-modernist “emancipation of the dissonance.” Music is very
of late Romantic agony; a juggernaut of twelve-tone modernism; far from being a “universal language,” as Arthur Schopenhauer
a cool minimalist dance through Hebrew psalms; off-kilter pop once defined it; to the contrary, no art stirs more heated debate.
from South Asia; a virtuoso survey of Azerbaijani mugham;
three defiantly idiosyncratic albums by female singer-songwriters; Over the past century, we have seen valiant attempts
three pathbreaking electronic records; a raging tour-de-force to restore a holistic understanding of genre. In 1923, at Aeolian
of political hip-hop; a collection of dubstep ballads: Björk’s list Hall in New York, the singer Eva Gauthier organized a concert
circumnavigates the globe, and, at the same time, it overruns entitled “Ancient and Modern Music for the Voice,” with a
the boundaries separating art from pop, mainstream from repertory ranging from Purcell’s “Hark! Hark! The Echoing
underground, primeval past from high-tech present. Air” to the latest songs of George Gershwin. A decade later,
the High-Low Concerts, at the St. Regis Hotel, put Duke
The partition of music into distinct genres, each with Ellington and Count Basie together with Aaron Copland and
its own history, philosophy, and body of technique, is a relatively Charles Ives. After the Second World War, Gunther Schuller,
recent development. Before a global marketplace emerged, under the banner of the Third Stream, sought common ground
with the advent of recording technology in the late nineteenth between bebop jazz and atonal composition. In the 1960s,
century, there was little talk of the classical, the popular, and Miles Davis, in the name of “fusion,” blended jazz and rock,
subdivisions thereof, although the language of music was seen while psychedelic rock bands studied recordings by Cage and
to vary widely from nation to nation and from city to city. Stockhausen: the latter’s face was famously featured on the cover
Shakespeare employed the word “music” with blissful vagueness: of Sgt. Pepper. More recently, there have been intense exchanges
“If music be the food of love, play on.” He apparently felt no between younger post-minimalist composers and figures from
need to specify what kind of music might feed a lusty ear. When indie rock and indie pop.
Mozart, in The Magic Flute, enacted what we might now describe
as a radical fusion of genres, combining high operatic tradition
with the popular art of the Singspiel, few seemed to find anything
untoward in the gesture; Antonio Salieri simply commented that
it was an entertainment worthy of being presented to the greatest
monarch. Rousseau, in his Dictionary of Music, noted that tastes
varied widely—“One is most touched by pathetic pieces, another
other prefers gay Tunes”—but nonetheless spoke of a “general
Taste upon which all well-constituted people are agreed.” 2
1
“My Favorite Records: Björk,”
http://www.therestisnoise.com/2011/11/
my-favorite-records-bj%C3%B6rk.html.
2
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Dictionary of Music,
in Essay on the Origin of Languages and

Writings Related to Music, trans. and ed. John T. Scott
(University Press of New England), 1998, p. 407. One of the many faces of Björk.
Photographed in Berlin on
the Biophilia live tour, 2013, Photographed by Inez van
wearing a sea-urchin mask Lamsweerde & Vinoodh Matadin
18 Alex Ross Beyond Delta: The Many Streams of Björk created by Maiko Takeda. for Interview magazine, 2009.
Shortly before his death, in 1992, John Cage said,
“We live in a time I think not of mainstream, but of many
streams, or even, if you insist upon a river of time, that
we have come to delta, maybe even beyond delta to an ocean
which is going back to the skies.” 3 Stream, delta, border,
boundary: we keep reaching for geographical metaphors
as we speak of genres, and we sense that the real landscape
of musical activity ultimately has little to do with our tidy
delineations, or indeed with the dismantling of them. Fluid
and shifting, music is spread out like populations around urban
centers, and certain communities could plausibly be assigned
to one city’s suburbs or to another’s. Genre may be a kind
of gerrymandering practiced by musical politicians. Indeed,
composers routinely complain when they are described as busters
of genre or crossers of boundaries; they tend to view themselves
simply as artists working with various kinds of material. The jazz
composer Michael Gibbs may have summed it up best when he
said, “There is a fusion going on every time somebody writes
music.” 4 The idea of fusion keeps materializing and disappearing
before our ears, a mirage generated by the limited ability of
language to account for what we hear.
3
David W. Bernstein and Christopher Hatch, eds.,
Writings Through John Cage’s Music, Poetry, and Art
(University of Chicago Press), 2001, p. 1.
4
Julie Coryell and Laura Friedman, eds.,

Jazz-Rock Fusion: The People, The Music
(Hal Leonard), 2000, p. 84.
The bearded lady.
Photographed by Inez van A previously unpublished
Björk photographed Lamsweerde & Vinoodh Matadin photograph by Juergen Teller
20 Alex Ross Beyond Delta: The Many Streams of Björk by Benni Valsson, 1998. for Time magazine, 2009. for The Face magazine, 1993.
The Education of Björk
in the intersecting tributaries of Björk’s work, there is Classical music loomed large in her early years. From
a glimpse of the delta that Cage described at the end of his life the age of five, she attended the Barnamúsikskóli in Reykjavík
—whether or not Cage himself would have been able to wrap (a children’s music school now called the Tónmenntaskóli),
his mind around her music. He died in September, 1993; three where she studied theory and history, sang in school choirs,
months before, Björk released her first solo album, Debut, in and played the flute. (The box set collection Family Tree contains
which she began in earnest her fierce dance across the continents a fragment of Björk’s flute playing: a sinuous little piece
of genre. You hear first a bouncing riff sampled from an Antônio from 1980, called “Glora.”) The focus on a canonical repertory
Carlos Jobim–Quincy Jones soundtrack, its syncopated beat of Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven frustrated her. “I remember
consigned to a venerable orchestral instrument, the timpani. being almost the fighter in the school, the odd kid out,”
Over this pattern, Björk sings a gloriously odd opening line: she once said. 5 But a teacher named Snorri Sigfús Birgisson
“If you ever get close to a human and human behavior, be ready excited her imagination by introducing her to major twentieth-
to get confused.” The voice exists somewhere on the continuum century composers: Schoenberg, Messiaen, Stockhausen,
from the folkish to the operatic; less by calculation by default, Cage. Early on, she made her own attempts at avant-garde
it lands in the middle ground of pop. composition, creating pieces from sonic found objects such as
a tape of her grandfather snoring.
Björk’s Icelandic origins almost certainly contributed
to her quizzical, questing approach to musical identity. Björk remains strongly invested in the modern end of
She belonged to a geographically isolated society in which the classical repertory, regularly attending new-music concerts
centuries-old folk traditions remained strong, and in which and performances of twentieth-century composers whom
young people passed the time singing in choral groups, she admires. In recent years, during her periods in New York,
as generations before them had done. “Somehow, we missed she has seen Metropolitan Opera performances of Berg’s two
out on the industrial revolution and modernism and post- operatic masterpieces, Wozzeck and Lulu; she has also heard,
modernism,” Björk recently told me. “We are jumping straight among many others, Messiaen’s monumental ensemble piece
from colonialism—we got our independence only in 1944—into Des Canyons aux étoiles (From the Canyons to the Stars) and, at
the twenty-first century. We could enjoy a still almost untouched the Park Avenue Armory, Stockhausen’s final electronic
natural landscape, and draw upon it as we head-butted our way composition, Cosmic Pulses. She has been more reserved in
into a green, techno, Internet age.” All the latest products her response to American minimalism—“Minimalism is my
of Western culture were readily available to Björk’s generation, abyss,” she told me, in 2004—but she cherishes Steve Reich’s
and to those who came after. Yet these shiny commodities Tehillim, as her Favorite Records list attests, and also admires
could be assembled in eccentric formations. The up-to-date the work of Arvo Pärt, Vladimir Martynov, and the late John
mingled with the obsolescent and the ancient. Despite Björk’s Tavener, all of whom lie on the outskirts of the minimalist
enthusiasm for the latest developments in the digital arena movement, often joining repetitive processes to pure, spare
and her painstaking attention to the minutiae of studio sonorities suggestive of old church traditions.
production, there is much in her music that feels rough-hewn,
homemade, pre-technological.

“Björk Meets Karlheinz Stockhausen: Compose Yourself,”
Dazed & Confused 23 (August, 1996).
Cover artwork for the self-titled
Björk as a child. album Björk released in 1977 at
She attended the Barnamúsikskóli the age of twelve, art directed by
22 Alex Ross Beyond Delta: The Many Streams of Björk in Reykjavík from the age of five. her mother, Hildur Hauksdóttir.
Many of Björk’s favorite classical pieces involve a bracing
collision of opposites. In Berg’s Lulu, passages of melancholy
lyricism in the manner of Mahler are overpowered by thunderous
dissonances. Likewise, in Messiaen, pure major triads are
frequently juxtaposed with cluster-like masses of tones. Björk’s
own work is tilted strongly toward the tonal end of the spectrum,
yet there are moments of crisis at which the familiar markers
of Western tradition fall away and we are confronted with
a darker, stranger sound world: the abrasive, metallic timbres
of “Pluto,” on Homogenic; the distant, dreamlike choral cluster
that inaugurates “An Echo a Stain,” on Vespertine; the spastically
revolving tone-row that drives “Declare Independence,” on
Volta; the low, groaning organ discords of “Dark Matter,”
on Biophilia. Almost all of Björk’s albums contain at least
one tense stretch where the spell of beauty is broken, perhaps
so that beauty will matter all the more.
Björk’s relationship with Stockhausen has special

significance in light of her longtime preoccupation with
the merging of music and technology. A pioneer of electronic
music in the postwar years, Stockhausen offered a utopian vision
in which technology could serve human and even spiritual
ends; Gesang der Jünglinge, or Song of the Youths, his electronic
masterpiece of 1956, features a boy soprano singing phrases
from the Biblical tale of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.
In later years, as Stockhausen adopted the profile of a guru
and dabbled in mystical arcana, he lost credibility in modern-
music circles, but Björk kept faith with him. Now that more
of Stockhausen’s later output has come into view, her faith
is vindicated; recent stagings of parts of his grand operatic
cycle Licht have generated more awe than derision.
After Stockhausen’s death, in 2007, Björk wrote,

“When Karlheinz harnessed electricity into sound and showed
the rest of us, he sparked off a sun that is still burning and
will glow for a long time… I remember sitting in his studio
in Cologne, surrounded by twelve speakers, him creating
a current traveling up and down, swirling around us like
the force of nature that electricity is, my insides pulsating
to his noise—primordial, modern and futuristic.” 6 The same
adjectives apply to Björk herself.

Björk, “Why I Love Stockhausen,”
The Guardian, October 29, 2008.
“Primordial, modern and
futuristic:” Björk photographed Photo from the Medúlla era
by Stephanie Pfriender Stylander, by Warren du Preez and
24 Alex Ross Beyond Delta: The Many Streams of Björk 1999. Nick Thornton Jones, 2004.
The Singer as Composer
there were many other influences on the young Björk. Monk provided a clear precedent for Björk, even if the two
Indeed, the sway of classical music can be felt more in artists seem to inhabit fundamentally different worlds. Having
the spiritual background of her music than on the surface. admired each other from a distance and exchanged letters over
At the age of eleven, she recorded an album of pop covers, the years, Björk and Monk finally met in 2005, in a conversation
including songs by the Beatles and Stevie Wonder. A few years mediated by the pianist Sarah Cahill. 7 Björk described her
later, she dived into punk and hardcore, becoming the lead early encounter, at around age sixteen, with Monk’s 1981 album
singer of an abrasive anarcho-punk outfit called Kukl. In Dolmen Music, which gives perhaps the purest demonstration
the late 1980s, she acquired international fame as the lead of her invented-folk style. Björk recalled that up until that point
singer of The Sugarcubes, a free-spirited, mildly surrealist New she hadn’t been greatly interested in vocal music, preferring the
Wave group. And, in 1990, she recorded a remarkable album buzzing complexity of instruments and electronics. But Monk
of jazz standards, called Gling-Gló—an inviting path not taken. showed what could be achieved when the voice alone, divorced
or distanced from language, is treated as the most malleable
The art of singing often consists in hiding the physicality of instruments. Speaking together, the two artists found other
of the voice—the noise of the breath, the click of the tongue, common ground: a family tradition of collective singing; an early
the croak of the throat, the innumerable nuances that fall love for Cage; a tendency to compose while walking outdoors;
between the twelve chromatic tones. Björk, by contrast, has never an abiding interest in how the voice is linked to the body.
tried to disguise that visceral aspect: her voice has a raw, abrupt,
outdoor character, even at its airiest and most unearthly. While In traditional realms of classical music, the voice is prized
you can hear intimations of that sound in her earliest recordings, as a medium through which a musical or dramatic idea is
she labored for many years to refine the vocal presence that so expressed. In pop, a similar expectation applies, even if
often elicits such adjectives as “organic,” “natural,” “authentic.” the medium is entirely different: the voice conveys a personality,
The development of the voice went hand in hand with her a style, an energy, a brand. In the cases of Monk and Björk,
emergence as a songwriter and as a producer of complex the voice itself becomes the center of gravity of the composition,
electronic and instrumental textures. the fount of the creative idea. To sing is to compose. We may
be aware of the biography behind the voice, but we care most
While artists as various as Maria Callas and Joni Mitchell of all for the grain of the singing itself—of the fictive landscape
shaped her sense of the capabilities of the voice, perhaps that forms around the voice as it moves. Wallace Stevens
the most enduring influence on Björk’s career, from Debut seemed to anticipate the phenomenon in “The Idea of Order
to Biophilia and beyond, has come from the American composer, at Key West”: “She was the single artificer of the world /
singer, dancer, and theatre artist Meredith Monk, who shares In which she sang.”
with Björk a fundamental unclassifiability, a tendency to invade
the interstices of institutionalized culture. Monk belongs
to the great vanguard of artists and musicians who thrived
in the unheated lofts and makeshift galleries of downtown
Manhattan in the 1960s and ’70s. Where so many of her
contemporaries, including Reich and Philip Glass, adopted
a cool, impassive mien, Monk brought a touch of ritual mysticism
to the New York avant-garde, cultivating an otherworldly yet
piercingly immediate vocal style that suggested some lost,
nameless folk culture. She aimed for a “voice as flexible as
the spine,” and connected it to a self-invented dance vocabulary
and a mobile theatre of gesture and image. The resulting work
caused a certain panic in critical circles: the New York Times once
sent a trio of music, dance, and theatre writers to assess her.
7
“Radical Connections: Meredith Monk and Björk,”

Counterstream Radio, http://www.newmusicbox.org/articles/
radical-connections-meredith-monk-and-bjork.
Singing live with a choir

on the Vespertine tour at Photographed during a live
26 Alex Ross Beyond Delta: The Many Streams of Björk Le Grand Rex, Paris, 2001. performance, 1994.
Composition as Collaboration
björk resists being called a composer, even if she has drawn In 2004, I had the opportunity to watch the making
extensively on the notational classical tradition. The cult of Björk’s fifth solo record, Medúlla, and could see first hand
of the solitary genius is alien to her. Instead, she sees her how her music gestates in a matrix of creative exchanges. 8
work as an essentially collaborative enterprise, one that calls The recording process took Björk from the Canary Islands
for an entire community of musicians, studio technicians, to Iceland and on to Salvador, Brazil, and London, where
instrument-makers, producers, programmers, videographers, the final mix was done. Partly in homage to Meredith Monk,
fashion designers, and other creative individuals. She is not Björk set out to demonstrate the myriad textures, from
the kind of pop star who makes a game of donning masks the ethereal to the percussive, that can emanate from the human
and disguises; her vocal identity has changed remarkably little voice: solitary folkish song, choral swells, breathy feminine
over two decades as a solo artist. But almost everything else whispers, raw heavy-metal shouts, beatboxing, and various
has changed: the instrumentation, the arrangements, the other techniques. The avant-garde rock vocalist Mike Patton,
production techniques. Her albums tend to react against one the Inuit throat-singer Tagaq, and the “human beatboxes”
another, with extroverted moods giving way to intimacies, Dokaka and Rahzel joined the ever-expanding, ever-changing
dense textures followed by transparent ones. Björk community; unfortunately, plans to add the R&B superstar
Beyoncé to the mix ran up against logistical difficulties. Given
To a great extent, Björk’s career can be narrated in terms the meandering itinerary of the creative process, it was striking
of her collaborations. In the early and mid-1990s, she was how cohesive the album turned out to be: working in conjunction
living in London, keeping close tabs on the city’s club scene and with the recording engineer Valgeir Sigurðsson and the mixing
maintaining a hectic nocturnal schedule. Debut and Post were, engineer Spike Stent, Björk shaped disparate material into
in a way, portraits of a multiculturally swinging city, with a potent whole.
purring trip-hop beats layered beneath the sinuous strings
of Talvin Singh and more opulent parts that Björk co-arranged Three years later, with Volta, Björk again reversed course
with Eumir Deodato. Synthesized sounds met up with the and reclaimed the extroverted mood of her early albums,
tootling and plucking of a community band or orchestra: although she kept hold of the more adventurous resources that
flute, harp, accordion, harmonium. The tone of these first she had been deploying since Homogenic. This party tended
albums is caught by the title of a song toward the end of Debut: toward the darkly chaotic. The hip-hop producer Timbaland
“Violently Happy.” added tribalistic beats that happened to resemble Afro-Brazilian
drumming tracks that Björk had recorded for Medúlla and
Homogenic, from 1997, marked the end of Björk’s London then set aside, sensing that they didn’t fit that album’s tone.
phase; she moved back to Reykjavík the following year. An all-female, ten-piece brass ensemble provided glowering brass
The producer Mark Bell became a crucial member of Björk’s sonorities. The indie soul singer Antony Hegarty sang duets
team, injecting cooler, more brittle timbres. The Icelandic with Björk on several tracks, establishing a contrasting mood
landscape can be sensed in the volcanic spasms of songs like of sensuous otherwordliness. If the record lacked the thematic
“Pluto,” or in the pummeling rhythms of “Hunter,” which unity of Vespertine and Medúlla, it again demonstrated Björk’s
suggest a terrain being trampled by hooves. At the same time, knack for disrupting the pop consensus.
the record suggests a turning inward. In the song “Jóga,” Björk
sings of “emotional landscapes,” of a “state of emergency.” Biophilia, from 2011, is perhaps Björk’s most ambitious
This exploration of a sometimes inviting, sometimes forbidding project to date. Part album, part stage spectacle, part iPad app
inner geography goes even deeper in Vespertine, which appeared emporium, part new-instrument laboratory, and part grade-
in 2001. Here, Björk’s collaborators, apart from Bell, included school curriculum, it is almost Stockhausenlike in its joyous
the producer-songwriter Guy Sigsworth, the electronic musician disregard for the constraints of genre. As often before, Björk set
Matthew Herbert, the avant-garde harpist Zeena Parkins, and about mapping the intersection of art, nature, and technology,
Drew Daniel and M. C. Schmidt, of the electronic duo Matmos. presenting analogies between scientific and musical elements.
Yet the glistening, twitchily sensual musical fabric of the album, “Crystalline” compares crystal structures to the efflorescence
which includes parts for glockenspiel, celesta, and music boxes, of songs from small motifs; “Solstice” likens swinging pendulums
was largely Björk’s creation, with most of the beats created to overlapping contrapuntal lines; and “Virus,” whose folklike
on her laptop and musical parts written in the Sibelius melody seems to come from the depths of the centuries,
composition program. has an unstable, ever-shifting accompaniment that suggests
cells subdividing and multiplying. The battery of bespoke
instruments includes the gameleste, a MIDI-controlled device
that incorporates gamelan-like bronze bars in a celeste housing;
and the Sharpsichord, a forty-six-string automatic harp controlled
by a pin cylinder.

See Alex Ross, Listen to This
(Farrar, Straus and Giroux), 2010, pp. 238–58. Björk performing on the Biophilia
tour, 2011, with a specially
commissioned gravity harp
Björk in the studio during that she designed together with Pendulums for the gravity harp, Björk rehearsing for Biophilia
28 Alex Ross Beyond Delta: The Many Streams of Björk a Medúlla session, 2004. Andy Cavatorta. built by Andy Cavatorta. with her Icelandic choir, 2011.
The circle of colleagues now included the organ craftsman
Björgvin Tómasson, the sound sculptor Henry Dagg, the
percussionists Matt Nolan and Manu Delago, the engineer
and programmer Damian Taylor, and the sound-artist and
educator Curver. They joined such longtime confederates
as Zeena Parkins, Matthew Herbert, Mark Bell, the Icelandic
poet Sjón, and the Iranian producer Leila Arab. Grown-up
audiences thrilled to the high-tech spectacle that Björk unleashed
in live performance—plasma bolts zapping inside a Tesla coil,
producing organlike blasts of sound—but most of all she wished
to serve the starved imaginations of schoolchildren, many
of whom now enter adulthood without having studied music
in school. “I want the kids to feel like they’re superheroes
of sound,” she told me, before a series of performances at the
New York Hall of Science, in Queens, in 2012. One afternoon,
I watched as a group of kids from Queens middle schools raced
around playing with the instruments and the attendant software,
their eyes glittering with unsuspected possibilities. 9
In the wake of the cosmic effort of Biophilia, another

change of course seems inevitable. Lately, with an eye toward
a new album, Björk has been recording more intimate,
confessional songs with strings. There is no doubt that these
records not only document an intellectual journey but also
a personal, psychological one. How the work matches up
with the life is a subject on which only the artist herself can
speak, and the biographical details are, in any case, somewhat
immaterial; what counts is the sense that each song is an attempt
to transmit honestly and unabashedly an inward state, rather
than to concoct a calculated, knowing image for the outside
world. As in Schubert’s final string quartet or Berg’s Lyric Suite,
the music has a seismographic action, recording shocks and
sensations that we may not see first hand.

See Alex Ross, “Björk Ed,”
The New Yorker, February 27, 2012.
Björgvin Tómasson designed Inventor and sound sculptor
two instruments with Björk, Henry Dagg with his The organs and the gameleste
a gameleste (shown here) and a Sharpsichord, complete with at a rehearsal for the Biophilia
30 Alex Ross Beyond Delta: The Many Streams of Björk pipe organ, both MIDI-controlled. amplification horns, 2011. tour, 2011.
Postlude: Declaring Independence
the great musical event of the past hundred years has The singer who composes, the composer who sings;
been the rise of pop and the concomitant marginalization the pop figure who embraces classical music, the classical
of a formerly dominant classical tradition. Walter Benjamin, student who has branched out into pop; the solitary creator
in his famous 1936 essay “The Work of Art in the Age of Its who thrives on collaboration, the Nordic woman who meanders
Mechanical Reproducibility,” observed that technologies through global cultures—Björk presents us with a complex
of reproduction had brought about the decay of the “aura” mass of dualities and contradictions. What is most impressive
attaching to bourgeois works of art; modern forms such as about the overall trajectory of her work is that each swerve
photography and film had eroded the uniqueness of the sacred or seeming detour contributes to a steadily ascending arc.
artistic object. The same dynamic could be seen in music, Despite constant changes of style and rotations of personnel,
as Theodor W. Adorno noted. Yet, as Adorno pointed out her music-making displays long-term continuities, not only in
in his correspondence with Benjamin, it is not the case that the fabric of her voice but in the melodic and harmonic contour
the phenomenon of “aura” has disappeared altogether; rather, of the songs. The integration of a distinct composerly sensibility
it has migrated from the older tradition to the newer one, into an open-ended, communally evolving output is perhaps
so that pop is now sacralized in turn. 10 It is a naïve fiction Björk’s signal achievement. It overrides a false opposition that
of contemporary American culture to believe that bourgeois has confined music in predictable social functions.
art is an affair of the élites while pop culture is a celebration
of democratic virtues. There is, in fact, a straight line from “Make your own flag! Raise your flag!” Björk cries
the bourgeois cult of the solitary genius to the mass cult of on “Declare Independence.” We don’t usually think of Björk
the stadium celebrity. In both venues, a musical object radiates as a political artist, and yet her music can acquire an insurgent
ritual power within a radically unequal capitalist society. edge, as became clear when, singing those lines in Shanghai
in 2008, she added a shout of “Free Tibet!” The idea of raising
It would be too much to claim that Björk breaks that cycle one’s own flag, of drawing one’s own borders, runs all the way
of sacralization and domination. No artist who participates through Björk’s career. It transcends the marketing cliché
in the give-and-take of the music business can escape it. But of “Think different” and espouses a philosophy of aesthetic
something in her work rejects a cultic function. As a performer, anarchy, whereby the redrawn map of the musical world becomes
she does not strive to dominate; even when her voice acquires the image of a future society. In this way, too, Björk is a faithful
a ferocious edge, she remains a figure within a landscape, a voice follower of Cage, whose vision of utopia consisted, simply and
within a collective. This is not to say that she fails to attract majestically, of a “multiplicity of individuals who have the habit
fanatical admirers or elicit adulation; rather, that she undermines of respecting one another.” 11 ||
the machinery of celebrity by playing against type. The fact that
she is routinely described as idiosyncratic, eccentric, “weird,”
or even “crazy”—adjectives seldom employed by those who know
her well—testifies to her oblique strategy in the public sphere.
In this respect, her in-between status in genre terms, her liminal
position between classical, popular, and folk worlds, has
subversive power, and not just in aesthetic terms. By refusing
to be classified, Björk also resists being commodified.
10
Adorno wrote to Benjamin on March 18, 1936:
“…if anything can be said to possess an auratic character now,
it is precisely the film which does so,
and to an extreme and highly suspect degree.”
Theodor W. Adorno and Walter Benjamin, 11
The Complete Correspondence, 1928–1940, ed. Henri Lonitz, Joan Retallack, ed., Musicage: Cage Muses on Words, Art, Music
trans. Nicholas Walker (Harvard University Press), 1999, p. 130. (Wesleyan University Press), 1996, p. 293.

32 Alex Ross Beyond Delta: The Many Streams of Björk
Nicola Dibben is a professor of musicology at the University ALL IS FULL OF LOVE || Words & music by Björk || for celeste Björk Creating: Myths of Creativity and Creation || Nicola Dibben
of Sheffield. She researches and teaches in the science
and psychology of music and in popular music studies.
Her publications include the books Björk and Music and
Mind in Everyday Life.

III
3 moma_dibben_cover.indd 1-4 14/11/2014 13:46

Nicola Dibben Björk Creating: Myths of Creativity and Creation

Creator || Producer
stories of björk’s creative process abound in interviews and In terms of music-making, some musical collaborators such
critical reception of her music: from accounts of composing by as engineers and producers are akin to performers brought in to
singing outdoors, through working at digital audio workstations, play music that she has written. One example of this relationship,
to jamming with other musicians. Yet, the discourse and ideology according to Björk, was her work with Markus Dravs, credited
of creativity—who and what we consider “creative” and why— with production of Homogenic, whom she asked to make “big,
remains relatively opaque. In this essay I briefly outline some distorted rock beats.” She gave him reference samples and asked
of Björk’s working process, before showing how her work him to create beats that she listened to and corrected, and by
itself has something to say about the nature of creativity which the end of the Post tour they had created a library of beats that
challenges deeply embedded notions of creation. she could use in Homogenic. Another example is Matmos, who
she brought in to provide a textural and percussive layer of beats
Björk’s solo work can be thought of in terms of “projects,” to tracks she had already created. 2
which are realized as albums, associated singles and remixes,
promotional images, music videos, documentaries, performances, Significantly, Björk’s account of these working relationships
and in the case of Biophilia (2011), a pop-up music school and used procreational metaphors, such as her description of studio
an app for tablet computer. Music is at the core of these projects. engineers she worked with as the “midwives” to her creative
For example, in the case of Biophilia, which I worked on projects. 3 Such a description runs counter to the idea of the
as musicological consultant, 1 Björk spent at least two years studio as the preserve of the male engineer and producer, and
researching and composing with assistance from a recording of the patriarchal model of creation and creativity as “divine
engineer, personal assistant, and management. By the time inspiration” which derives from sacred or phallocentric models
I met Björk in September 2010 she had already created working of the father/god. 4 It is in this context of patriarchal ideologies
versions of the tracks that would form the album, at least one of creativity, and difference politics, that interpretation of Björk’s
of which was awaiting lyrics (the track “Melody,” which was work from a feminist perspective is particularly interesting.
later titled “Cosmogony”). At this stage she had identified most I argue that her work challenges the stereotype of the patriarchal
collaborators, and was communicating her idea for each aspect God-like creator, and replaces it with a matriarchal alternative
of the project to the relevant people, working with the individuals premised on procreation. The most obvious place to look for
concerned to achieve it. Hence, design, art work, costume, this matriarchal creator is in the visual and lyrical dimension
videos, and apps emerged during that process and were executed of her work, but, as I will show, they are just as apparent in
to the music, with some changes to the music in response to the sound of her music.
those interventions and the needs of the different types of
artefacts. The reason this sequence is important is that it points
to a distinctive feature of Björk’s work—the way in which she uses
all media at her disposal to communicate consistently a central
idea particular to each project, which is first manifested musically.
2
Matmos, “When Matmos met Björk,”
Red Bull Music Academy Magazine,
http://www.redbullmusicacademy.com/magazine/
when-matmos-met-bjork, June 26, 2013.
3
Homogenic (1997) CD liner notes;
1 and personal communication, February, 2013.
In this case, “musicological consultant”
is a grand title for a variety of tasks, 4

from writing liner notes to identifying Rob Pope, Creativity: Theory, History, Practice
key centers of songs for a package of tuning forks! (Psychology Press), 2005.
Live performances for Biophilia, A screenshot of “Solstice,” from

Manchester International the interactive Biophilia digital The “Cosmogony” homescreen
34 Nicola Dibben Björk Creating: Myths of Creativity and Creation Festival, UK, 2011. app, first released in 2011. from the Biophilia app.
Procreator || Mother || Nature Procreator || Mother || Nature
björk’s performances of femininity are notable for avoiding björk’s work makes an unusual alliance between a woman’s
the sexualized objectification of women’s bodies that permeates sexual identity and motherhood. In a culture where motherhood
mainstream popular culture. Her costumes are often thematically is often deemed de-sexualized, Björk’s focus on sensual
connected to the particular project she’s engaged in and flout experience in Medúlla is striking. Björk attributed this thematic
conventions of acceptability, catwalk fashion trends, or body- aspect of the album project to her experience of pregnancy,
conscious dressing. 5 Citing Björk as a “feminist icon” one birth, and mothering, describing the album as “blood, bones
blogger wrote: “… her clothes are never about being pretty and meat.” 7 In this context, the song “The Pleasure is All
or sexy, which I love. They’re clothes as art and as something Mine” can be understood as a celebration of the sensual and
to play with and explore.” 6 Her movements in performance emotional experience of mothering, and “Mouth’s Cradle”
similarly avoid clichéd sexualization: the choreography eschews as a rumination on breastfeeding. The voice is one place where
coy looks, or simulated sex typical of female pop icons and gender is “performed,” 8 so places where the voice does not
instead is characterized by child-like cavorting, by movements comply with the codification of sexual categories and roles
that express and visualize sonic structures, or reflect almost disrupt identity categories. 9 The panting and groaning performed
absent-minded absorption in the act of singing. Nonetheless, by Björk and Canadian throat-singer Tanya Tagaq break
some of her work has been erotically explicit: the music video conventions of vocal femininity because they can be heard as
“Pagan Poetry” (dir. Nick Knight, 2001) shows Björk semi-naked eliding both a maternal and erotic identity.
with beads sewn into her skin. In sum, Björk’s visual technique
avoids sexual objectification by disavowing, to some extent, In interviews contemporary with Medúlla, Björk
the conventional representational style of heteronormative described the project as an attempt to return to a time “prior
sexual attractiveness, fetishized body parts, and patriarchal to civilization,” and to hark back to a mythologized past in the
modes of looking. Instead, the visual becomes an outlet for the wake of 9/11. In musical terms this is manifest in the “primitivist”
expression of a different kind of female experience and identity. and body-centric vocal album. The very personal, family-centered
focus, and emphasis on the voice, can be understood as a form
of “embodied protest” which voices the physical and emotional
experience of motherhood in opposition to the (male) oriented
contemporary political scene. 10 This celebration of sensual
experiences of breastfeeding and mothering is an articulation
of peace politics which is arguably congruent with tenets
of third-wave feminism and its valorization of the feminine.
From a feminist perspective Björk’s work can be understood

as affirming female sexual autonomy and identity by avoiding
sexual objectification, and concomitant ideologies of male sexual
entitlement, and by celebrating identities of motherhood. This
is extremely important in so far as it counters a situation in which
women’s sexuality is defined by men. However, one problem with
this projected female identity is that it affirms constructions of
the female subject as natural and pre-technological, which can be
seen as problematically essentialist. One place this is apparent is
in the construct of “Nature” which appears throughout her work.
7
The Inner Part of an Animal or Plant Structure,
dir. Ragnheiður Gestsdóttir, 2004.
8
5 Judith Butler, Gender Trouble (Routledge), 1999.
Edwin F. Faulhaber III,
Communicator Between Worlds: 9
Björk Reaches Beyond the Binaries. Freya Jarman-Ivens,
Diss. Bowling Green State University, 2008. Queer Voices: Technologies, Vocalities,
and the Musical Flaw (Palgrave Macmillan), 2011.
6
Franca, “Fashionable Feminist Icon: 10
Björk,” March 2, 2011. Oranges and Apples: Björk has described some of the songs as being

http://www.oranges-and-apples.com/2011/ about family members. The lyrics of “Mouth’s Cradle”
03/fashionable-feminist-icon-bjork.html. refer to “building an altar away from all Osamas and Bushes.” Stills from the erotically
charged video for “Pagan Poetry” Photographed for
(directed by Nick Knight, 2001), the Volumen VHS/DVD Björk and her son Sindri,
Björk wearing a dress by Inez van Lamsweerde photographed in Iceland by
36 Nicola Dibben Björk Creating: Myths of Creativity and Creation by Alexander McQueen. & Vinoodh Matadin, 1998. Juergen Teller, 1993.
Procreator || Mother || Nature
the natural world is one of the most common tropes

in Björk’s work, whether as the self-proclaimed source of her
creativity, the thematic subject of her work, or dominant
interpretive mode of critical reception. This perspective
is typified by the way she understands her voice as her
primary compositional tool, which she describes as shaped
by and a reaction to the natural world, untutored and hence
“preserving” something otherwise changed or destroyed. 11
Björk’s work articulates a celebration of and continuity

of humans with the natural world. 12 Imagery of the physical
and animal natural world abounds in the music videos and
lyrics of her solo career: volcanic and winter landscapes, the sea,
and animals. Notably, whereas in her early solo career (Debut
and Post) she was usually the lyrical and visual second-person
observer of nature, in later work she was more often the first-
person embodiment of nature: for example, as cyber-polar-bear
in the video of “Hunter” from Homogenic, as the now infamous
swan at the Oscars for Dancer in the Dark, or as the sea
in “Oceania” from Medúlla. By personifying nature Björk
performs the continuity between human and animal, human
and physical, self and other.
Björk’s performance of “Oceania” at the Opening

Ceremony of the Athens Olympic Games (2004) is a good
example of this aesthetic practice of embodying nature.
In this work, written for the Olympic Games, Björk takes on
the persona of the “Ocean-Mother” who watches over humanity
(thereby disavowing differences of religion and nationality).
The main visual cue to this embodiment in performance was
the blue, billowing, and encrusted dress by designer Sophia
Kokosalaki which unfurled across the stadium, while the lyrics
(co-written by longtime collaborator, Icelandic poet Sjón) speak
from first-person perspective. Musically, the scalic passages
and choral flourishes can be heard as mimetic of waves, while
the fermatas (the long held notes disrupting the regular beat)
manifest the sea-goddess’s power and control in musical form
by halting the temporal flow.
Björk’s identification of Woman with the natural

world in much of her work could be seen as problematically
essentialist in so far as it seems to reinscribe binaries that
ultimately preserve male power. Yet this interpretation would
ignore the extent to which her work engages with the idea
of technology and, by doing so, the extent to which it challenges
these very categories. So it is to the “technological” that
I turn next.
11
Inside Björk, dir. Christopher Walker, 2003.

12
Nicola Dibben, Björk (Equinox), 2009, pp. 53–71. Björk personifying the sea
in her performance of “Oceania”
at the Olympic Games, Athens,
A portrait by Stéphane Sédnaoui, 2004, in a dress designed
38 Nicola Dibben Björk Creating: Myths of Creativity and Creation 1994. by Sophia Kokosalaki.
Feminizing Techno
björk’s treatment of the technological has to be seen A second feature of Björk’s sound that presents
in its wider cultural context. The construct “Technology” this integration of the natural and technological is the mimetic
is associated with a worldview of scientific progress, objectivity character of her beats. For example, the timbre of her beats
and rationality, and of domination over the natural world. deliberately mimics aspects of the natural world such as seismic
In the West this is a legacy of nineteenth- and early twentieth- movement of the earth (Homogenic), and winter landscapes
century reaction to industrialization and mechanization and (Vespertine), associations that are primed for the listener by
associated fears of routinized human labor that would contextual information such as Björk’s statements on her work
then be replaced by the work of machines. In popular music and accompanying videos. In “Nature is Ancient,” for example,
the “technological” came to be associated with electronic the industrial-sounding beats coincide with shots of a foetus-like
instruments and sound sources, epitomized by the synthesized creature, and the filtered frequency spectrum evokes a sound
timbres and repeating beat patterns of electronic dance music— heard through some other substance or device, and can be
this, despite the fact that a guitar is just as much a technology interpreted as a uterine soundscape. In some cases, beats and
as the Digital Audio Workstation. 13 This association between other materials are directly sampled from everyday sound
the sounds of electronic dance music and the concept of the (cracking ice and footsteps in snow on Vespertine), and in Medúlla
“technological” is manifest in Björk’s artistic output, statements beats are made from the ultimate sonic signifier of human
in interviews, and critical reception. This is significant because subjectivity—the voice.
it means that if we look closely at her use of beats we can better
understand the idea of technology in her music. A third example of the way Björk inscribed the beats
of electronic music with alternative meanings was through
One innovation of Björk’s compositional style was the use of microbeats on Vespertine. Microbeats are high-pitched,
the unusual combination of vocal, instrumental, and electronic short-duration, percussive rhythms that derived from avant-garde
sources, which integrated sounds culturally coded as “natural” and experimental “glitch” music of the 1990s which used the
with other sound sources and compositional practices clicks of a CD skipping as musical material. One way microbeats
conceived as “technological.” 14 One place this can be heard is subvert traditional beat-based composition is by “miniaturizing”
in the relationship between her voice and the sonic background. the sonic experience. The term “micro” refers to the idea of
The sound of Björk’s first solo albums was innovative in the working with a “smallest particle” or “grain” of sound, and
context of 1990s electronic dance music for its combination Björk used this within a broader aesthetic of miniaturization
of vocals and beat-based electronic dance music. Her voice particular to Vespertine. The design intention was to create
works with the “technological,” represented by the beats, but the impression of something small that had been magnified. 16
is not subservient to it, as can be heard in the expressive timing Miniaturization of objects opens up the everyday world to
of her relatively unprocessed vocals around the quantized beat the imagination and is a sonic manifestation of Vespertine’s
(a relationship described by British musician and co-writer utopian delight in the domestic. 17 This was achieved by using
Guy Sigsworth as “the unforgiving pulse of the machine and high-frequency sounds of short duration and in rapid
the human resisting it”). 15 rhythmic patterns (sounds emitted by small objects/events
in the real-world), and positioning them around the virtual
space of the recording so that they become more akin to
something organic and mobile (insects, perhaps) rather than
the fixed-location, loud, low-frequency beats characteristic
of some electronic dance music. By virtue of this treatment,
technology was made human-scale, and brought into the
private, domestic realm.
16
This is also evident in the title sequence
and credits to Björk’s documentary Minuscule (2004),
13 in which the camera’s gaze travels through a miniature world.
Simon Frith, “Art versus technology:
The strange case of popular music,” 17
Media, Culture & Society 8.3 (1986), pp. 263–79. Björk explained her use of microsound
at this time as a compositional strategy
14 that emerged from working with a laptop computer,
Nicola Dibben, Björk (Equinox), 2009. and a state of domesticity and retreat in response
to the concurrent filming of the Lars von Trier-directed film

15 Dancer in the Dark, in which she took the leading role
Guy Sigsworth, personal communication, 2006. (Inside Björk, dir. Christopher Walker, 2003).
Björk performing at the Brit

40 Nicola Dibben Björk Creating: Myths of Creativity and Creation Awards, London, 1994.
Microbeats also make technological mediation audible.
With digitalization at the end of the twentieth century came
the apparent absence of a physical artefact, 18 and this was
accompanied by aesthetic practices that made the digital visible
and audible. This “opaque mediation” 19 is evident in some
of Björk’s videos at the time (for example, her transformation
from human to animated bear in “Hunter”). The sonic “glitches”
of a CD skipping are the sound of the perfect workings of CD
technology interrupted, making audible the otherwise inaudible
digital artefact itself. In this sense microbeats acknowledge
and embrace the technological realm, rather than using it to
create a fantasy of (unmediated) audio perfection.
As this indicates, microbeats are premised on the failures

and unpredictabilities of technology, and in this sense Glitch
music can be understood as a critique of digital technology.
Talking of Vespertine, Björk remarked: “… it’s sort of conquering
the fact that most people think that technology is cold because
it has no mystery, and it’s very calculated… So when you take
technology and use the areas where it breaks, where it’s faulty,
you’re entering a mystery zone where you can’t control it.
It’s reacting more like an animal or person to you, and you
have to react with it.” 20
Mechanical technology is also explored by Björk in this

way: for example, while the digital is sonically present in the
use of CD glitches on Vespertine, that album in addition includes
the sounds of a mechanical music box whose idiosyncratic timing
variations present a more imperfect version of the technological.
It is possible to see this set of Björk’s compositional

practices as a critical response to the binary opposition between
human and machine, the natural and the technological.
The construct of technology as systematic, predictable, and
invulnerable is not played out in Björk’s treatment of sonic
signifiers of the technological; instead, technology, as represented
through her sound, is unsystematic, unpredictable, vulnerable—
and ultimately rather life-like. From a feminist perspective,
she loosens the binary constructs and opens the way for an
alternative relationship with and between nature and technology.
18
The absence of physical artefacts
with digital technology is “apparent”
rather than “real” because digital artefacts such as MP3s
still need physical playback technologies.
19
Ragnhild Brøvig-Hanssen,
Music in Bits and Bits of Music: Signatures
of Digital Mediation in Popular Music Recordings.
Diss. PhD thesis, University of Oslo, 2013.
20
Björk interviewed in CDNow, August, 2001,

“Cocoon Special,” 2001:
http://www.bjork.fr/Cocoon,114. Video stills from “Hunter”
(directed by Paul White, 1998),
showing Björk’s transformation
from human to animated
42 Nicola Dibben Björk Creating: Myths of Creativity and Creation polar bear.
The Creator-Procreator
i have suggested that Björk’s artistic practices present a version Whereas “All is Full of Love” presents a cyborgian
of “technology” that does not fit the cultural stereotypes. As embodiment of a feminized technology—the human-machine
Charity Marsh and Melissa West pointed out over a decade hybrid—elsewhere Björk’s work conceives of humans as part
ago, 21 Björk blurs the distinction between technology and nature, of a bigger system in which the hybridity is more explicitly
and in doing so she dissolves the polarization of masculinity between organic and inorganic matter. An early exemplar
and femininity. Elsewhere I argue that the music video “All of this is the music video “Jóga,” at the end of which the
is Full of Love” 22 epitomizes this idea of the human-technology camera enters Björk’s chest to reveal she is made of rock
relationship. 23 In that video Björk embodies a human-machine identical to the land she stands on. Whereas this music video
hybrid 24—a cyborg modeled on her facial features, lovingly can be understood as a nationalist identification by Björk
tended to by robotic arms in a sci-fi futuristic setting, who then with the Icelandic landscape, 25 her more recent work encourages
appears in sexual union with another. The close-up shots less place-bound interpretations, pointing instead to a conception
of cylindrical protuberances, milky substances flowing over of nature in terms of planet rather than place.
cyborgian body parts, the tangled cables linking cyborgs
to robotic arms suggestive of bondage, and the moment This difference in scope is illustrated by comparing
of sexual union inferred from the few seconds blackout “All is Full of Love” with “Mutual Core” 26—a music video
at the track’s Golden Section are an explicitly sexual and made thirteen years after the former, yet which shares structural
sensual visual representation of a non-heteronormative and thematic similarities with it, and has been described
and cyborgian subjectivity. as “a feminist treatise against patriarchy in creation theory.” 27
“Mutual Core” depicts the emergence and sexual union
This feminization of technology is also accomplished of two hybrid creatures in a creation myth narrative. Rock-like
sonically: the cyborgs lip-synch to Björk’s singing voice, and creatures emerge and submerge in aquatic movements in sand,
musical materials culturally coded as feminine and magical in which Björk stands rooted up to her midriff. They rise up
(for example, short, scalic clavichord passages) are aligned and display anthropomorphic features: rock strata meet and
with visual shots of the robotic arms tending to the cyborg. caress like tongues, the “rockface” takes on human features.
The “noisy” filtered timbre of the slow looped beat pattern At each of the two choruses the hybrid creatures come together
that runs throughout the track has a mechanical character and in a violent eruption—a visual realization of the lyrical reference
starts with the movement of the robotic arms, as if the track to tectonic plates colliding. The audio-visual climax is the union
itself is a piece of machinery (0:19). This is in stark contrast of the creatures in the final chorus as the rock and lava thrust
to the moments of human subjectivity associated with the upward, creating two androgynous Buddha-like figures.
cyborgs: the chorus in which the cyborgs duet accompanied Here the categories of organic and inorganic are as inadequate
by sonic signifiers of emotion and altered states of consciousness as those of female and male.
(vocalize, crescendo of the high-frequency wash on the upbeat
to the chorus, harp-like glissandi, vocal reverberation).
It is possible to understand Björk’s treatment as presenting
a new hybrid entity which confounds dualist categories
of masculine-feminine and technology-nature.
21 25
Charity Marsh and Melissa West, Nicola Dibben (in press),
“The Nature/Technology Binary Opposition Dismantled “Affecting landscapes: popular music and environmentalism
in the Music of Madonna and Björk,” in a Nordic context,” Popular Music in the Nordic Countries,
Music and Technoculture (2003), pp. 182–203. eds. Antti-Ville Kärjä and Fabian Holt.
22 26
“All is Full of Love,” dir. Chris Cunningham, 1999. “Mutual Core,” dir. Andrew Thomas Huang, 2012.
23 27
Nicola Dibben, Björk (Equinox), 2009. Cacy Forgenie, “Björk’s ‘Mutual Core’
video is fantastic, feminist & repeat play worthy,”
24 berBice [MRKT], November 15, 2012:
Mike Featherstone and Roger Burrows, eds., http://berbicemarket.com/sports-music-film-art-books

Cyberspace/Cyberbodies/Cyberpunk: /bjorks-mutual-core-video-is-fantastic-
Cultures of Technological Embodiment (Sage), 1996. feminist-repeat-play-worthy-video/
Björk revealing that, inside A still showing human-machine
her chest, her heart is Iceland. hybrids in the video to
Stills from “Jóga,” directed “All is Full of Love,” directed by
44 Nicola Dibben Björk Creating: Myths of Creativity and Creation by Michel Gondry, 1997. Chris Cunningham, 1999.
Similarities between the two videos encourage comparison:
they share a narrative of creation, organic-inorganic hybridity,
the falling ash/sparks during the creation process, the flowing
liquids and unification evocative of sexual union, moments
of visual symmetry of entwined hybrid creatures surrounded
by and linked to other smaller creatures, and significant visual
events at the Golden Section of each track (sexual union when
the lights flicker off in “All is Full of Love” and the touching
of hands in “Mutual Core”). Both celebrate non-heteronormative
sexuality, and both challenge our perceptions of the categories
of organic and inorganic (human/machine in one case;
human/mineral in another). But whereas “All is Full of Love”
emphasizes peace, love and sex, “Mutual Core” represents
a more violent unification.
This focus on hybridity disturbs familiar conceptual

categories: organic and inorganic are combined rather than
representing a duality. This questioning of dualist categories
is particularly significant in the context of Björk’s ecopolitical
activities, hinting at the human relationship with, rather
than domination over, the natural world. 28
28
Nicola Dibben (in press),
“Affecting landscapes: popular music
and environmentalism in a Nordic context,”

Popular Music in the Nordic Countries, Stills from the videos
eds. Antti-Ville Kärjä and Fabian Holt. to “All is Full of Love” (Chris
Cunningham, 1999) and “Mutual
Core” (Andrew Thomas Huang,
2012), showing powerful unions
46 Nicola Dibben Björk Creating: Myths of Creativity and Creation of inorganic/organic hybridity.
Conclusion: Disturbing the Categories
i have argued that Björk’s artistic output is characterized The problem with such an approach, or interpretation
by themes and narratives of creation and unification that of her approach, is two-fold. If we understand her work as
problematize familiar gendered dualist categories. I focused showing that constructs normally thought of as binary opposites
on sonic examples and compositional practices, but the same are in fact compatible with one another, then this simply
themes are evident in more obviously representational reinscribes the opposition—constituting the dualities in the very
aspects of visuals and lyrics: her videos feature androgynous process of unifying them. 30 In fact, I find this interpretation
characters, non-heteronormative representations of sexual unpersuasive because it ignores the way her work destabilizes
union, avoidance of sexual objectification of Björk’s own image, gendered categories. As I have argued above, the human-machine
and the presentation of Woman as simultaneously sexual binary is challenged by the entity of the cyborg; the organic-
and nurturing. inorganic distinction is disturbed by creating hybrid entities;
and the differentiation of science and myth (Big Bang creation
Perhaps surprisingly, given the feminist reading of her theory and Mother Nature mythology in “Cosmogony”) is
work that I have presented, Björk herself had until recently been made indistinct. There are no clear categories. Instead, we are
reluctant to identify herself as a feminist. Subsequent to her presented with a non-gendered, non-heteronormative subjectivity
increased politicization after 9/11, and the birth of her daughter, in which creation and procreation are one.
she became more outspoken about gender inequalities, 29
contrasting her own perspective with that of her mother’s Hence, I suggest an alternative perspective on her work:
generation of second-wave feminists. It would be easy to read namely, that Björk challenges the binaries from the outset. None
Björk’s work in terms of difference feminism in which women of the categories comprising the apparent dualities we might
are aligned with nature and its associated attributes. Indeed, find there are inscribed in her work; rather they are shown to be
such a reading is supported by a track such as “Sacrifice” there only in our own realization of their inadequacy as systems
from Biophilia, which ponders on how nature positions women of thought to make sense of the material at hand. And so for
to care for others first. Björk’s author-image prioritizes her the duration of a song, a performance, we can experience an
emotional authenticity and her voice as signifier of the “natural” alternative way the world might be. ||
and “pre-technological” congruent with dominant constructions
of the female subject in Euro-American culture. Moreover,
her embodiment of nature is redolent of an ecofeminism
reliant on a mystical connection between women and nature.
This amounts to an espousal of third-wave “difference
feminism”—the idea that there are real differences between
the sexes and a reclaiming of the “traditional” female roles which
some believed to have been jettisoned by second-wave feminism.
29
“It’s interesting for me to bring up a girl.
You go to the toy store
and the female characters there—Cinderella,
the lady in Beauty and the Beast—
their major task is to find Prince Charming.
And I’m like, wait a minute—it’s 2005!
We’ve fought so hard to have a say,
and not just live through our partners,
and yet you’re still seeing two-year-old girls
with this message pushed at them
that the only important thing is
to find this amazing dress so that the guy will want you.
It’s something my mum pointed out to me
when I was little—so much that I almost threw up— 30
but she’s right.” Björk interviewed by Liz Hoggard, Andrew Robbie, “Sampling Haraway,
“Maybe I’ll be a feminist in my old age,” Hunting Björk: Locating a Cyborg Subjectivity,”
The Observer, March 13, 2005. Repercussions, 2007, 10: 1.

48 Nicola Dibben Björk Creating: Myths of Creativity and Creation
Timothy Morton is Rita Shea Guffey Chair in English Page 61, above — Photo courtesy of Timothy Morton. AURORA || Words and music by Björk || for harpsichord This Huge Sunlit Abyss from the Future Right There Next to You…
at Rice University (Houston, USA). He is the author of Realist Page 61, below — Home video courtesy of Björk Guðmundsdóttir. Emails between Björk Guðmundsdóttir and Timothy Morton || October, 2014 || Edited by James Merry
Causality; Hyperobjects: Philosophy
Magic: Objects, Ontology, Causality;
World; The Ecological Thought;
and Ecology after the End of the World; ought;
Nature, nine other books and 120 essays
Ecology Without Nature,
on philosophy, ecology, literature, music, art, design, and food.
Morton is a proponent of object-oriented ontology (OOO),
a new philosophy that shows how nonhuman things—a fox,
a pencil, the biosphere, a song, a quasar, a mixing desk—are
as rich and alive and special as we think humans are, and
how they influence each other in a sensual, molten ether.

IV
4 moma_timothy morton_cover.indd 1-5 14/11/2014 13:46

hi timothy
i wanted to write this letter for a long time
i have been reading your books for a while and i like them a lot
next year there will be a MoMA exhibition

on my work including a book .
i was wondering if you’d be interested in taking part in it ?
warmth , björk

Dear Björk, thank you so much for writing ...
It was very kind of you to write to me, and I’m very touched im thrilled youre interested
by your kind words. I am always quite surprised anyone reads
my stuff! and sorry , i went offline ,
was hiking in iceland and filming a video .
I would be thrilled to be part of the MoMA catalogue.
Your work has been a very deep influence on my way of thinking so i have been doing a little reading and trying to find folks
and life in general. I like to be given homework in terms who could help me define what “ism” i am ... i guess i managed
of what to write (perpetual student!), so do tell me more about to avoid being analyzed for all these years but now since i am
what specifications you might like. a little older and supposedly “wiser” i would like to offer up
a collaborative hand and wave hi to theory . well , if i dont do it ,
It truly seems to me that there is some kind of shift happening the art critics will and that seems destined for misunderstandings .
towards ecological awareness--not just in terms of PR i ended up reading several books on posthumanism .
for the science. I have heard this in your work since I started it is not exactly what i was looking for but closest yet ...
to listen to it. most interesting is that it is the first “ism” where the human
is not at the centre of the world , and the stuff about anthropocene
Yours, Tim is also spicy !! not only to define it for me ,
but also for all my friends , and a generation actually .
i feel in many ways we icelandic people are a bit different from usa
and england . somehow we missed out on the industrial revolution
and modernism and postmodernism and are now coming straight
from colonialism , getting our independence 1944 and going
straight into 21st century ! we have a chance to enjoy our still
almost untouched nature and combine it and headbutt our way
into green techno internet age . so somehow there is way less
apocalyptic feeling over here ... we dont have an army ,
havent been burned by wars or by the guilt that comes with it ...
somehow we are still continuing the romantic age of the 19th
century but it is not back to nature , it is forwards !! i feel this
has been a little misunderstood so far as naive and cute
( a la grizzly man werner herzog
or even worse dolphins and shit !! )
and i havent seen much written stuff in the western media
where this “ism” is given a mature voice .
then i guess there is also the woman matriarch factor .

would be incredible to somehow address that in a fertile
non patriarch rocknroll way ? without dissing a single male !!!

Oh gosh, it’s my pleasure, and thank you in turn for replying By “weird” I mean the Icelandic and Old Norse roots of that word,
with such richness. “urth.” What things are is inextricably looped, twisted or entwined
with how they appear, yet different--so things are weird and also
I think I’ve had your music and words in me for decades--I mean fragile, even black holes. I will now not take up five hours of your
this word i use, “hyperobject” for instance, it sounds like one time proving it! All my stuff right now is explicitly about this word
of your words. You have so many nonhuman beings in your work, urth, which for me is a strange coincidence since you wrote me.
both obviously alive and not so obviously. I tend to see things
in an animistic way. I try to argue that everything is alive I could find a million examples in your work. The description
(or undead--almost as good!). of the snow in “Aurora” leaves the snow to be exactly what it is,
yet at the same time there is this tantalizing sensual appearance,
Your sentence made me smile. “Help me define what ism I am” yet one can’t quite grasp it, which is why it’s beautiful (“The way
is kind of its own ism in a way, and a very lyrical phrase it melts...”). Kant says something very similar about raindrops.
(I don’t really know how to write poems but I can read them...) In his funny old clunky way.
I have no idea what ism you are really of course (he said sincerely An artist attunes to what things are, which means sort of listening
and truthfully), and my own ism doesn’t seem to have made itself to the future, which is just how things are--I think time is a sort
very obvious! That is part of the whole ism dynamic, of course, of liquid that pours out of hatpins, underground trains, salt
which we humans have been in for about two hundred years... crystals. So a work of art is also listening to itself, because what
it is never quite coincides with how it appears, too. “You have
I argue that art comes from the future (and I can prove it?!) to play a long time to sound like yourself” (Miles Davis).
so I think art of whatever kind is always ahead of thinking.
It’s my job to sort of channel it into the present in words. This is where I think maybe your work is mysteriously realist.
As your art is obviously very clearly open to the future (and from Each work is very unique, quite startlingly so when you compare
the future) I thought I’d like to tell you, with helping you on it to how others proceed. So in a way the works are also these
the 2015 projects in mind. nonhumans I keep banging on about.
I think art is a way to talk about the way things are in general: And this is why it doesn’t quite fit into an “ism” because so far
an umbrella, Sagittarius A, coral, breadcrumbs, photons. I believe isms have been historically about ignoring reality, in other words
art is a way to attune to what reality is, which is a weird reality. nonhuman beings.
You did say you’d read my books. Me being a bit daft I suddenly
connected with the fact you read “Realist Magic”, and am even
more touched. I care about all my stuff but that is the one I wrote
from my core. I’m so delighted you are into it.
The sentences in that book are really just a fuzzy photocopy

of what you do.
So glad to hear someone has been hiking and not online.

Hope the filming goes excellently!
“Magic” is a very positive word for me.
Being a newborn baby’s dad was one of the most psychedelic

things that ever happened to me. The corny phrase is “children
are the future” but it’s quite true in another way. This huge sunlit
abyss from the future right there next to you...
That Michael Jackson trial, it was like that, wasn’t it? I found
out about Michael Jackson’s death in the middle of a class I was
magic : am filming : will reply properly soon, teaching and the first words out of my mouth were, “Of course
but in the meantime i thought i’d send you this we are all responsible for this” (by putting him up on a pedestal
to be the perfect pop puppet, etc.). One of the most conservative
around 10 to 15 years ago i read an interview with an architect students even snorted derisively but I guess he was just reacting
where he talked about the difference between people who invent to his own heavily shielded vulnerability...
things and people who collect things : he said he was a collector
of ideas , he travelled often to india and other places for this . Creation comes out of vulnerability, doesn’t it? Some kind
and that he felt really threatened by people who just wake up of attunement to something that isn’t you. Susceptibility.
and they have thought of something original .
he called it “the tyranny of the oblivious” . You seem to allow your voice to be vulnerable, which is very
powerful in fact: threatening vulnerability. Sometimes
i found this incredibly interesting . at the time i had just moved it seems to be in between crying and laughing. Or roaring,
to new york and was breastfeeding a newborn baby at home growling, ululating. Allowing it to be itself, which is a physical,
writing music . 9/11 had just happened and i was following visceral entity.
the news of the michael jackson trial : a public execution
happening . it seemed extraordinary that something so sweet In this your voice seems to be staying in a place of creativity,
and generous could be such a threat ... which for me means being close to things.
This is a reason why I really like your song “Virus.” Being alive
means being susceptible to viruses and so on. And far more
generally, viruses, patterns, appearance, flowers, art--these are
all far from useless, they are intrinsic parts of being a thing at all.
Causality itself is something to do with magical seduction.
(Five-hour argument compression!) How that amounts to “tyranny”
just beats me. To me, reality is literally an anarchy. Artists just
aren’t tyrants. They can’t be.
In a way art is the opposite of collecting, because it must

be more like listening to something one can’t quite hear--it’s an old
idea of channeling, sort of nonviolently allowing things to beam

themselves down.
For instance, the work on Biophilia--it’s just brilliantly about
how life can’t be contained to prefabricated concepts of life, that
it contains things like crystallization and viruses and moons.
And also, of course, this is a basic thing I find everywhere in your
work: you become the thunder and lightning (for instance), and you might find it funny but i was trying to explain OOO
yet you don’t, just as the voice entwines around the instrument; to a friend last night in an email after a few whiskeys , ha ha
or how an instrument can be an agent all by itself, not just telling
a (human) story. There is this playful both-and that I think thought id share it with you :
is a basic quality of what a thing is at all.
“ i have been reading some OOO stuff ,
What is original does not come from absolute blank nothing the guy i once sent you a link about , timothy morton
(“oblivion”), but from an electromagnetic tenderness--from
remembering, not forgetting. i guess he is SWERVING the apocalyptic angle into hope ,
or at least there is an attempt
You allow the songs on the Biophilia app to be remade, which
is very courageous, but also realistic, because I think entities his thing is that the apocalypse has already happened
never exhaust their possibilities by being used or interpreted and we have to get out of our paralysed state and react .
by anything. You also seem very open about having songs remixed, he has a lot of humour too , which is incredible .
and I wonder whether it’s for the same reason. i guess i relate most to the more sonic angle of OOO ,
about string theory and how in the core of the atom all vibrates
The song as entity is a physical being in its own right and creating and resonates and the 20th century was the century
it means letting it be, which is absolutely the opposite of collecting, of cause and effect and the element table .
where there is a frame into which things fit already. but now it is more about the magnetic force of the sun ,
how we are discovering that now : both on a subatomic level
It is itself precisely because it can be changed, remixed, re-heard. and also on a large scale : how the magnetism of our solar system
It is mysterious. is way more effective than the pathways of our stars .
sorry , crazy farfetched , but if you think of it as a sound
Earth needs this tenderness--I think there is some kind of fusion it is super exciting how we are finally opening up to resonance ...
between tenderness and sadness, joy, yearning, longing, horror hmm ... perhaps too ambitious to explain in a short email
(tricky one), laughter, melancholy and weirdness. This fusion ( i blame the whiskey ) ”
is the feeling of ecological awareness.
ha ha ha and to take it even further : my favorite favorite favorite
thing is how it connects to animism , that in each object
there is soul . and therefore asks for different reaction to ecology ?
each laptop , each bird , each building

you got me! i can’t tell you how nice you can feel these entities coming out the what an inspired post to receive !!!
it is to be got. gotten? gotted? rocks up here in the north of england, the
pools and fountains. whether you like gracefulll all over ...
i am indeed trying to find ways to hope it or not, or believe or not. irish woman
and not be totally caught in the headlights i heard once: “sure i don’t believe in them, im in the mountains in iceland now herding sheep :
of all this stuff. but they’re there all the same.” bang on... one has to run and pull horns and receive polka dot bruises on
ones thighs : smashing !!!! it was magic today .
also--that’s an “OOO” sort of list there: somehow the further north you go the it was so sunny and crisp and no wind at all , kinda miraculous but
laptop, bird, building. i love to make more vivid it becomes. i expect it’s super in slomo , without the boom .
such lists. spoon, quasar, frost on an iron vivid in iceland?
r a i l i n g . smell of wool and jarm and the volcanic mist from the eruption
bohemians, punks, everyone who ever had finally arrived here in the west so all was in soft focus but not
the humour--thanks!! i find so much allows and responds to some kind lazy hazy style , but metallic w/definition ! during dinner i shuffled
humour in your work too. there’s a whole of dream that sprays out of things even my latest sound discoveries : irish house with punk sounds
mixture of different kinds, sometimes if it’s totally mundane like a hammer or ( the fresh young are doing this apparently )
s u p e r i m p o s e d . a bottle of coke--all are in fact shamans
who don’t quite know it. btw , talking of this fresh young generation, i adore them .
the resonance: yes x 10. i can’t help writing and i agree : “rediscovering enchantment through science”
about sound. and the kind of connection i think this is the story of art in the last and “allowing the inner space to sparkle madly”
of everything. i think things are telepathic, two hundred years that art scholarship something so so so MAGIC is finally happening !!
really. frogs, balls of string, auroras and is blocking, mostly out of fear.
flight attendants. causality is telepathy. i saw an article saying that majority of hollywood movies last year
our mission maybe is to allow people were about the apocalypse and i was like : sort your hope out ,
your art is like trying to hook up all these to feel this and think this with full crystal usa ! im so bored with that only possible ending . soooo limited .
telepathic wires between everything. clarity, not departing from reason for one i love how you write in your book about that :
second, yet allowing the inner space to
my friend and i were just talking about sparkle madly. nor succumbing to someone “nihilism wants to empty its pockets of everything including
poetry and how almost-now eco society else’s old bad belief juju but allowing the space in the pockets--as if one could pull the nothingness out
is actually about rediscovering things to be magic, rather than totally of the pocket itself to rid oneself of the inconsistency of the thing .
enchantment yet with full on science--not inert? that’s my mission anyway haha “believing in” nothing is a defense against nothingness ,
fighting it, but revealing it. fearless a metaphysics of presence disguised
exploration of phenomena. earth needs more magicians as a sophisticated undermining of all presence.”
there is this part of me that just wants scientists, stop trying to persuade wrong obvious bankruptcy ?
to talk about elves and sprites yet i disguise people that you are right! just blow them helllo ?
it because others might think it was away with some magic...
believing in something solid. or probably ha ha ha ha
just laugh at me if they are cool kid you and i should do the news conferences
a c a d e m i c s . . . together about global warming we might have to discuss the north later : so much to say .
but overall i feel its underrated how much space is here .
people would soon submit hahahaha plant / people / sound / animals .
COPYRIGHT MATERIAL FOR REFERENCE ONLY stark is the word

i’m so bored of that apocalypse stuff too! this is my philosophy slogan: thinking he has this great thing about this attitude nice one!!! I just knew you’d dig it.
i had no idea it was so dominant but yes should know how to laugh, and cry. he calls the beautiful soul.
it is very “cool” and often goes to number i still can’t get over the fact that you
1. it is a way to block the tender subtle for some reason in 2008 i started to talk the beautiful soul (i call it bs for short!!!) quoted the two most important things
alive reality... about death, for real. instead of the usual sees the world (everything else) as evil. i have ever said
academic game: “i am so clever and i am me, “pure” over here, world “evil” over
like, yes--pain destruction agony. yes. now, so beyond emotion and full of cynicism there. all is corrupt. it’s the dark boys in anyway, look at this beautiful tiny sparkling
scrape yourself up off the floor. let’s figure and despair, therefore i am right.” a nutshell really. “i am pure in my total void, it isn’t nothing at all, it’s beautiful.
out how to love. horror at the state of things” wordsworth made it, as a way to channel
i get a vanishing number of 20-something the wetness to his home... [picture file]
boys who want to do some kind of so...this is the really really amazing bit:
“i’m smarter than you because my horror
is bigger than yours” ****-measuring... hegel argues that this very attitude
IS THE EVIL . like the way you see the
they think i am stupid because i can’t see world as evil IS the evil
how hopeless everything is lol
the “logical” solution: kill yourself or kill
maybe the dark boys are obsessed because the world or do nothing, frozen in the
they sense something already there that’s h e a d l i g h t s
missing in their sense of who they are and
of reality? we are spokespeople for the it’s like a super super addictive attitude
realm of physical otherness? the scary to the ecological panic, right?
land of cause and effect? aka the sonic very OOO ,
yess !! ocean...aka the sensual ocean... so, one “owns” this--one accepts that one’s here’s a waterfall in my land
very gaze directly is the evil that one that opted
hegel has this really good idea. which is thinks one is seeing “over there”. realizing for a subterranean life :
that ideas and philosophies come with that the way you see the world is the evil the river that isnt.
attitudes coded into them. they select for you see in it. it’s awesomely loopy and not [video file]
attitudes like viruses select for certain p r e a c h y
susceptible lifeforms.
it has that essential goth twisty
when you sort of “own” the attitude rather
than letting it rule you, it dissolves and what do you think??
you are on to the next one. so ideas are
always on the move.
THATS
SO
SPOT

ON
!!!!!!

the river that isn’t!!!

this unseeing is so vivid.
a mountain’s haiku about a waterfall.
we’re carving out new hope spaces. i just created headspace to go back read
sadness, longing, hope, susceptibility, all of our emails so far and
laughter. good ecological recipes. all these words are so internal now !!!
then how about this: between music and i guess i have a habit of physically
words you are allowing the unspeakable absorbing things which comes in handy
to manifest when i sing . so i guess my only clumsy
way to do this is in a round about way ,
i like this word unspeakable around theory
ha ha
it feels ego-puncturing yet beautiful yet and that might become
weird yet fascinating yet spooky yet the subtheme of our little quest : in your message, theory and art as my isobel was perhaps partly overcoming
physical nonhuman yet human. like slippery-hand-reaches-even-slippery-tail the slippery hand chasing the slippery tail the ridicule of the singer/songwriter
bataille’s idea of spirituality mission , why this possessed need
i feel also there is a reason why i havent p e r f e c t to tell your tale ? so most of my lyrics
when one feels prana it is like that. the embroidered elaborate phrases so far i have written myself , but roughly
rushing quality and the tendrils climbing about my stance in this world . you know i’m arguing all the time now that one lyric per album i’ve sat down
up quality and the hairs on one’s body probably because it doesnt sing well ! reality is like jörmungandr, and everything with my oldest mate and author sjón
waving like coral quality. in it is also a tail-biting loop, because of and we’ve documented together
yes you’re right about the “unspeakable” u r t h . . . this separate mythological character ,
... my lyrics are more like signposts isobel ... but im not sure how much
on musicmoods to kinda shortcut or in your language everything is an isobel it travels to the listeners that it is sort
to the feeling ??? much better than “object” i do declare of taking the piss a little , i find
it hilarious !!! her name is a little magic
realist drama , kinda sensationalism ,
over-romantic , ha ha .

and she has an urban/rural dilemma
she is constantly trying to solve , ha ha .
as if !!!
you could.

hahaha yes yes
well of course! a line that says “my name

isobel” might be pretending somehow
“sophisticated” modernity culture seems
there is always a gap between the one who to want to laugh at protectiveness or fear
is narrating and one who is narrated for other lifeforms. yet in an ecological
age, even if you have indifference, that’s
also the gothic-ness is a giveaway--i love a form of caring. your skin cares about
that mode as it’s like pure fiction plus being burned by the too strong sunlight,
seriousness and you can’t tell exactly even if you think you don’t care about
where the two join or separate...like robert global warming. paneroticism would be
smith’s hairdo. “objects” are comical like care turned up to 11 haha.
that: they are totally what they are yet i’m so familiar with depression and i know
never quite what they seem...they are it’s a trap, like an allergic reaction of the
always doing slapstick yes it is sssoooo important indulge me while i try to go a bit hi def intellect to its poor host being.
“not to sound too superego, with this very same concept trying to kill desire is the modern sport,
this isn’t just silly. i think that there is like filthy-look-from-the-perfect-hippie” including looping it through plastic
a deep connection in your work between first, i really do want to put you outside “sexualized” (actually the opposite)
self-care and care for other beings, which ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha the ism world as currently defined. you do w h a t e v e r s .
is ecology. think about “all is full of love” have a whole style that burns through
and its video, or the line from “unison”: that could be our downfall , your work, so that’s not what i’m saying-- “narcissism” is the favourite accusation
“one hand loves the other so much the pit we should avoid hang on! of the one who is wounded--especially
on me.” this is really significant for me when it’s a deliberate, self-inflicted wound
as sensual relations with the “self” or i love this in your art, it seems these non-you entities of coolness.
the body are missing in much of western “caring for yourself take the lead and you merge. not the same think about the overture of wagner’s
ideology, and i think it’s very destructive. = as being passive at all. more like making “tristan and isolde”, the aching chord
nietzsche: “love your neighbor caring for another entity love with them. allowing them to exist of doomed love. tragedy.
as yourselves, but first be such as love = from their own side. leaning into them. everyone dies when they melt together,
yourselves.” isobel had a point. the beginnings of ecological care” just like listening comes before language e t c .
or music ???? kind of
only the wounded narcissist accuses a scared boy attitude to the eroticism.
the other of narcissism, like when a bully there is no ism to describe this! i’m not
goes “i don’t like bullies” just before they sure there can be because like i say ism i put that wagner against your “unison”
bully you. the human relation to nature implies there is a mapped out grid for how in class yesterday. powerful, remorseless
is a massive narcissistic wound to approach beings. gentleness. merging but not to death.
disappearing into the music but not
we need to heal it--not to sound too how about erased. merging, which is not one and not
superego, like filthy-look-from-the-perfect- two. [compliment warning] joyful, funny,
hippie kind of way. to care for one’s “self” P A N E R O T I C I S M g o r g e o u s
as another: being in a loop. there are

always at least two things, never just one. even that isn’t it. i can’t stand putting you the final score: wagner 0 björk 10.
narcissism has a bad rap. it’s not solipsism. in a box. can’t stand it! [compliment forgiveness please]
!!!!! a miracle of a post !!!!!
sorry i didnt get to read it until now
what a pleasure to read !!! and the tone of it , that tilt between humour all my stuff: you can never truly exit the
and awe and humility and yet slightly cocky : i absolutely adore it !!!!!! s w e l l . . .
such a precise mood .......... yes : we can merge and survive some anonymous someone said in the
1 + 1 is three house scene in 1988: “just dance until your
i know it ego splatters all over the floor. then dance
on that.” because in the inner space,
my author/philosopher friend oddny eir ævarsdóttir pointed out a website to me you find escape routes for people don’t it might be like this: there is never ego,
once, with a theory : that if you could put religions on opposite ends of a certain you? i know i can find them for others but there is just this dancing fire. quivering,
homemade scale , where one could measure the amount of “feminine emotive” sometimes hard to find for myself. t r e m b l i n g .
values and then other pole “ masculine abstract” ( which we all have both of )
zen buddhism would be furthest to the abstract point , where one takes oneself devotion. you know it’s not necessarily to so the point is to make things that cause
outside the swell and looks at feeling and stuff from afar and empties oneself , a teacher or a human but could be to the the inner space to sparkle or quake. to
empties , empties and if one empties enough one merges with all and nirvana ! teacup, lover, song, dance. not to mention make some kind of subject-quake. it’s nice
the pomegranate bleeding all over one’s in german: einschütterung. inner
and on the other opposite end is sufi , where you fall in love with your day fingers deliciously. s h u d d e r i n g . . .
and your pomegranate and your teacup and your lover and the song you are turning
in circles to : aim is to merge merge merge and if you merge well enough it’s like enlightened lust. like passion is the impossible to describe--“like a mute tasting
you “empty” and become one with all . so whatever suits your character , basic fundamental force of this universe sugar”. how can the river that isn’t speak
go this way ... eventually it leads to the same place . and you shouldn’t delete that, unless you its merging into the rock.
was thinking about when you wrote : “ this is my philosophy slogan: thinking want to go crazy or start world war 3.
should know how to laugh, and cry.” how you seem determined to include feelings or is it 4 already?! just love this lifeform. you will soon find
in philosophy . no prizes for guessing i feel i belong to the latter group . soooo sufi . yourself in a dance. in this dance, your
( but maybe some dark beats are buddhist , and melodies sufi ? ) intellectual buddhists think it’s about total partner and you are not one and yet not
abstraction. you never need to handle two. there is a pomegranate, it’s not just
and it made me think perhaps it is even simpler : you told me you were a pomegranate or even meditate. you can an illusion. but it’s a faerie pomegranate
surrounded by music as a child , the music in my household was like loud get there by understanding. zen can tend bursting with [unspeakable]”
like all the time . so this became the ocean i lived in . like physics . sonic liquid . to look at feeling from afar and so they
and all else like life and such were berries on top . and i get so lost without it , have some kind of hangover from that, oh björk that is so good, empty empty
like literally a fish out of water . very masculine and careful. empty >> merge vs merge merge merge >>
i didnt really take this thought that much further , empty. that second one is the right way
but it somehow went with the river that isnt and wordsworth dam and but for me “understanding” = standing for me. emptiness is a kinda abstract word
under surface of the river that isn’t. for kind of a sensation, in fact, i reckon.
and perhaps your dark boys and my euphoric matriarchs ?
oh wow yes “one takes oneself outside the without the idea that philosophy can cry
hmm .... swell and looks at feeling and stuff from and laugh, the game becomes pure cold
throw in a afar and empties oneself , empties , empties “wisdom” rather than philo-sophy, the

span
ner in and if one empties enough one merges love of wisdom. just being totally right,
the water
with all and nirvana !” which is totally wrong.
“you find escape routes for people don’t you ?” anyway : this made me think of that a lot of the minimalists
are actually buddhists ... my favorite of theirs are the exceptions :
im clumsy at a lot of things but youre right , so far ive been kinda ok where they have passion . like steve reichs tehillim.
at emotional strategy : perhaps see all as emotional chronology somehow . ( ha ha ha does remind me though of one of my favorite venezuelan matriarchs
that is the continuity i connect to , swallow that pulse and hike trancelike getting uncontrollable laughing fits over the wooden classical wrist of the maracas
onwards on that emo dna ... the spine of time , ha ha ha ha ha , shaker in that one , ha ha ha ha , passion but some lack of merge in his bones )
i’m not having it any other way ! and often i can explain to my friends i love so much when you mentioned in them rave years everyone
like a sport commentator what is happening to them ... was djing some kind of truth “just dance until your ego splatters all over the floor”
but then last year and a half , all that I knew so far : wasnt . isnt and gone . i remember so well from that period when like ALL music like ever made
so i tried to dervish me out of it , wringer ranger rotator in that magma got divided into if you could dance to it or not . ha ha ha ha ha ,
before it coagulated but non of the old tricks worked anymore ...
so i have been casting me a new set of spanners . just too much thinking had entered music ...
i guess i got like fired from the patriarchs but hired by herds of matriarchs
surrounding me offering ecstatic beats and djing ... so even classical shit or world music or whatever genre
was like erased if it didnt swing ... and the further reach the better :
and i’ve been thinking a lot about that dark beats are buddhist and melodies sufi ... ARTIST
your comment cracked me up “look at feeling from a far so they have like drones , buildings or them buddhist things ? looped and gridded
some sort of hangover from that , very masculine and careful” ha ha ha ah ha , GAPS
careful hangover from too much distance ... ha ha ha ha ha ha streamlined and abstract swirling sufi style all around you
PHILOSOPHER’S
anyway here comes one of my favorite discoveries of last few years ... we must unite the two , tim
MIND
it is by a russian minimalist , vladimir martynov . but instead of some of the
usa minimalists : being post modern , often ironic and distant , this is full full full in the music now--oh thanks for sending! i love it so much already
passion ! he decided to take favorite pieces his parents played him when he was and i’m only at 7:06. all the overdrama sucked out and my soul
a child : small sections and loop them . ( talking about the ocean of our parents ! ) can breathe.
so it could have been a pretentious concept job but what is so marvelous is that
it is kinda the opposite . in this piece he takes a 10 minute section from mahler’s indeed martynov has found the really hurty bit. well, by isolating
der abschied and with spirally looping it over and over extends it into 40 minutes . that small part martynov seems to let all the human ego drama
narrative melt away until you are left with this non-ego emotion.
so he sort of took one of the most overdramatic moments in recent classical music that is just total [swear word swear word] genius.
and magnified it up like 138457 !! for me somehow the looping serves as a truthful
tunnel into his childhood so it doesnt feel like stealing at all . the telescope you can “study” it as it rotates and be in it at the very same time
is obvious . not hidden . and then of course the amount of rearranging and mahler minus ego. it is after all the song of the earth not the song
craftsmanship and work he puts into it adds to the refinement and quality of it ... of mahler’s strangulation of tim
it is extremely dramatic so be careful but there is light at the end of the tunnel : or even better: just pure pain, no suffering
if you get through it it ends super prettily ... ???
[mp3 file] Vladimir Martynov || Der Abschied thank you martynov, the ego-stripper, you have contributed

to world peace
i loved the zoom and the wonderful map.
“we were getting on a good elevated airy whirl” -- still there!
if there is any money made from this i would like mine to go

to lifeforms, coral perhaps? i love coral and it’s dying and
bleaching, and it’s such a total world down there. i think of OOO
i adore this email !!! as the discovery of a gigantic sparkling coral reef too deep for most
philosophy to notice. sharks floating about, anemones with
when you talk about he sucked the ego out of him !!! tendrils. things that could be alive, could be dead. could be plant,
and only pain no suffering ... no flamboyance in this drama , ha ha could be animal. could be a whole entity yet made of all kinds
ha ha ha , no feathers .... hopefully not too boring the polarizing of things that don’t add up to it. we are sewn into this reef,
of the sufi merge and the zen abstract. with clown fish cleaning our nostrils while looking up at illusion
reflections of us looking down with underwater scopes from
sorry i zoomed out , the scientific surface...
once we were getting on a good elevated airy whirl ,
as i read through our emails, i’m finding something wonderful.
i needed a map ... i needed to northsouth me somehow ... if you strip away the “you” and “me” lines you get two very very
and you have helped me so much !! to NAME my original clear things. first there are really crystal statements about art
coordinates on this map . and politics and ecology and objects and on and on and on,
how to rediscover the natural merger . all integrated and very meaningful !!!
this time im not exiting the swell ... and then you get these incredible things: sheep horns, dams, jarm,
foss, voices, antlers, norns, magnetic shields, sun, atoms...it goes
on and on... !!!
i can see these two “channels” mixed together yet separated,

like in a paradox: our “human” statements about art, from which
emerges a manifesto; and nonhuman beings, crowding in,
laughing, crying and supporting and undermining and shadowing
the human
we really did something, and continue to do so
really really

like a lot
i just arrived in iceland
!!!!! what a miraculous letter !!!!!!
so so so sensual and connected ,

every constellation included on tip-toes !!!!
!!! yessss , lets give it to corals !!!

COVER ME || Words & music by Björk || for organ The Triumphs of a Heart: A Psychographic Journey Through the First Seven Albums of Björk || Sjón Sjón is a novelist and poet, and the lyricist of many
of Björk’s best known songs, including Isobel, Bachelorette,
Oceania, and Cosmogony. His novels The Blue Fox,
The Whispering Muse and From the Mouth of the Whale have
won numerous awards and have been published in more
than thirty languages.
The Triumphs of a Heart: A Psychographic Journey Through the First Seven Albums of Björk || Sjón
V V
5 moma_sjon poem_cover.indd All Pages 14/11/2014 13:45

Sjón
The Triumphs of a
Heart:
A Psychographic Journey Through the First Seven Albums
of
Björk

73
(Based on first-hand witnessing of all the events described — with
confirmation of the testimony’s accuracy by its main subject, Björk, and
truthful quotations from her own works — acquired by the author in situ

in New York City, April, 2014.)
75
I debut || 1993
once upon a time
there was a girl
who sang and danced

on the platform of a flatbed truck …
COPYRIGHT MATERIAL FOR REFERENCE ONLY 77

I
once …
once there was a girl …
a girl … who lived alone …
in a lava field … in a forest …

by the ocean …
in a small hut made of earthly materials …
a hut that was as open to the natural elements
as it was sheltering …
from the wind …
the sun …
the rain …
the snow … it was
a hut that stood in the middle of a field
of dark lava formations …
in the clearing of a forest …
on the black sands of a northern beach …
and a girl lived in it …

I
and once …
once there was a heart …
a human heart
that lived inside a girl …
was sheltered inside a girl’s breast …
embraced by her rib cage …
a beating blood-warm heart …
living inside the body of a girl …

a girl who was the girl who lived in a hut …
in the lava field …
in the forest …
by the ocean …
in the comfort of her own company …
her isolation …

I
at all hours nature staged its spectacle for the girl

and found its existence confirmed
in her senses …
she was there …
in the wee hours of the morning

when the birds in the emerald foliage
twittered their multitude of melodies …
throughout the days and nights

when the ocean took on all the colours of the sky …
at dusk when the black lava formations
became beasts of wonder …
she was there as nature’s participating audience …
its witness …

I
still …
the girl was not truly alone …
the heart she sheltered in her breast
was her companion …
when the girl was happy

the heart beat faster …
when she was sad

the heart slowed down to a lull …
as her eyes reflected the full moon …
as her ears welcomed the cry of seagulls …

as her body moved with trees on a windy day …
as she sang back at the echoing rocks …

the heart tuned itself
to her every experience …
every night was the night of the hunter …

every day saw the birth of a new living being …
and she noted it all down …
in her notebooks …

I
but then there were the thoughts and feelings

the girl didn’t know were stirring within her
and could only be heard by the heart …
could only be witnessed by someone

inside her body …
heard even louder

than the things that knowingly rushed
through her mind …

I
one night the heart listened

as the girl dreamt a new dream …
in the dream
she opened a door to a long narrow room

without walls and without a roof …
as she stepped into the room

the floor started to move under her feet …
to keep her balance

she had to stretch out her hands …
to float like a bird
steadying itself in the air …
the floor turned into the platform

of a flatbed truck …
taking her away …
bringing her close to a human …
to human behaviour …

I
the morning after the girl was confused …

at the end of the dream
she had seen another being like herself …

but different …
was she maybe one half of a whole?
… she paced back and forth

as she tried to make sense of it …
did she need another one to feel complete? …

I
the girl’s pacing back and forth

made a path in the ground …
and her heart

started beating with curiosity
about where it would take the two of them …
go!
the heart said …
look for the other …

II post || 1995
the path of trodden earth

under the girl’s naked soles
gave way to a narrow lane
strewn with gravel …
the narrow lane
became a road
paved with stones …
the road became a street
covered with asphalt …
and she walked the path …
she walked the narrow lane …
walked the road …

the street …
until she found herself on a circular patch
of hardened cement …
she was surrounded by rocks higher

than any she had seen at home …
it was in the moment
when there is neither full light
nor fading light …

II
and then
the electric lights came on …
the girl stood

in the middle
of what she was to learn is called ‘a square’ …
she saw
that she was surrounded
by tall buildings
with lights in the windows …
with people moving in bright rooms
behind the window panes …
with blinking words and images
on their outside walls …
people rushed from one building to another …

in cars … on motorcycles …
by the underground trains …
and those
who went walking
came to the square … for rest …
to demonstrate …
to hold hands … to fight … to dance …
yes …
the girl had come to a place called ‘city’ …

II
in ‘city’
the man-made lights made it possible

to live at night as easily as day …
night and day were no longer sharply divided …
instead of the sky reflecting in the ocean
here ‘city’ reflected in itself …
in glass walls … in wet raincoats …
in shiny hubcaps …
at night darkness could be made …
by turning off the lights …
during the day it was possible

to take a break from the daylight
in the artificial
light of cellars and back rooms …

II
here
the basic elements of the girl’s former existence
had been taken apart …
particle
by
particle …
and put together anew
in ways unthinkable
back home in the lava field … the forest …
by the ocean …
liquids were transformed into fabrics …
sand was made transparent …
gases burned in colourful glass tubes …
electric currents
were harnessed in sound …

II
the girl felt like she was inside
a vast
and welcoming body …
that she pulsated like a heart

embraced by a giant ribcage
and the sounds of the world
reached her from the outside …
and just like the heart inside her breast
reacted with her
now she picked up
on everything ‘city’ was experiencing … she listened
to the hum of its undercurrents …
listened to the sounds that were native to ‘city’ …
as well as the new ones others like her

had brought to it …

II
it was synthetic …
it was scintillating … it was mercurial …
it was mesmerising … it was electrifying …
it was exhilarating …
and for the first time

in her life
she felt the power of the colour pink …
pink …
the colour of innocence
that responds to the colours
black and violet
by turning sensual
and erotic …

II
and every hour of the day and night
the heart was one with the girl
in her celebrations …
in her brass-
and breakbeat-fuelled urban enthusiasm …
beating faster than ever before …
only slowing down
to revel in new pleasures …

II
‘city’
was the place to go hunting for mysteries …

to prove the impossible did exist …

III homogenic || 1997
one day the girl woke up to a new feeling …
she wasn’t whole anymore … or rather …
she realised she wasn’t made of one thing
but many …
in the mirror she saw a girl
who had become a collection

of all the diverse influences
she had embraced …
rhythms shaped like obscure half-gods …
fragrances that exploded like fireworks

once they reached the brain …
words used to describe moods

belonging to southern latitudes …
fabrics that spoke of eastern flora …
melodies that twirled

like smoke from incense …

III
yes …
just as ‘city’ was the ever-changing sum

of its history
the girl had become an evolving hybrid

of her encounters with its inhabitants …
the culture of ‘city’ had put its mark on her …
her posture
spoke of pavements and dance floors …
her six senses
had adjusted to the navigation
of urban geographies …
a song could be shaped

like a coconut with purple fur …

III
but the girl was as fragmented

on the inside as the outside …
love had also put its mark on her …
instead of being a two-way street

the heart in her breast had become a crossroads …
and she herself had become a tree
that grew a heart on every branch …
her smile came quicker
and disappeared quicker …
her anger rose faster and declined faster …
her sense of human relationships

was informed
by the puzzling
emotional
landscapes
she had explored …

III
the girl responded to her new state of being

by matching the energies she had grown up with
with the energies of ‘city’ …
she matched ‘city’ with nature …
she analysed its building materials …

it all came from the same source as herself …
the glittering streets

reminded her of the tiny droplets
shining on the moss-covered stones
in the lava field back where she came from …
all that sparkled …

all that glowed …
it was also nature’s work …

III
and suddenly ‘city’

didn’t seem so big after all …
compared with the size
of the natural forces
she knew from her childhood …
the erupting volcanoes …
the hissing of water boiling in a hot spring …
the shaking of the ground …
the lashing of giant cliffs
by tidal waves …

III
with the electric equipment

in her bedroom laboratory
the girl brought to life the forces
that had shaped her …
that had sent her forward into the world …
she wrote a hunting song …
if travel is searching
and home what’s been found
i’m not stopping
i’m going hunting

i’m the hunter

III
the girl’s ears

picked up
on the timbre of strings
vibrating
under bows …
their resonance
in the wooden bodies
of the instruments
that supported them …
they sang of her old country …

III
nothing was forgotten …

she was the hunter …
and all was full of love …

IV vespertine || 2001
the heart became

transparent …
its four-chambered body

took on the glassy whiteness
of those underwater medusas known as
jelly-fish … it slowed down …
its movements became as graceful as those

of a snowflake drifting
down to earth from up high …
every beat of the heart

became as distinct
as a shiny pearl spit
from a girl’s mouth
over the ocean
to a boy …

IV
the messages reaching the heart

from the girl’s mind
were about calm and contemplation …

discovery through delaying desire …
recovery through relaying response

in pagan metaphors …
the plucking of silvery strings …
the touch of fingertips on clear glass …
pedalling through /
the dark currents /
i find an accurate copy /
a blueprint /
of the pleasure in me
swirling /
black lilies /
totally ripe

IV
outside
the girl’s warm body
the world had begun its wintering …
snow covered ‘city’ and its squares,
cultured gardens
and streets …
the man-made landscape lost
its hard edges

IV
sheltering inside their buildings
and looking out at ‘city’

in
its
white
and frosty uniform
the people were reminded

that they themselves were nothing
but advanced cave-dwellers …
the flickering fire

that yesterday had inspired the minds
of their singing storytellers had been replaced
by the moving images of their lit-up
home-screens …

IV
security was to be found in stillness …
human breath was temporarily halted …
halted
like the swing
of the handle
on a music box …
and when it returned
breath
had become visible …

IV
with steam
on her breath
the girl took to the city limits …
she came to a place where it wasn’t possible

to see where nature
took over from ‘city’ …
where ‘city’ from afar
looked like a natural phenomenon …
a panorama of man-hills built
by the human animal …

IV
the heart swam in the girl’s breast …
it had gone dark inside …
the light from the winter sun

was reflected off her white parka …
the time
between morning and evening
had never been shorter …
she travelled from twilight to twilight …
treading the glacier head …

looking hard for moments of shine …
calling upon the goddess aurora
by melting snow
in her mouth …

IV
and once again
it was proven
that travel
is searching …
all along the girl had been hunting …
in a mountain shade she was approached
by a boy …

possessed
of magical sensitivity …

IV
the girl knew she was ready to say:

I do … and the heart echoed
a young bride’s emotions:
spark the sun off!

spark the sun off!

V medúlla || 2004
the girl returned to ‘city’ …
but this time ‘city’ was also an island …
an island with a forest in its middle …

a man-made forest surrounded by buildings
higher than any in ‘old city’
on the other side of the ocean …
like gigantic needles crowding

a sun dial sticking
high into the sky
the buildings threw their magnificent shadows
on the two rivers surrounding the island …
and as the sparkling sun circled ‘city’
the rectangular shadows crossed the tumultuous
waters like bridges on the run …
‘new city’ was bigger … louder … busier …

V
but while the metropolis and mother sun played

‘light
and
shadow’
the girl played
‘cave’ with her magical boy …
his embrace was her fortress …

it placed a skeleton of trust beneath them …
bone by bone …
stone by stone …
and she asked herself

patiently and carefully:
who is it?
who is it that never lets you down?
who is it that gave you back your crown?

V
she carried her joy

on the left …
her pain on the right …
for such is life’s balance …

V
one day the girl’s heart
noticed the faint sound
of another heart nearby …
so vague it almost wasn’t there …
to create the moment’s silence needed

to confirm its discovery
it skipped its next beat …
and …
yes …
it really was there …

a beating weak in volume
but strong in rhythm …
a rhythm much faster
than the girl’s heart
could remember ever having performed …
even when the girl was
at her most excited …

V
and it was not the heartbeat

of the girl’s boy of magical sensitivity …
his beat was a beat the girl’s heart
sometimes felt penetrating her body …
when the two were pressed up close to one another …
a beat which sometimes could be heard
through the flesh and bone
separating the girl heart
from the boy heart …
and when it happened
they found each other’s rhythm
and beat as one …
in unison …

V
no …
this time around the heart beat was closer …
much closer …
and … oh! …

the joy! …
the joy when the heart realised

that the beat was really on the inside …
the girl’s body had become a home

to a new heart …
a quick and tiny one …
a tiny baby girl’s growing heart …

V
as she was to become a mother
the girl braided her long dark hair …
and her long dark braids twisted

and turned like an umbilical cord …
twisted like a helix …
and in her mind she saw herself standing

on endless black sands
with her long dark braids
braided into the dark
and not so dark braids of the child’s grandmothers
… and their dark
and not so dark braids
were braided into the dark
and not so dark braids
of the child’s great-grandmothers …

V
it was a triumph
that could only be celebrated
with many voices …
harmonious breathing …
lullabies from the mouth’s cradle …
a mother’s joy and pain
craving a world in balance …

VI volta || 2007
with her newborn baby in her arms

the girl paced back and forth …
rocking her little girl …
sharing with her tiny one some

of the sweet nothings
that are as soothing for the grown-up soul
as the young one …
but she was a mother-girl now …

a girl-mother …

VI
and from within her girl-mother’s skull

she could clearly see with her two green eyes
that on earth
there were things
to do …
yes …
from a mother-girl’s perspective

it was obvious that certain things
had to be set right …
the girl felt the urge to rearrange things

into new
and just forms …
patterns that would make the strong

accept the weak
as equals …

VI
since the girl left her hut
in the middle of the lava field …

in the middle of the forest … by the ocean …
she had encountered many kinds

of human behaviour …
they ranged from the peaceful to the corrupt …
from the gentle to the nasty …
from the arrogant to the meek …
she had endured its darker sides …
but did it have to be like this? …

forever? …
also for her little one? …

VI
a primitive urge to protect set in …
primitive as in primal …
primal as in original …
original as in primordial …
and the thought of protection

through action stirred her movements …
her right hand acquired the shape

of a word …
the word ‘justice’ …
her mother-girl fingers

outstretched and quivering
from the excitement of rebellion …

VI
and all the while

the tiny girl
was suckling
at her mother’s breast …
for a mother-girl
can do many things at the same time …
feeding a child
and challenging the world’s order
at the same time
was the most natural thing
to her …

VI
the mother-girl armoured herself
with colours …
colours applied directly to the body …
colours sprayed on her full body-armour …
her pacing became a stomp …

her rocking became a dance …
the sweet nothings
became an anthem …
she set forth into the world …

VI
declare independence
don’t let them do that to you
declare independence
don’t let them do that to you
‘independence’ is a synonym of ‘freedom’ …

‘action’ is a synonym of ‘resistance’ …
‘urge’ is a synonym of ‘wanderlust’ …
the mother-girl started fires …

people gathered around the fires …
the tribal fires burned …
they moved on to start new fires …
the journey took them from island to island …
continent to continent …
they were united in movement …

they let off the steam
that had been filling them
for months …
for years …

VI
the heart in the mother-girl’s breast

beat faster …
faster than ever before …

it rejoiced in being
one heart of many hearts …
hearts beating in unison …
and for a little while

there was balance on earth …
innocence was still possible …

VII biophilia || 2011
the heart …
like the earth in space …
slopes in its seat …

inside the girl …
inside the woman’s torso …
the heart …
in its house of flesh and bones …

bathed in red light …
a visceral cosmic body …
pulsing … pulsing …
it pumps the oxygen-rich blood
through the veins of her body …
she breathes in …
the rib cage expands …
she breathes out …

VII
the girl … the woman … one morning …
she stands on the edge of a cliff

looking out to the ocean …
the tide is coming in …
the vast expanse of salt water rushes towards land
as if it were exhaled from the lungs
of a magnanimous beast …
the frothing waves spread out on the black sands

like warm breath hitting a cool window pane …
as she returns to the shore …
it is evening …
the vast body of water is being sucked back

towards the horizon …
the beast inhales …
it is only matter of size …
of speed …
of volume …
for if air moves like water …

the waves of the sea
are repeated
in the sand dunes
of deserts …

VII
i shuffle around /
the tectonic plates in my chest
you know i gave it all

i try to match our continents / to change seasonal shift
to form a mutual core
as fast as your fingernail grows the atlantic ridge drifts
to counteract distance
you know i gave it all
can you hear the effort of the magnetic strife?
the shuffling of columns
to form a mutual core …

VII
in the distance …
across the water …
the lights of ‘city’ …
a cluster of lights …
bodies …
above her …
across space …

the lights of ‘cosmos’ …
a cluster of lights …
bodies …
dancing
to the silent rhythms
of gravity …
matter … majestically sprinkled
into the void …

the music-box of the spheres … the girl …
the woman …
she sets out to recreate it on earth …

with technology and poetry …
with her notebooks and new instruments …
with love …

VII
there is only matter …

only movement …
only
matter and movement …
matter in movement …
and all that is made thereof …

energy …
heat …
sound …
the unheard sounds
as well as those pleasant to the human ear …

the high frequencies and the low …
the harsh and the soft …
the crackle of the lightning
and the whistle of wind …
songs in the name of biophilia …

VII
move the ‘h’
to the back of the word HEART
and it becomes a new one: EARTH …
move it to the front again:
HEART …
move it back: EARTH …
EARTH-HEART … Earth-Heart …
earth-heart …
earth … heart …
oh … yes …
the heart …
the heart keeps beating …
beating triumphantly …
beating with the earth …
the earth …

homogenic || 1997 medúlla || 2004
debut || 1993 Page 111 — Cover for Homogenic, 1997, featuring Page 145 — Björk photographed for the cover of Medúlla, 2004,
a kimono, sash, and necklace designed by Alexander McQueen. wearing a hairpiece by Hrafnhildur Arnardóttir (a.k.a. Shoplifter)
Page 77 — Björk wearing a mohair sweater by Maison Martin Margiela Photography by Nick Knight. and a necklace designed by M/M (Paris).
for the cover of “Violently Happy,” 1993. Photography by Inez van Lamsweerde & Vinoodh Matadin.
Photography by Jean-Baptiste Mondino. Page 113 — Video stills from “Bachelorette,”
co-written by Björk and Sjón; Page 147 — Video stills from “Triumph of a Heart,”
Page 79 — 1995. video directed by Michel Gondry, 1997. directed by Spike Jonze, 2005.
Photography by Alain Duplantier.
Page 115 — Björk wearing a white leather dress with chiffon “wings,” Page 149 — 2004.
Page 81 — Photo taken for the cover of “Human Behaviour,” 1993. designed by Jeremy Scott, for her Homogenic tour, 1998. Photography by Warren du Preez and Nick Thornton Jones.
Photography by Jean-Baptiste Mondino. Photography by F. Albert. biophilia || 2011
Page 151 — Video stills from “Nature is Ancient,” directed by Lynn Fox, 2002.
Page 83 — Video stills from “Human Behaviour,” Page 117 — 1997. Page 177 — Cover photo for Biophilia, 2011,
directed by Michel Gondry, 1993. Photography by Craig McDean. Page 153 — Medúlla shoot, 2004. featuring a red nebula-style wig by Eugene Souleiman,
Photography by Warren du Preez and Nick Thornton Jones. a dress by Iris van Herpen, and a “harp-belt”
Page 85 — Cover photo for “Big Time Sensuality,” 1993. Page 119 — Cover image for “Bachelorette,” 1997. in cherry wood and bronze by threeASFOUR.
Photography by Juergen Teller. Photography by Paul White. Page 155 — Video stills from “Who Is It,” Photography by Inez van Lamsweerde & Vinoodh Matadin.
shot on location in Iceland by Dawn Shadforth, 2004, Constellation by M/M (Paris).
Page 87 — 1993. Page 121 — Michel Gondry and Björk, photographed on location, 1999. Björk wearing a dress of silk and metal bells
Photography by Glen Luchford. Photography by Benni Valsson. designed by Alexander McQueen. Pages 179 and 181 — 2012.
Photography by Warren du Preez and Nick Thornton Jones.
Page 89 — 1994. Page 123 — 1997. Page 157 — Björk wearing the Medúlla hairpiece, 2004.
Photography by Rankin. Photography by Phil Poynter. Photography by Inez van Lamsweerde & Vinoodh Matadin. Page 183 — Photo taken for the cover
of the 200th edition of Dazed & Confused magazine,
Page 91 — Video stills from “Venus as a Boy,” Page 125 — Video stills from “All is Full of Love,” Page 159 — 2000. guest-edited by Björk, 2011.
directed by Sophie Muller, 1993. with software and special effects utilized to impose Björk’s facial features Photography by Mert & Marcus. Art and photography by Sam Falls.
onto a pair of robots, directed by Chris Cunningham, 1999.
Page 93 — Cover photo for “Venus as a Boy,” 1993. Page 185 — Video stills from “Mutual Core,”
Photography by Jean-Baptiste Mondino. volta || 2007 directed by Andrew Thomas Huang, 2012.
vespertine || 2001
Pages 161 and 163 — Volta cover shoot, with crochet costume Page 187 — Strata portrait developed for the “Mutual Core” video,
post || 1995 Page 127 — Cover photo for Vespertine, 2001, by The Icelandic Love Corporation later used as a cover for the remix album Bastards, 2012.
featuring the “Swan” dress of tulle and feathers designed by Marjan Pejoski. and make-up by Andrea Helgadóttir, 2007. Image by Andrew Thomas Huang.
Page 95 — Björk wearing an “Airmail” jacket made of envelope paper, Photography by Inez van Lamsweerde & Vinoodh Matadin. Photography by Inez van Lamsweerde & Vinoodh Matadin.
designed by Hussein Chalayan, for the cover of Post, 1995. Drawing by M/M (Paris).
Art directed by Paul White. Page 165 — Björk wearing a dress by Kokon To Zai, 2008. black lake || 2015
Photography by Stéphane Sédnaoui. Page 129 — 2001. Photography by Vera Palsdóttir.
Photography by Inez van Lamsweerde & Vinoodh Matadin. Pages 190–91 — Still from the “Black Lake” audio-visual installation
Page 97 — Video stills from “It’s Oh So Quiet,” Page 167 — Concept art from “Wanderlust” video specially commissioned by The Museum of Modern Art, New York,
directed by Spike Jonze, 1995. Page 131 — Vespertine shoot, 2001, featuring a costume design by threeASFOUR. made in stereoscopic 3D, with large-scale puppeteering, directed by Andrew Thomas Huang, introducing
Photography by Warren du Preez and Nick Thornton Jones. live-action acrobatics, miniatures, and computer graphics. a new character into the Björk universe;
Page 99 — 1996. Image by Encyclopedia Pictura, 2007. a version of the song was released on her eighth solo studio album.
Photography by Nobuyoshi Araki. Page 133 — Video stills from “Hidden Place,”
directed by Inez van Lamsweerde & Vinoodh Matadin and M/M (Paris), 2001. Page 169 — 2007.
Page 101 — Stills from the video to “Hyperballad,” 1996, Photography by Bernhard Kristinn. All video stills:
filmed by Michel Gondry at Telecine Cell in London Page 135 — Björk wearing a dress by Alexander McQueen, 2001. Courtesy of Wellhart and One Little Indian.
using a motion-control system. Music box and shoes by Matthew Barney. Page 171 — Björk wearing a yarn mask All photographs: Courtesy the photographers.
Photography by Nick Knight. designed by The Icelandic Love Corporation, 2007. All art: Courtesy the artists.
Page 103 — 1995. Photography by Bernhard Kristinn.
Photography by Juergen Teller. Page 137 — 2000.
Photography by Mert & Marcus. Page 173 — Video stills from “Declare Independence,”
Page 105 — 1996. directed by Michel Gondry, 2007.
Photography by Gavin Evans. Page 139 — 2000. The flags of Greenland and the Faroe Islands are featured
Photography by Nan Goldin. on the shoulders of the characters’ jumpsuits:
Page 107 — 1995. Björk dedicated her lyrics to both territories—ruled by Denmark,
Photography by Glen Luchford. Page 141 — Björk wearing an Alexander McQueen just as Iceland once was.
dress in the “Pagan Poetry” video, 2001.
Page 109 — 1995. Photography by Nick Knight. Page 175 — The cover of Volta, 2007, featuring a Styrofoam and
Photography by Snorri Brothers. lacquer spray paint costume inspired by Luigi Ontani
Page 143 — 2000. and designed by Bernhard Willhelm.
Photography by David Sims. Photography by Nick Knight.

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Introduction || Klaus Biesenbach

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1 moma klaus cover_UK.indd 1-6 14/11/2014 17:18

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2 Klaus Biesenbach Introduction

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4 Klaus Biesenbach Introduction

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6 Klaus Biesenbach Introduction

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8 Klaus Biesenbach Introduction

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10 Klaus Biesenbach Introduction

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12 Klaus Biesenbach Introduction

For Biophilia, Björk collaborated with Iris van Herpen,

The MoMA exhibition design embraced the ambition

This publication and exhibition cement Björk’s singular

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2 moma_ross_cover.indd 1-5 14/11/2014 13:49

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Björk’s relationship with Stockhausen has special

After Stockhausen’s death, in 2007, Björk wrote,

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Singing live with a choir

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In the wake of the cosmic effort of Biophilia, another

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3 moma_dibben_cover.indd 1-4 14/11/2014 13:46

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Live performances for Biophilia, A screenshot of “Solstice,” from

From a feminist perspective Björk’s work can be understood

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the natural world is one of the most common tropes

Björk’s work articulates a celebration of and continuity

Björk’s performance of “Oceania” at the Opening

Björk’s identification of Woman with the natural

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Björk performing at the Brit

As this indicates, microbeats are premised on the failures

Mechanical technology is also explored by Björk in this

It is possible to see this set of Björk’s compositional

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This focus on hybridity disturbs familiar conceptual

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