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Björk is a singular force in culture. A fusion-focussed avatar for cultural synthesis, her new live film shatters boundaries all over again.
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Björk is having the time of her life. She’s touched down in London to help launch her new concert film Björk: Cornucopia, and is clearly relishing catching up with old friends, and re-connecting with familiar sights. Seated across from CLASH on a plush leather sofa, her dark eyes as wide as can be, every question is greeted with deep thought, every answer launched with the flailing of arms and the gesticulation of absolute child-like enthusiasm. To Björk, creativity is her life force; but it’s also – to echo the most-used phrase in our conversation – “super fun!”
The film itself is vintage Björk. It captures a night in Lisbon on her Cornucopia tour, fusing aspects of the Icelandic artist’s broader catalogue with her vital recent work; blending her incredible, soul-encompassing approach to performance with technology so ground-breaking she’s leaving tech giants in her wake. Truly, nothing is spared, nothing is left uncovered, and everything is left onstage.
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“For me, it all had to be emotionally correct,” she notes. “That was a lot of work, just getting every animation made. For me, it had to be like synaesthesia, and it all had to be synchronised with the songs and whatever emotion you’re trying to express. There’s a million little details like that, because it’s been our baby for five years.”
The tour itself taps into the energies of the pandemic, and the need to re-connect. For Björk, the experiences of lockdown were difficult, but also a blessing; departing the United States, it was her first extended spell in Reykjavik in a long time, enabling her to go through a process of re-grounding. “Look, what happens when you have two homes? You’ve two of everything; two blenders, two ovens, two encyclopaedias. I went through all my stuff and gave half of it away to Ukrainian and Syrian refugees. It was quite therapeutic.”
“Our life in Iceland wasn’t that changed,” she recalls. “And I loved the two years when I didn’t have to go on an airplane! For most people that isn’t good news, but for me, a musician who tours a lot, it’s a luxury. Always waking up in your own bed is such a privilege.” When the pandemic receded, Björk started making plans. Interrupted by COVID, her Cornucopia tour picked up where it left off – at the razor’s edge of stylistic disruption and digital innovation. The set list was overhauled, with the singer labelling the setting, an ambitious fusion of digital animation and 19th century theatrics, as “a magic lantern show”. She adds: “the nature of ‘Cornucopia’ was to take VR from the 21st century to the 19th century stage… take it out of the headset.”
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The shows were also a means of catch-up. Since 2015’s ‘Vulnicura’ – her first with frequent studio partner Arca – Björk has moved in radically distinct directions. If ‘Vulnicura’ was a work of heartbreak and loss, 2017’s ‘Utopia’ was playful, carnal. 2022’s ‘Fossora’ spun the dials once more, a work of potent emotion that dealt with grief, and found Björk collaborating with her children on record. She admits she was “quite protective” of ‘Vulnicura’ because of its ties to her family. So, in lieu of a formal tour, she explored VR “because it was somehow secret, like a private opera for one. A really sad heartbreak album, but just for one! And then ‘Utopia’ was the opposite. It was: let’s celebrate, let’s put this on a stage! I was really into play, y’know? Like, this is fun! I was having a lot of fun with Arca and James Merry, and we wanted to go into the world of 360 in both sound and visuals.”
The Cornucopia experience takes both of those instincts and extrapolates them outwards at astonishing speed. Björk once told the New York Times it was “a sci-fi pop concert” and you can see why; stunningly ambitious, it truly transports you to another magical realm. During the technical process Björk aligned once more with James Merry, who attempted the work of following her quicksilver imagination for the jaw-dropping staging. The technology, meanwhile, saw the singer work with multiple future-facing companies, single-handedly rolling back what a pop concert can both look and sound like. “Sorry, I sound really embarrassed,” she laughs when discussing a few of the key players in the tech realm. “I’m a punk – I don’t like money or logos! It was more like… an exchange!”
“I just really love that energy when you’re hanging out with people who are discovering new things nobody’s done before,” she says. “The whole novelty of that, it’s kind of cute – like a punk energy!” At the centre of the performances, though, lies the same instinct for communication which has propelled Björk through every iteration of her creative life. After all, it’s worth recalling that she moved from indie fame in The Sugarcubes to actual fame in the ‘90s, with records like her aptly-titled ‘Debut’ and the boundary-smashing ‘Homogenic’ forging a sound that was both utterly new, and highly feminine.
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Whether luxuriating in flute-enabled sonic balms or pirouetting in the maelstrom of sonic noise, the results of this new film are intended to engender aesthetic conversation with her audience. “I mean, I’m very blessed with fans,” she smiles, nodding furiously. “They’re amazing, they’re very nerdy and in a good way. And I’m very proud that they’re all ages and all genders and queer and anti-racist. I feel quite proud of that.”
“I can’t be interpreted all the time,” she continues, “when I’m at restaurants or doing something private. I just want to have good relationships with the people I love in my life; like my kids, my family, my friends, my loved ones. I just need a certain level of privacy to be able to write more music and give more to my fans, and they’ve been really respectful of that.” Her previous work in VR hangs over the tour, acting as a reference point to these current endeavours. “It’s quite niche,” she notes. “Like, the people who will go to put a headset on, and be able to see the exhibition. It’s niche! One of the reasons I did ‘Cornucopia’ was to go old school, create a normal concert and get the physical, visceral experience. I love digital but I love physical even more.”
On the table in front of CLASH sits the proofs to a lavish new tome based on the tour: “a normal book that your grandparents can hold in their hands.” This tangible relationship to art is a hallmark of Björk’s career. Her extraordinary 2011 release ‘Biophilia’ may have been the world’s first app album, but she’s also a vinyl head. Days after our meeting CLASH catches Björk playing a rare DJ set for Apple Music, appearing on a line-up that also includes grime kingpin Skepta and the mighty Uncle Waffles, amongst others. The set is typically daring; at times gleefully humorous, she cuts ‘n’ shunts her way through the mixing, displaying a punk-like disregard for the norm.
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Every full moon Björk DJs in Reykjavik. It’s a way of re-centring herself, and reconnecting with the community that first bore her. Taking place at Smekkleysa – “it’s like Rough Trade but a bit smaller” – she likens it more to visual art, the experience of being invited to wander through an exhibition of paintings or photography. As for the sets themselves, as her Apple Music broadcast displays, it’s truly anything goes. “Listen, one minute it’s an 80-year-old salsa singer, the next minute a Finnish techno teenager. That’s always been my take on music. It’s all styles, all genres, all ages, all races. All everything and I’m very happy!”
“In the ‘90s when we went out clubbing, you’d wait until 4am for your favourite DJ and by then you’re either off your head – if you’re even still awake – so you can’t hear what they’re doing, or you’ve fallen asleep,” she laughs. “I’m not knocking club culture, you know, that’s amazing. But I also wanted this different kind of listening, the same energy you would get from visiting an art museum, right? You go with your friends, and you have a coffee, you look at the art, you talk about whatever, maybe get one glass of wine. It’s a daytime energy.”
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In Björk’s world, energy is everything. An artist known for praising the exquisite minutia of mushrooms, for example, she’s also tethered to the furthest-out reaches of computer programming. In every aspect of her life, you sense this longing to embrace the inter-connectedness of nature – lifeforms, biological and digital, mutating in and out of each other, amorphous identities running fluid through rivulets of imagination.
She’s less an auteur and more a ‘conductor’ bringing together creative systems, but also a conduit for energies, natural and otherwise. Kindred spirits are drawn into her orbit. One perennial collaborator over the past decade has been the boundary-less electronics of Arca. “She’s a fully-fledged musician, y’know?” the Icelandic voice exclaims. “She can be a producer, and do an amazing beat. But she can run vocal lines, and sing those. She’s this incredible producer who can also do a crazy ass pop song. She can do the weirdest avant-garde experimental shit on Earth!”
“But also what I really appreciate is that she’s also such a good friend, and very intellectual… like, in a good way,” she continues. “You could really talk about anything with her; you could talk philosophy one minute, and comedy the next. When you’re making a song, it’s very ambiguous what you’re trying to do, and she’s the best collaborator in the sense that she really is borderline psychic in understanding what it is that you’re after.”
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You get the sense from chatting to Björk that hanging out in the studio would not only be an education, but also fun. Each day is another adventure. It’s apt that she often DJs beneath a Reykjavik full moon, as this tethers her creativity to the natural world, and the endlessly moving environments we reside in. Björk’s art changes because she does; it’s a perpetual act of re-discovery. “I just think I get bored very easily,” she says. “For real. That’s probably the main driving force. But I think it’s a combination of things. One is that I was very blessed that I spent ten years in bands with amazing people. We had a label and we were very safe. We didn’t need anyone else. And I was the youngest, so I was kind of protected.”
“I don’t know if you’re into Chinese astrology – probably not! – but they were all tigers,” she explains. “Tigers are very protective and I was the only snake, so I was very protected. In a way, it was a university for me. I thought I would be in bands forever. I loved it! But then at the end of it I was like: oh damn, I need to do new music, I need growth. I need to get out of this box! And my carrot was my own growth,” she says… “not in an egotistical or narcissistic way.”
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Citing the seminal Hermann Hesse novel The Glass Bead Game as a reference point, Björk compares her own artistic output to the book’s message of transcendental education. “Every time you get bored, you get another challenge. It’s about providing yourself with a school for life. Except it’s not like a building – the building is you!” The breadth of Björk’s knowledge is staggering. To further her art she’s learned software languages, and multiple aspects of musicology; she’s remained at the forefront of club culture, rooting herself into multiple creative lineages. She’s a finely balanced creative cosmos forever expanding outwards. “That’s the energy that drives me; I feel like I’m growing. It’s not fame, it’s personal growth.”
We close by looking to the future. Björk works at her own pace, a steady but assured voyage of artistic attainment, grinding down challenges into dust. “I’m the sort of person who is always writing, but I’m super slow. It’s not like I write in bursts and then don’t write anything for three years,” she insists. “I’m the opposite. I write a song every two months. That’s how you survive. That’s the antidote. It’s planting seeds inside of you that are desperate to get out.”
“It’s too early days… ” she says. “Also, if I describe it, in my experience, I’ll jinx it, y’know? If I say it’s green, then I’ll go home and do everything except green. Because that’s the way creativity works. It has to work in the dark. It’s nothing stressful. It’s part of my diary!”
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Björk: Cornucopia releases in cinemas worldwide on May 7th for a limited time only. Head to bjorkcornucopia.com for information.
As seen in CLASH 130. Order your copy here.
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Words: Robin Murray
Imagery: Nick Knight + Tobias Gremmler
Cornucopia Tour Photography: Santiago Felipe
Creative Direction: Rob Meyers
Join us on WeAre8, as we get under the skin of global cultural happenings. Follow Clash Magazine HERE as we skip merrily between clubs, concerts, interviews and photo shoots. Get backstage sneak-peeks and a view into our world as the fun and games unfold.
Future Forever: Björk interviewed – clashmusic.com
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