WE CAN BE (PLANT) HEROES: BJÖRK
Words by Jessica Peace
We’ll be looking at some serious plant heads and heroes - and there are many. A few Sundays ago you might of heard Björk belting it out beneath the lightning in Victoria Park, we did and it got us chatting...
BJÖRK AND NATURE
Or Björk IS nature... She’s so big on it she was overheard saying, ‘I get turned on by nature. I don’t find urban brothel situations very hot. But that’s just my taste… like, National Geographic porn’. Whatever blows your hair back luv.
Through her artwork and continual campaigning Björk is forging the alliance between technology and nature in order to combat climate change and the exploitation of nature, especially in her old gaff Iceland, ‘I think the way to overcome environmental problems is with technology. What else are we going to use – sticks?’ Can’t argue with that mate.
BIOPHILIA
If you like your Opera made of electronica and floaty/shouty vocals then this is the opera for you. Termed the ‘multimedia exploration of the Universe’, Björk collaborated with app developers, scientists, instrument makers and an Icelandic choir.
But she didn’t get just to do this, she also got to meet David Attenborough and shoot the breeze with him about nature and music (all christmases at once) when they made, ‘When Björk Met Attenborough’. Because he’s such a massive fan you’ll hear him narrate the recorded live show of Biophilia.
ACTIVISM
In response to the threat of Aluminium mining exploiting Iceland’s land, Björk put together a gig and raised £3 million. She and other campaigners plan to use the cash to build a National Park in the centre of Iceland.
A MUTUAL CORE AND EMOTIONAL LANDSCAPES
Always bringing us back to Mother Nature, Björk mixes human relationships with the rockin’ and rollin’ of planet earth. In ‘Mutual Core’ she sings, ‘I shuffle around the tectonic plates in my chest … to change seasonal shift … As fast as your fingernail grows… the Atlantic ridge drifts’. In the video by Andrew Thomas Huang, she spits out lava and flings about black Icelandic sand. She was up to this two decades ago in ‘Jóga’, when she wailed about emotional landscapes and and ends up in Michel Gondry’s video with an island inside her.
COSTUME
Okay, so it’s not a plant or flower but that ‘Swan Dress’ designed by Marjan Pejoski - the woman mimed laying an egg on the red carpet! Too good.
UTOPIA TOUR
Bjork has come up with - and made happen, another show to explore humans, nature, technology and how we’re gonna save it all. If you like the sound of flutes and birdsongs this’ll be right up your alley.
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