Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Bjrk gives birth to her second child, daughter Isadora Bjarkardttir Barney
14/11/2014 17:18
Klaus Biesenbach
Introduction
Roots
in 1944, after six hundred years of Danish rule, Iceland
declared independence, establishing a new and sovereign
republic. Bjrks parents were born shortly after the founding
of the republic, and both grew into strong activists and civil
leaders. Bjrks generation, born twenty years later, were
the children of the first free-born Icelanders. This generation
were naturally connected to native Icelandic tradition, but also
had an openness to international exchange and opportunities
to travel. Culturally, for native Icelanders, pagan tradition,
folkloristic storytelling, and the universal mass-media society
collided at an accelerated pace.
After her parents separated when she was a year old,
Bjrk was raised in a bohemian environment of creative people
on her mothers side and responsible craftsmen and later union
activists on her fathers. Her mother was, as Bjrk describes
her, a dreamer, who took her out of traditional patriarchy
to live in a commune of musicians and artists on the outskirts
of Reykjavk, a setting which Bjrk now describes as a fairy
tale. Her paternal grandmother was an abstract painter, who
took the young Bjrk to museums. Bjrk was inspired very early
on to be both the wild, liberal spirit in the more traditional/
conservative/bourgeois paternal family, while at the same time
acting as the responsible wake-up call for her mothers more
liberal way of life. For the first five years of her life she lived
in the commune as an only child, but then acquired one halfbrother on her mothers side and three half-brothers and three
half-sisters on her fathers.
Bjrks musical talent and open nature were evident from
a young age. When she was still at school, she would ride
the bus and sing in front of anybody who happened to be
on it. She would also sing and improvise while walking to and
from school. She liked to help the teachers distribute food
and snacks to the other schoolchildren, rather than being part
of the group being cared for. From the ages of five to fifteen,
in addition to regular school, she attended a specialized music
school. Several days a week she studied the theory and practice
of music, and received a classical music education on the flute
and recorder. While in music school, it was clear to Bjrk that
she was fascinated by the study of musicologythe structure
and composition of songswhich in many ways was one of
the important educational principles of her album Biophilia,
released in 2011.
In early 1977, when Bjrk was eleven, she recorded
her first album, and it made her a national celebrity. Bearing
in mind Icelands small populationwith most living in
her home town of Reykjavkshe was not yet comfortable
becoming a recognized public figure. Having lost her anonymity,
she refrained from composing and releasing a second solo album.
Instead, she dived into the group dynamics of an art collective
and several different bands. In so doing, she was working
collaboratively on her creative process, but much less visibly
than if acting as a solo artist. It took her until she turned
twenty-seven to appear on the cover of a solo album again.
Klaus Biesenbach
Introduction
Parallel Worlds
Masks
the symbol of the mask has been thematized throughout
the ages. In the plays of antiquity, actors went on stage with
a mask, thus simultaneously embodying a person and a persona,
a living and a dead body. By the sixteenth century, the mask
had disappeared, as actors felt the need to express the individual
emotions behind their roles. The face as mask became the actors
instrument. The voice, the accent, the diction were also part
of the role. In engaging with readable signsin adopting
different masksthe actor could convey different characters.
As an artist, Bjrk has adopted many visually compelling
personas. She has worn some of the most experimental headcoverings, including wigs, veils, diamond-studded surfaces,
feather ear-pieces, and extreme sculptural dandelion-like
head-dresses designed by Maiko Takeda. But the mask is only
one palpable, tangible embodiment of the idea of a character.
Bjrk also created distinct, semi-fictitious characters to evoke
and perform the author/actor/singer/protagonist/heroine/role
of each album, channeling the creative energies of a musical
period and galvanizing a mask to reflect the art and artist
simultaneously. She made each character a highly detailed,
stylized, accomplished, almost sculpted visual construct,
being one with the music and acting as its imago.
Visual artists have long been preoccupied with masks,
characters, and signifiers. In portrait painting, artifacts
of personal existence became symbolic objects, often reflecting
the subjects place in life. In recent times, Hiroshi Sugimoto
made photographs of historical figures by photographing their
Madame Tussaud wax figures, thereby creating the uncanny
illusion that people who had been dead for centuries were
undead. The American artist Cindy Sherman has used her
own face, make-up, wigs, and costumes to echo the presence
of historical figures for her work.
The creation and display of an outward identity is
a pronounced characteristic of contemporary life. As 3D
scanning and printing become more commonplace, people
will have the ability to access their own 3D portraits with ease.
In the meantime, the idea of the selfie has produced millions
of self-portraits that have found an audience on the internet.
With social media such as Facebook and Instagram, the online
person and persona are easily blended: document with fiction.
Or users can adopt avatars and completely falsify their identity.
Klaus Biesenbach
Introduction
2
Nicola Dibben, Bjrk (Indiana University Press), 2009, p. 98.
Klaus Biesenbach
Introduction
Klaus Biesenbach
Introduction
10
Klaus Biesenbach
4
Author interview with the artist, May, 2014.
Introduction
5
Author interview with Jefferson Hack, October, 2014.
Klaus Biesenbach
Introduction
Klaus Biesenbach
Introduction
Alex Ross is the music critic of The New Yorker and the
author of the books The Rest Is Noise and Listen to This.
2 moma_ross_cover.indd 1-5
14/11/2014 13:49
Alex Ross
1
My Favorite Records: Bjrk,
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.
Alex Ross
3
David W. Bernstein and Christopher Hatch, eds.,
Writings Through John Cages 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.
Alex Ross
Bjrk photographed
by Benni Valsson, 1998.
A previously unpublished
photograph by Juergen Teller
for The Face magazine, 1993.
5
Bjrk Meets Karlheinz Stockhausen: Compose Yourself,
Dazed & Confused 23 (August, 1996).
Alex Ross
Bjrk as a child.
She attended the Barnamsikskli
in Reykjavk from the age of five.
6
Bjrk, Why I Love Stockhausen,
The Guardian, October 29, 2008.
Alex Ross
7
Radical Connections: Meredith Monk and Bjrk,
Counterstream Radio, http://www.newmusicbox.org/articles/
radical-connections-meredith-monk-and-bjork.
Alex Ross
Composition as Collaboration
bjrk resists being called a composer, even if she has drawn
extensively on the notational classical tradition. The cult
of the solitary genius is alien to her. Instead, she sees her
work as an essentially collaborative enterprise, one that calls
for an entire community of musicians, studio technicians,
instrument-makers, producers, programmers, videographers,
fashion designers, and other creative individuals. She is not
the kind of pop star who makes a game of donning masks
and disguises; her vocal identity has changed remarkably little
over two decades as a solo artist. But almost everything else
has changed: the instrumentation, the arrangements, the
production techniques. Her albums tend to react against one
another, with extroverted moods giving way to intimacies,
dense textures followed by transparent ones.
To a great extent, Bjrks career can be narrated in terms
of her collaborations. In the early and mid-1990s, she was
living in London, keeping close tabs on the citys club scene and
maintaining a hectic nocturnal schedule. Debut and Post were,
in a way, portraits of a multiculturally swinging city, with
purring trip-hop beats layered beneath the sinuous strings
of Talvin Singh and more opulent parts that Bjrk co-arranged
with Eumir Deodato. Synthesized sounds met up with the
tootling and plucking of a community band or orchestra:
flute, harp, accordion, harmonium. The tone of these first
albums is caught by the title of a song toward the end of Debut:
Violently Happy.
Homogenic, from 1997, marked the end of Bjrks London
phase; she moved back to Reykjavk the following year.
The producer Mark Bell became a crucial member of Bjrks
team, injecting cooler, more brittle timbres. The Icelandic
landscape can be sensed in the volcanic spasms of songs like
Pluto, or in the pummeling rhythms of Hunter, which
suggest a terrain being trampled by hooves. At the same time,
the record suggests a turning inward. In the song Jga, Bjrk
sings of emotional landscapes, of a state of emergency.
This exploration of a sometimes inviting, sometimes forbidding
inner geography goes even deeper in Vespertine, which appeared
in 2001. Here, Bjrks collaborators, apart from Bell, included
the producer-songwriter Guy Sigsworth, the electronic musician
Matthew Herbert, the avant-garde harpist Zeena Parkins, and
Drew Daniel and M. C. Schmidt, of the electronic duo Matmos.
Yet the glistening, twitchily sensual musical fabric of the album,
which includes parts for glockenspiel, celesta, and music boxes,
was largely Bjrks creation, with most of the beats created
on her laptop and musical parts written in the Sibelius
composition program.
8
See Alex Ross, Listen to This
(Farrar, Straus and Giroux), 2010, pp. 23858.
Alex Ross
9
See Alex Ross, Bjrk Ed,
The New Yorker, February 27, 2012.
Alex Ross
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,
The Complete Correspondence, 19281940, ed. Henri Lonitz,
trans. Nicholas Walker (Harvard University Press), 1999, p. 130.
11
Joan Retallack, ed., Musicage: Cage Muses on Words, Art, Music
(Wesleyan University Press), 1996, p. 293.
Alex Ross
3 moma_dibben_cover.indd 1-4
14/11/2014 13:46
Nicola Dibben
Creator || Producer
stories of bjrks creative process abound in interviews and
critical reception of her music: from accounts of composing by
singing outdoors, through working at digital audio workstations,
to jamming with other musicians. Yet, the discourse and ideology
of creativitywho and what we consider creative and why
remains relatively opaque. In this essay I briefly outline some
of Bjrks working process, before showing how her work
itself has something to say about the nature of creativity which
challenges deeply embedded notions of creation.
Bjrks solo work can be thought of in terms of projects,
which are realized as albums, associated singles and remixes,
promotional images, music videos, documentaries, performances,
and in the case of Biophilia (2011), a pop-up music school and
an app for tablet computer. Music is at the core of these projects.
For example, in the case of Biophilia, which I worked on
as musicological consultant, 1 Bjrk spent at least two years
researching and composing with assistance from a recording
engineer, personal assistant, and management. By the time
I met Bjrk in September 2010 she had already created working
versions of the tracks that would form the album, at least one
of which was awaiting lyrics (the track Melody, which was
later titled Cosmogony). At this stage she had identified most
collaborators, and was communicating her idea for each aspect
of the project to the relevant people, working with the individuals
concerned to achieve it. Hence, design, art work, costume,
videos, and apps emerged during that process and were executed
to the music, with some changes to the music in response to
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 Bjrks workthe 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 Bjrk,
Red Bull Music Academy Magazine,
http://www.redbullmusicacademy.com/magazine/
when-matmos-met-bjork, June 26, 2013.
1
In this case, musicological consultant
is a grand title for a variety of tasks,
from writing liner notes to identifying
key centers of songs for a package of tuning forks!
3
Homogenic (1997) CD liner notes;
and personal communication, February, 2013.
4
Rob Pope, Creativity: Theory, History, Practice
(Psychology Press), 2005.
Nicola Dibben
7
The Inner Part of an Animal or Plant Structure,
dir. Ragnheiur Gestsdttir, 2004.
5
Edwin F. Faulhaber III,
Communicator Between Worlds:
Bjrk Reaches Beyond the Binaries.
Diss. Bowling Green State University, 2008.
6
Franca, Fashionable Feminist Icon:
Bjrk, March 2, 2011. Oranges and Apples:
http://www.oranges-and-apples.com/2011/
03/fashionable-feminist-icon-bjork.html.
8
Judith Butler, Gender Trouble (Routledge), 1999.
9
Freya Jarman-Ivens,
Queer Voices: Technologies, Vocalities,
and the Musical Flaw (Palgrave Macmillan), 2011.
10
Bjrk has described some of the songs as being
about family members. The lyrics of Mouths Cradle
refer to building an altar away from all Osamas and Bushes.
Nicola Dibben
Photographed for
the Volumen VHS/DVD
by Inez van Lamsweerde
& Vinoodh Matadin, 1998.
11
Inside Bjrk, dir. Christopher Walker, 2003.
38
Nicola Dibben
Feminizing Techno
bjrks treatment of the technological has to be seen
in its wider cultural context. The construct Technology
is associated with a worldview of scientific progress, objectivity
and rationality, and of domination over the natural world.
In the West this is a legacy of nineteenth- and early twentiethcentury reaction to industrialization and mechanization and
associated fears of routinized human labor that would
then be replaced by the work of machines. In popular music
the technological came to be associated with electronic
instruments and sound sources, epitomized by the synthesized
timbres and repeating beat patterns of electronic dance music
this, despite the fact that a guitar is just as much a technology
as the Digital Audio Workstation. 13 This association between
the sounds of electronic dance music and the concept of the
technological is manifest in Bjrks artistic output, statements
in interviews, and critical reception. This is significant because
it means that if we look closely at her use of beats we can better
understand the idea of technology in her music.
One innovation of Bjrks compositional style was
the unusual combination of vocal, instrumental, and electronic
sources, which integrated sounds culturally coded as natural
with other sound sources and compositional practices
conceived as technological. 14 One place this can be heard is
in the relationship between her voice and the sonic background.
The sound of Bjrks first solo albums was innovative in the
context of 1990s electronic dance music for its combination
of vocals and beat-based electronic dance music. Her voice
works with the technological, represented by the beats, but
is not subservient to it, as can be heard in the expressive timing
of her relatively unprocessed vocals around the quantized beat
(a relationship described by British musician and co-writer
Guy Sigsworth as the unforgiving pulse of the machine and
the human resisting it). 15
13
Simon Frith, Art versus technology:
The strange case of popular music,
Media, Culture & Society 8.3 (1986), pp. 26379.
16
This is also evident in the title sequence
and credits to Bjrks documentary Minuscule (2004),
in which the cameras gaze travels through a miniature world.
15
Guy Sigsworth, personal communication, 2006.
17
Bjrk explained her use of microsound
at this time as a compositional strategy
that emerged from working with a laptop computer,
and a state of domesticity and retreat in response
to the concurrent filming of the Lars von Trier-directed film
Dancer in the Dark, in which she took the leading role
(Inside Bjrk, dir. Christopher Walker, 2003).
Nicola Dibben
14
Nicola Dibben, Bjrk (Equinox), 2009.
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 Brvig-Hanssen,
Music in Bits and Bits of Music: Signatures
of Digital Mediation in Popular Music Recordings.
Diss. PhD thesis, University of Oslo, 2013.
20
Bjrk interviewed in CDNow, August, 2001,
Cocoon Special, 2001:
http://www.bjork.fr/Cocoon,114.
Nicola Dibben
The Creator-Procreator
i have suggested that Bjrks artistic practices present a version
of technology that does not fit the cultural stereotypes. As
Charity Marsh and Melissa West pointed out over a decade
ago, 21 Bjrk blurs the distinction between technology and nature,
and in doing so she dissolves the polarization of masculinity
and femininity. Elsewhere I argue that the music video All
is Full of Love 22 epitomizes this idea of the human-technology
relationship. 23 In that video Bjrk embodies a human-machine
hybrid 24a cyborg modeled on her facial features, lovingly
tended to by robotic arms in a sci-fi futuristic setting, who then
appears in sexual union with another. The close-up shots
of cylindrical protuberances, milky substances flowing over
cyborgian body parts, the tangled cables linking cyborgs
to robotic arms suggestive of bondage, and the moment
of sexual union inferred from the few seconds blackout
at the tracks Golden Section are an explicitly sexual and
sensual visual representation of a non-heteronormative
and cyborgian subjectivity.
This feminization of technology is also accomplished
sonically: the cyborgs lip-synch to Bjrks singing voice, and
musical materials culturally coded as feminine and magical
(for example, short, scalic clavichord passages) are aligned
with visual shots of the robotic arms tending to the cyborg.
The noisy filtered timbre of the slow looped beat pattern
that runs throughout the track has a mechanical character and
starts with the movement of the robotic arms, as if the track
itself is a piece of machinery (0:19). This is in stark contrast
to the moments of human subjectivity associated with the
cyborgs: the chorus in which the cyborgs duet accompanied
by sonic signifiers of emotion and altered states of consciousness
(vocalize, crescendo of the high-frequency wash on the upbeat
to the chorus, harp-like glissandi, vocal reverberation).
It is possible to understand Bjrks treatment as presenting
a new hybrid entity which confounds dualist categories
of masculine-feminine and technology-nature.
21
Charity Marsh and Melissa West,
The Nature/Technology Binary Opposition Dismantled
in the Music of Madonna and Bjrk,
Music and Technoculture (2003), pp. 182203.
25
Nicola Dibben (in press),
Affecting landscapes: popular music and environmentalism
in a Nordic context, Popular Music in the Nordic Countries,
eds. Antti-Ville Krj and Fabian Holt.
22
All is Full of Love, dir. Chris Cunningham, 1999.
26
Mutual Core, dir. Andrew Thomas Huang, 2012.
23
Nicola Dibben, Bjrk (Equinox), 2009.
24
Mike Featherstone and Roger Burrows, eds.,
Cyberspace/Cyberbodies/Cyberpunk:
Cultures of Technological Embodiment (Sage), 1996.
27
Cacy Forgenie, Bjrks Mutual Core
video is fantastic, feminist & repeat play worthy,
berBice [MRKT], November 15, 2012:
http://berbicemarket.com/sports-music-film-art-books
/bjorks-mutual-core-video-is-fantasticfeminist-repeat-play-worthy-video/
Nicola Dibben
28
Nicola Dibben (in press),
Affecting landscapes: popular music
and environmentalism in a Nordic context,
Popular Music in the Nordic Countries,
eds. Antti-Ville Krj and Fabian Holt.
Nicola Dibben
29
Its interesting for me to bring up a girl.
You go to the toy store
and the female characters thereCinderella,
the lady in Beauty and the Beast
their major task is to find Prince Charming.
And Im like, wait a minuteits 2005!
Weve fought so hard to have a say,
and not just live through our partners,
and yet youre 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.
Its something my mum pointed out to me
when I was littleso much that I almost threw up
but shes right. Bjrk interviewed by Liz Hoggard,
Maybe Ill be a feminist in my old age,
The Observer, March 13, 2005.
30
Andrew Robbie, Sampling Haraway,
Hunting Bjrk: Locating a Cyborg Subjectivity,
Repercussions, 2007, 10: 1.
Nicola Dibben
This Huge Sunlit Abyss from the Future Right There Next to You
Emails between Bjrk Gumundsdttir and Timothy Morton || October, 2014 || Edited by James Merry
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 youd be interested in taking part in it ?
warmth , bjrk
Dear Bjrk,
It was very kind of you to write to me, and Im very touched
by your kind words. I am always quite surprised anyone reads
my stuff!
I would be thrilled to be part of the MoMA catalogue.
Your work has been a very deep influence on my way of thinking
and life in general. I like to be given homework in terms
of what to write (perpetual student!), so do tell me more about
what specifications you might like.
It truly seems to me that there is some kind of shift happening
towards ecological awareness--not just in terms of PR
for the science. I have heard this in your work since I started
to listen to it.
Yours, Tim
By weird I mean the Icelandic and Old Norse roots of that word,
urth. What things are is inextricably looped, twisted or entwined
with how they appear, yet different--so things are weird and also
fragile, even black holes. I will now not take up five hours of your
time proving it! All my stuff right now is explicitly about this word
urth, which for me is a strange coincidence since you wrote me.
I could find a million examples in your work. The description
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,
yet one cant quite grasp it, which is why its beautiful (The way
it melts...). Kant says something very similar about raindrops.
In his funny old clunky way.
An artist attunes to what things are, which means sort of listening
to the future, which is just how things are--I think time is a sort
of liquid that pours out of hatpins, underground trains, salt
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
to play a long time to sound like yourself (Miles Davis).
This is where I think maybe your work is mysteriously realist.
Each work is very unique, quite startlingly so when you compare
it to how others proceed. So in a way the works are also these
nonhumans I keep banging on about.
And this is why it doesnt quite fit into an ism because so far
isms have been historically about ignoring reality, in other words
nonhuman beings.
You did say youd 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. Im 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.
That Michael Jackson trial, it was like that, wasnt it? I found
out about Michael Jacksons death in the middle of a class I was
teaching and the first words out of my mouth were, Of course
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
students even snorted derisively but I guess he was just reacting
to his own heavily shielded vulnerability...
Creation comes out of vulnerability, doesnt it? Some kind
of attunement to something that isnt you. Susceptibility.
You seem to allow your voice to be vulnerable, which is very
powerful in fact: threatening vulnerability. Sometimes
it seems to be in between crying and laughing. Or roaring,
growling, ululating.Allowing it to be itself, which is a physical,
visceral entity.
In this your voice seems to be staying in a place of creativity,
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
arent tyrants. They cant be.
In a way art is the opposite of collecting, because it must
be more like listening to something one cant quite hear--its an old
idea of channeling, sort of nonviolently allowing things to beam
themselves down.
you got me! i cant tell you how nice you can feel these entities coming out the
it is to be got. gotten? gotted? rocks up here in the north of england, the
pools and fountains. whether you like
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 dont believe in them,
but theyre there all the same. bang on...
of
all
this
stuff.
also--thats an OOO sort of list there: somehow the further north you go the
laptop, bird, building. i love to make more vivid it becomes. i expect its super
in
iceland?
such lists. spoon, quasar, frost on an iron vivid
r
a
i
l
i
n
g
.
bohemians, punks, everyone who ever
the humour--thanks!! i find so much allows and responds to some kind
humour in your work too. theres a whole of dream that sprays out of things even
mixture of different kinds, sometimes if its totally mundane like a hammer or
s u p e r i m p o s e d . a bottle of coke--all are in fact shamans
who
dont
quite
know
it.
the resonance: yes x 10. i cant help writing
about sound. and the kind of connection i think this is the story of art in the last
of everything. i think things are telepathic, two hundred years that art scholarship
really. frogs, balls of string, auroras and is blocking, mostly out of fear.
flight attendants. causality is telepathy.
our mission maybe is to allow people
your art is like trying to hook up all these to feel this and think this with full crystal
telepathic wires between everything. clarity, not departing from reason for one
second, yet allowing the inner space to
my friend and i were just talking about sparkle madly. nor succumbing to someone
poetry and how almost-now eco society elses old bad belief juju but allowing
is
actually
about
rediscovering things to be magic, rather than totally
enchantment yet with full on science--not inert? thats my mission anyway haha
fighting it, but revealing it. fearless
needs
more
magicians
exploration
of
phenomena. earth
there is this part of me that just wants
to talk about elves and sprites yet i disguise
it because others might think it was
believing in something solid. or probably
just laugh at me if they are cool kid
a c a d e m i c s . . .
yess !!
he has this great thing about this attitude nice one!!! I just knew youd dig it.
he
calls
the
beautiful
soul.
i still cant get over the fact that you
the beautiful soul (i call it bs for short!!!) quoted the two most important things
have
ever
said
sees the world (everything else) as evil. i
me, pure over here, world evil over
there. all is corrupt. its the dark boys in anyway, look at this beautiful tiny sparkling
a nutshell really. i am pure in my total void, it isnt nothing at all, its beautiful.
horror at the state of things wordsworth made it, as a way to channel
the wetness to his home... [picture file]
so...this is the really really amazing bit:
hegel argues that this very attitude
IS THE EVIL . like the way you see the
world
as
evil
IS
the
evil
the logical solution: kill yourself or kill
the world or do nothing, frozen in the
h
e
a
d
l
i
g
h
t
s
its like a super super addictive attitude
to
the
ecological
panic,
right?
so, one owns this--one accepts that ones
very gaze directly is the evil that one
thinks one is seeing over there. realizing
that the way you see the world is the evil
you see in it. its awesomely loopy and not
p
r
e
a
c
h
y
it
has
what
that
do
essential
you
THATS
SO
SPOT
ON
!!!!!!
goth
very OOO ,
heres a waterfall in my land
that opted
for a subterranean life :
the river that isnt.
[video file]
twisty
think??
the
river
that
isnt!!!
this
unseeing
is
so
vivid.
a mountains haiku about a waterfall.
were carving out new hope spaces.
sadness, longing, hope, susceptibility,
laughter.
good
ecological
recipes.
like
this
word
unspeakable
ha ha
in your message, theory and art as my isobel was perhaps partly overcoming
the slippery hand chasing the slippery tail
the ridicule of the singer/songwriter
mission , why this possessed need
p
e
r
f
e
c
t
to tell your tale ? so most of my lyrics
i have written myself , but roughly
one lyric per album ive sat down
you know im arguing all the time now that
with my oldest mate and author sjn
reality is like jrmungandr, and everything
and weve documented together
in it is also a tail-biting loop, because of
this separate mythological character ,
u
r
t
h
.
.
.
isobel ... but im not sure how much
it travels to the listeners that it is sort
or in your language everything is an isobel
of taking the piss a little , i find
??? much better than object i do declare
it hilarious !!! her name is a little magic
realist drama , kinda sensationalism ,
over-romantic , ha ha .
hahaha
yes
yes
hang
on!
when its a deliberate, self-inflicted wound
in your art, it seems these non-you entities of
coolness.
take the lead and you merge. not the same think about the overture of wagners
as being passive at all. more like making tristan and isolde, the aching chord
love with them. allowing them to exist of
doomed
love.
tragedy.
from their own side. leaning into them. everyone dies when they melt together,
just like listening comes before language e
t
c
.
or
music
???? kind
of
a scared boy attitude to the eroticism.
there is no ism to describe this! im not
sure there can be because like i say ism i put that wagner against your unison
implies there is a mapped out grid for how in class yesterday. powerful, remorseless
to
approach
beings.
gentleness. merging but not to death.
disappearing into the music but not
how
about
erased. merging, which is not one and not
two. [compliment warning] joyful, funny,
o
r
g
e
o
u
s
P A N E R O T I C I S M g
what a pleasure to read !!! and the tone of it , that tilt between humour
and awe and humility and yet slightly cocky : i absolutely adore it !!!!!!
such a precise mood .......... yes : we can merge and survive
1 + 1 is three
i know it
my author/philosopher friend oddny eir varsdttir pointed out a website to me
once, with a theory : that if you could put religions on opposite ends of a certain
homemade scale , where one could measure the amount of feminine emotive
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
outside the swell and looks at feeling and stuff from afar and empties oneself ,
empties , empties and if one empties enough one merges with all and nirvana !
and on the other opposite end is sufi , where you fall in love with your day
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
you empty and become one with all .so whatever suits your character ,
go this way ... eventually it leads to the same place .
was thinking about when you wrote : this is my philosophy slogan: thinking
should know how to laugh, and cry. how you seem determined to include feelings
in philosophy . no prizes for guessing i feel i belong to the latter group . soooo sufi .
( but maybe some dark beats are buddhist , and melodies sufi ? )
and it made me think perhaps it is even simpler : you told me you were
surrounded by music as a child , the music in my household was like loud
like all the time . so this became the ocean i lived in . like physics . sonic liquid .
and all else like life and such were berries on top . and i get so lost without it ,
like literally a fish out of water .
i didnt really take this thought that much further ,
but it somehow went with the river that isnt and wordsworth dam and
and perhaps your dark boys and my euphoric matriarchs ?
hmm ....
throw in a
span
ner in
the water
its like enlightened lust. like passion is the impossible to describe--like a mute tasting
basic fundamental force of this universe sugar.how can the river that isnt speak
merging
into
the
rock.
and you shouldnt delete that, unless you its
want to go crazy or start world war 3.
just love this lifeform. you will soon find
or
is
it
4
already?!
yourself in a dance. in this dance, your
intellectual buddhists think its about total partner and you are not one and yet not
abstraction. you never need to handle two. there is a pomegranate, its not just
a pomegranate or evenmeditate. you can an illusion. but its a faerie pomegranate
with
[unspeakable]
get there by understanding.zen can tend bursting
to look at feeling from afar and so they
have some kind of hangover from that, oh bjrk that is so good, empty empty
empty >> merge vs merge merge merge >>
very
masculine
and
careful.
empty.that second one is the right way
but for me understanding = standing for me.emptiness is a kinda abstract word
under surface of the river that isnt. for kind of a sensation, in fact, i reckon.
oh wow yes one takes oneself outside the without the idea that philosophy can cry
swell and looks at feeling and stuff from and laugh, the game becomes pure cold
afar and empties oneself , empties , empties wisdom rather than philo-sophy, the
and if one empties enough one merges love of wisdom. just being totally right,
with
all
and
nirvana
!
which
is
totally
wrong.
The Triumphs of a Heart: A Psychographic Journey Through the First Seven Albums of Bjrk || Sjn
The Triumphs of a Heart: A Psychographic Journey Through the First Seven Albums of Bjrk || Sjn
V
14/11/2014 13:45
Sjn
The
Triumphs
of
Heart:
Bjrk
(Based on first-hand witnessing of all the events described with
confirmation of the testimonys accuracy by its main subject, Bjrk, and
truthful quotations from her own works acquired by the author in situ
in New York City, April, 2014.)
debut || 1993
once
upon a time
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 once
once there was a heart
a human heart
that lived inside a girl
breast
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
her isolation
its witness
still
when the girl was happy
the heart beat faster
when she was sad
the heart slowed down to a lull
the heart
by someone
her body
heard even louder
than the things that knowingly rushed
through her mind
in the dream
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
go!
the heart said
II
post || 1995
the path of trodden earth
under the girls 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
nor
fading
light
II
and then
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 girls former existence
had been taken apart
particle
by
particle
II
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
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
one
in her celebrations
in her brassand breakbeat-fuelled urban enthusiasm
beating
II
city
was the place to go hunting for mysteries
to prove the impossible did exist
III
homogenic || 1997
anymore or rather
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
melodies
that twirled
like smoke from incense
III
yes
on her
her posture
spoke of pavements and dance floors
her six senses
had adjusted to the navigation
of urban geographies
III
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
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
III
and suddenly city
didnt 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
by tidal waves
III
with the electric equipment
in her bedroom laboratory
the girl brought to life the forces
that had shaped her
if
and home
travel
im
not
is
searching
im going hunting
im
the hunter
III
the girls 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
and all
the hunter
was full of
love
IV
vespertine || 2001
jelly-fish
it slowed down
the
over the
ocean
to
heart
spit
from a girls mouth
boy
IV
the messages reaching the heart
from the girls 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 /
blueprint /
of the pleasure
in me
swirling /
black lilies /
totally ripe
IV
outside
cultured gardens
and streets
IV
by the moving
home-screens
IV
breath
had become
visible
IV
with steam
on her breath
the girl took to the city limits
she came to a place where it wasnt possible
to see where nature
took over from city
IV
by melting snow
in her mouth
IV
it was proven
that travel
is searching
in a mountain shade
by a boy
possessed
of magical sensitivity
IV
medlla || 2004
to city
louder
busier
on the left
her pain
on the right
nearby
yes
it really was there
a beating weak in volume
but strong in rhythm
a rhythm much faster
than the girls heart
could remember ever having performed
even when the girl was
at her most excited
and it was not
the heartbeat
of the girls
boy of magical sensitivity
his beat was a beat the girls
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 others rhythm
and beat as one
in unison
no
much closer
and
oh!
the joy!
the joy when the heart realised
that the beat was really on the inside
the girls body had become a home
to a new heart
a quick
and tiny one
a tiny baby girls growing heart
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 childs grandmothers
and their dark
and
not so dark braids
were braided into the dark
and
not so dark braids
of the childs great-grandmothers
it was
a triumph
harmonious breathing
VI
volta || 2007
VI
yes
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
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
but did it have to be like this?
forever?
VI
primitive
primal
original
as in primal
as in original
as in primordial
VI
and all the while
the tiny girl
was suckling
at her mothers breast
for a mother-girl
can do many things at the same time
feeding a child
and challenging the worlds order
at the same time
was the most natural thing
to her
VI
with colours
VI
declare
independence
dont let them do that
to you
declare
independence
dont 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
faster than ever before
one heart
hearts
it rejoiced in being
of
many hearts
beating
in unison
VII
biophilia || 2011
the heart
like the earth in space
slopes in its seat
inside the girl
inside the womans 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
the rib
she breathes in
cage
expands
she breathes out
VII
the girl
the woman
one morning
it is evening
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
to form
i gave
a mutual
it all
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
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
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
HEART
move it
HEART
EARTH-HEART
Earth-Heart
earth-heart
earth
heart
oh yes
the heart
the heart keeps beating
beating triumphantly
beating with the earth
the earth
debut || 1993
Page 77 Bjrk wearing a mohair sweater by Maison Martin Margiela
for the cover of Violently Happy, 1993.
Photography by Jean-Baptiste Mondino.
Page 79 1995.
Photography by Alain Duplantier.
Page 81 Photo taken for the cover of Human Behaviour, 1993.
Photography by Jean-Baptiste Mondino.
homogenic || 1997
medlla || 2004
biophilia || 2011
Page 177 Cover photo for Biophilia, 2011,
featuring a red nebula-style wig by Eugene Souleiman,
a dress by Iris van Herpen, and a harp-belt
in cherry wood and bronze by threeASFOUR.
Photography by Inez van Lamsweerde & Vinoodh Matadin.
Constellation by M/M (Paris).
Page 87 1993.
Photography by Glen Luchford.
Page 89 1994.
Photography by Rankin.
volta || 2007
post || 1995
Page 95 Bjrk wearing an Airmail jacket made of envelope paper,
designed by Hussein Chalayan, for the cover of Post, 1995.
Art directed by Paul White.
Photography by Stphane Sdnaoui.
Page 97 Video stills from Its Oh So Quiet,
directed by Spike Jonze, 1995.
Page 99 1996.
Photography by Nobuyoshi Araki.
Page 101 Stills from the video to Hyperballad, 1996,
filmed by Michel Gondry at Telecine Cell in London
using a motion-control system.
Page 103 1995.
Photography by Juergen Teller.
Page 105 1996.
Photography by Gavin Evans.
Page 107 1995.
Photography by Glen Luchford.
Page 109 1995.
Photography by Snorri Brothers.
vespertine || 2001
Page 127 Cover photo for Vespertine, 2001,
featuring the Swan dress of tulle and feathers designed by Marjan Pejoski.
Photography by Inez van Lamsweerde & Vinoodh Matadin.
Drawing by M/M (Paris).
Page 129 2001.
Photography by Inez van Lamsweerde & Vinoodh Matadin.
Page 131 Vespertine shoot, 2001, featuring a costume design by threeASFOUR.
Photography by Warren du Preez and Nick Thornton Jones.
Page 133 Video stills from Hidden Place,
directed by Inez van Lamsweerde & Vinoodh Matadin and M/M (Paris), 2001.
Page 135 Bjrk wearing a dress by Alexander McQueen, 2001.
Music box and shoes by Matthew Barney.
Photography by Nick Knight.
Page 137 2000.
Photography by Mert & Marcus.
Page 139 2000.
Photography by Nan Goldin.
Page 141 Bjrk wearing an Alexander McQueen
dress in the Pagan Poetry video, 2001.
Photography by Nick Knight.
Page 143 2000.
Photography by David Sims.
Pages 161 and 163 Volta cover shoot, with crochet costume
by The Icelandic Love Corporation
and make-up by Andrea Helgadttir, 2007.
Photography by Inez van Lamsweerde & Vinoodh Matadin.
Page 187 Strata portrait developed for the Mutual Core video,
later used as a cover for the remix album Bastards, 2012.
Image by Andrew Thomas Huang.