MANILA, Philippines - My first thought upon listening to Björk’s album “Vulnicura” was “I’m really glad I’m not actually heartbroken right now,” because I imagine playing it for the first time in a state of mourning would have been a soul-crushing experience. Having listened to it without reading any reviews or knowing what I was in for, the devastation came as a surprise. I’ve never been happier in my life, and yet Black Lake had me wanting to curl up into a ball under my duvet. (“Did I love you too much? / Devotion bent me broken.”) The album is quite literally a record of all the stages of the end of her relationship with her longtime partner Matthew Barney, breakdown to breakup to recovery. (Songs are subtitled with timestamps: 2 months after,= and such.)
Björk’s done feelings before, relatively relatable tracks (and old, personal favorites) like Jóga (“All that no one sees, you see / What’s inside of me / Every nerve that hurts you heal / Deep inside of me”) and Hyper Ballad (“I go through all this / Before you wake up / So I can be happier / To be safe up here with you”), but given the subject matter of her more recent releases, a breakup album was the last thing I was expecting to be listening to. It appears to be the last thing Björk was intending to write as well (I mean, 2011’s “Biophilia” was so thoroughly conceptual — it’s about the universe), but it’s what came out. “There’s so many songs about (heartbreak) that exist in the world, because music is somehow the perfect medium to express something like this,” she told Pitchfork earlier this year. “I’ve never really done lyrics like this, because they’re so teenage, so simple.”
The adolescent I used to be loved Björk, though she didn’t quite understand her at the age of 10 or 11. (I still don’t quite understand her that often these days, either, admittedly.) The music video for Bachelorette will probably always be burned into my memory as the strangest thing my pre-teen eyes had ever seen over and over and over again; I spent hour upon hour patiently waiting for it on MTV’s Alternative Nation or Most Wanted. It’s a little funny now, to imagine that this five and a half-minute snippet of surrealism (directed by Michel Gondry — we were watching Gondry when we were kids!) entered my cultural consciousness at the same time as the Spice Girls or the Backstreet Boys, but that was my childhood, and I know many peers who can say the same.
I remember the Swan Dress at the 2001 Academy Awards, designed by Marjan Pejoski (who now designs for KTZ) — who doesn’t? It was so widely ridiculed back then that even if you didn’t have the vaguest interest in fashion (and at almost 14, I really didn’t), you knew about it. It’s hardly the most outrageous thing Björk’s ever worn, but it is certainly the most iconic.
And if you’re in New York, or will be before June, you can go see it, among other things (her extensive body of audio and visual work included), at MoMA’s Björk retrospective. Chronicling two decades of her music, videos, visuals, objects, costumes, and instruments in an immersive history of the artist and her work. Organized by Klaus Biesenbach, chief curator at large at MoMA and director of MoMA PS1, the exhibit covers the entirety of Björk’s storied music career, from her debut “Debut” to her latest album, “Vulnicura” (with an especially commissioned music installation for Black Lake).
Composed of multiple layers, the exhibit takes up the Museum’s lobbies on the first floor and the Marron Atrium on the second. Four instruments used in “Biophilia” are on view (a Tesla coil, gravity harps, a gameleste, and a pipe organ). The “Biophilia” app, which was the first app to enter the Museum’s collection, is on view in the Architecture and Design galleries on the third floor.
In the Marron Atrium, visitors get to go through an experimental sound experience of Björk’s music, accompanied by a fictitious biographical narrative by Icelandic writer Sjón (who also wrote the lyrics for Bachelorette), developed in partnership with Volkswagen’s Electronics Research Lab in Belmont, California. This section of the exhibit, called “Songlines,” is location-based, throwing out different content depending on where you are. Among the items on display are the robots designed by Chris Cunningham for All Is Full of Love, Marjan Pejowski’s infamous Swan Dress, Alexander McQueen’s Bell Dress and Pagan Poetry Dress, Iceland Love Corporation’s “Volta” album costume, Bernhard Willhelm’s Volta tour dress, Hussein Chalayan’s Airmail Dress, and Iris van Herpen’s “Biophilia” tour dress. And then some.
Is the retrospective essentially one massive fangasm, a disastrous fiasco, a mess, like all of its many critics have said? Possibly. Maybe. MoMA’s been criticized before for pandering exhibits and continuing hipsterization. But let’s get real. Does this matter if you’re a Björk fan? Probably not, right? We all just want to gaze upon that Swan Dress.
— Regina Belmonte
Special thanks to MoMA.