The Creative Directorial Design Behind Björk’s Concert Film

The pop star’s 2017 Utopia album, with Venezuelan musician Arca, makes up most of the setlist, including “Body Memory" on which she’s joined by the Hamrahlid Choir, with whom she sang as a child. Accompanying her through most of the show is Viibra, a seven-member women’s flute ensemble that plays multiple variations of the instrument. 

Here, Björk talks about assembling the biggest show of her career, while discussing current topics like AI and climate change.

Jordan Riefe: You took a hands-on approach with Cornucopia that you don’t normally take. 

Björk: To be creative director and set designer was to be there through every stage of it. For this project, we needed to take the VR of the 21st century out of the headset and put it on a nineteenth century stage, and then make it a 360 experience, like in The Shed. We had a film director to shoot the show, but she wasn't really involved after that. 

A couple of times, I hired people to help me out who were actually directors, and they only worked for a little time. So, basically it’s been seven years of me following this baby. It was scary to be creative director and set designer, the one who was there through it all, every stage of everything. 

JR: Why does each album seem to have a different roll out?

B: With different albums you feel like you're a comet orbiting a planet and you're expressing that planet to someone. You try to express different perspectives so it's less boring for yourself and less boring for other people. My albums go through different genres. 

And there have been albums that were very raw and more visceral and there were others that were more playful. In ‘Cornucopia’ you hear a choir, organspiels, it's a miniature cosmos. I think that my role in it, if there’s such a thing as protagonist, is more like a peacemaker. 

JR: Are you concerned about the rise of AI and its impact not just on you as an artist but on humanity?

B: When you discover the atom bomb should we destroy or create it? We have to go through every level– the morality, the values, human values – the same with AI. As a community, the human race will figure it out but it will take a while. We don't even know what it is yet. 

Obviously it would be best to ask Chat GPT what could be the cheapest and most effective way for us to react to climate change. For the arts, I think it varies from artist to artist. I can imagine for people who work on a soundtrack for Netflix it’s scary as fuck. For somebody like me, I think what AI does is it’s quick with structures. That’s the one thing I don't want. I want to write my song structures, I enjoy that. I don't want to press a button and get that.

JR: You used it in Nature Manifesto at Pompidou in Paris. What can you tell us about that installation?

B: We wrote a philosophical statement that holds its own with the ‘Cornucopia’ show. The optimistic angle is more about acceptance, like the apocalypse has already happened and how are we going to make do in the remains? The biology can handle it, it is strong enough. 

It's accepting we will lose half of our species – and we will – but there will be different mutants and toxicities that, with mycelium, we might learn how to digest. And I think it's important to also have hope or a way of accepting what has happened and move forward to a new take on biodiversity for the children, the future. 

It’s about evolving and how we grow with our discoveries. I think in this way we can dream. And I think it's important to not be paralyzed with guilt over what we’ve done to the planet. We have to stand up and act. 

JR: What form does that action take?

B: We need to push our imagination as far as it can go. In that state of mind it’s going to feel very far-fetched, but it is the way to go. When you read the Climate Accord, it feels like a fantasy. So, we have to change it and rewrite it so it is reachable. We have to negotiate it until we find a way to pull us into the future. 

What comes first is the idea. It’s a way of saying we are fucked but this is the way where we can proceed. That’s what music is about, and writing the anthem to that, and writing the soundtrack to that, and standing up and doing something about it. 

JR: Seems like solutions are elusive.

B: It’s about aligning ourselves to certain energies. If we do, it might help us survive. It’s about evolving and how we grow with what we discover. The new technology we have, it’s not just evil, it’s also good. And hopefully we know how to use it to grow in a good way.