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The woman and the girl, the organic and the synthetic, the plastic and the cheese >> It's all the same to Björk by RUPERT BOTTENBERG
Björk (rhymes with jerk... sort of) is off on a tangent about the great cheese/plastic dichotomy. No, we're not discussing the Spice Girls. The contradiction in question is that between the organic and the synthetic, a Yin/Yang balance that permeates Björk's music, particularly on her latest album Homogenic. "You know," she says, "a monkey picking up a stick to open a nut, and a laptop--I just can't see the difference. I'm sorry. Both for me are nature, just as much as the cheese and the plastic. "I think nature made all of us, and as all the planets swirl in circles, one of the creatures became so arrogant at one point that they thought they could draw a line between what is man-made and what is nature. I think that humans are animals. The difference between nature and technology is, for me, different time. Nature is past, techno is future. It's impossible to draw the line somewhere." >>> Equally impossible is the idea of categorizing Björk herself. A tiny elfin figure whose voice by turn soars and growls, small and frightened one moment, supremely confident and happy the next. Womanly reserve clashes with childish impetuousness, sensuality with innocence. Soul-baring honesty collides with infuriating ambiguity. Plainly put, she hides in plain sight. Born in the Icelandic capitol of Reykjavik in 1965, Björk Gottmundsdottir's history as an artist is a tug of war between wild, precocious excess and carefully constructed clairvoyance. She recorded her first album at the age of 11 before starting a string of bands throughout her teens, leading to the Sugarcubes, effectively her international debut. One of those previous bands was Kukl, who found themselves in the good graces of anarchist collective/punk orchestra Crass. This despite Kukl's decidedly apolitical stance. "Crass came to Iceland and fell in love with our music," she recalls, "but we were probably the only band on the Crass label that was not political. "I think there are a lot of different brands of anarchist punks. You can be obsessed with breaking down the government prisons. But what we were more obsessed with was fighting mediocrity in the individual person and narrow-mindedness. We were actually fighting more against Iceland's art snobs. We went on a mission to fight good taste, we thought it was the enemy of creativity. We never went into party politics, but I think we've always been very strong on the personal politics." >>> Björk's strong connection to Iceland goes a long way to explaining her inherent contradictions. The North Atlantic island, as isolated as it is, has the fifth highest standard of living in the world and a literacy rate to match. It's a relatively young land, though, and its breathtakingly dramatic landscape is firmly embedded in Björk's heart. That metaphor is made literal in her video for the song "Joga," where the island itself is scanned, exploded and scrutinized from every angle by the eye of the computer. She explains that the climate is quite temperate, ranging between minus 5 and 15 Celsius. "I think what's fiercer about Iceland than the cold is just nature. You've got tons of that in Canada, don't you? Iceland is about the size of England, but it's got only about 260,000 people. So the rest of it is just wild. It's got volcanoes, earthquakes and hot springs. And the biggest waterfall and glacier in Europe. And a lot of lava! NASA sent their astronauts there to train before going to the moon. That says a lot already." The story of the Icelandic people gives further insight into Björk's motivations. "I don't think we're that much more creative than other people, but we're definitely more independent," she says. "To begin, a thousand years ago, the people who went to Iceland were Vikings who couldn't handle authority. So we started the first democracy in the world. I think we're pretty much the original anarchists. The Vikings would meet every summer in a valley which has an excellent echo, and they would stand there and make all the decisions together. There would be no leader. Nobody tells us what to do." >>> To the rest of the world, for whom hierarchal politics, economic and intellectual disparity and gender inequality are a given, Björk's approach is intriguing--frustrating and seductive at the same time. "We're very self-sufficient," she says of Icelanders. "I guess you could call that creative. I mean, if you want a pink dress, you make it. If you want a house, you build it. If your car breaks down, you fix it and if you need a picture on your wall you paint it." And if you want to juxtapose a classical string octet against a futuristic drill & bass soundscape, you do that as well. Once again, for Björk there is no contradiction. "I think that's bullshit as well! The fact that you use a violin doesn't make you a classical musician, and it doesn't make the music you do classical either. It's just an instrument... one doesn't have to be so literal." By the same token, Björk jumps to the defence of "poor little computers." If, as she feels, technology is merely an extension of our humanity, then the detachment it inspires is no one's fault but our own. Teakwood or silicon, it's all the same to her. "You cannot blame the instrument for the songs that come out. You can't say computer music is cold. It's not the computer that's cold, it's the artist. I hear even music using fucking acoustic guitar, and it's sterile. It's got nothing to do with guts or worms or love... or anything." Björk performs at Metropolis on Friday, May 8 at 8:30pm, $26.50+taxes
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"I love little facts, like that humans actually made plastic for the first time by accident, in 1504. In Switzerland, when they were trying to make cheese." The voice on the other end of the line has a strong English accent. It's only the occasional rolling of the Rs that gives away the speaker's Icelandic roots.