Björk: ‘The apocalypse has already happened… but we have to go forward’

Conjuring the ghosts of lost animal life with the help of AI (more on that later), the sound installation aims to build a “sonic bridge” between modern life and primordial intuition, as museum visitors travel between floors. An accompanying video by Sam Balfus depicts a lush forest inhabited by a mutating organic lifeform, while curator Chloé Siganos reminds us that the gallery itself is in a state of metamorphosis, soon due to close for a five-year renovation project.

It wasn’t easy to work with extinct creatures, explains Björk: “It has the danger of sounding pornographic, invading their intimacy.” In the end, the Icelandic musician tried to approach them more like collaborators, drawing on a century of recordings from the BBC and “nature nerds” like David Attenborough. “For someone that has been recording sound for decades, I have rarely heard such intimacy,” she says. “The animals are so sensually aligned with their environment, and in this way, they are teachers. And I wanted to give the microphone to them.”

Below, Dazed presents a conversation between Björk, Aleph Molinari, and Chloé Siganos on Nature Manifesto and the case for optimism in the post-apocalypse.

Firstly, what is your conception of ‘nature’?

Björk: Musicians are all about vibrations and energy and sound. We don’t look at the world, we listen to the world. When I go into what we call ‘nature’, I feel a change of energy in my body. I feel that something much bigger than me is healing me, and that I’m part of a much bigger context, and I don’t have to carry everything on my own. It takes me out of my ego. I’m also blessed to have been born in a country like Iceland, where we are part of nature. When you are in Reykjavík, even though it is a capital in Europe, you don’t have the separation between urban and rural. Nature for us is not an isolated holiday moment. 

Aleph Molinari: And nature is essential to you because it’s at the origin of how you began singing – by walking in nature. Would you say that your music lives in a dialogue with nature?

Björk: Yes. Therefore, from the point of view of a musician, it was hard for me […] to get my head around doing a spoken-word piece in an escalator. Now, where is the music in that? When I see pieces that bring nature into the urban museum context, I sometimes feel that they are a little hypocritical. I used to discuss this with Meredith Monk – if our role is to bring nature and animals into cities, like a balm for urbanites. She feels more resolved towards it. I feel it’s a strange service. I respect animals too much for them to be valium for the civilisation that destroyed them. 

So I tried to approach the creatures on an equal sonic level, as collaborators. I spent weeks listening to recordings that were done over the last hundred years by the BBC and nature nerds – the David Attenboroughs of humankind – who waited for hours with a microphone in nature for their protagonists. The immense presence was mind-blowing. For someone that has been recording sound for decades, I have rarely heard such intimacy. The animals are so sensually aligned with their environment, and in this way, they are teachers. And I wanted to give the microphone to them.

Aleph Molinari: For me, nature also means being in that moment when you understand the interconnectedness of things, that you are part of a broader system that you are able to not just listen to, but to participate in. We come from nature, we are defined by it. And the modern concept of ‘nature’ itself is problematic, because it’s a concept born in the Romantic period and, with the rise of the industrial era, became an antithesis to human civilisation and everything urban. Nature came to define what was outside, the savage Other. And it became a terrain that had to be tamed, and ultimately exploited. But nature is everything that we’re part of.

What is important about Nature Manifesto is bringing that idea of interconnectedness, and a sense of the urgency of saving our ecosystem and its biodiversity, to a place that’s in the nucleus of an urban environment. If this system collapses, we will face dire consequences and might not be able to eat or survive on this planet. What’s your vision of nature, Chloé?

Chloé Siganos: I grew up in Lisbon, Portugal, so for me nature means the sea more than anything else. I’ve always lived in big cities, where nature is often defined as ‘everything that isn’t human’, because the focus is always on humans being at the centre of everything. What I love in Nature Manifesto is that we have the feeling that we are invited in by the ghosts of extinct species. I feel it very strongly when I’m immersed in this soundpiece in the Caterpillar. This building at one point symbolised the idea of a utopia. 

It’s important to put ourselves in a position where we must listen and become aware of the consequences of our actions. This manifesto tells us that we were part of a more complex chain of species, and that becomes obvious when you are surrounded by all of these animals. So nature is also a fantasy, and because we are very lacking in nature, these sounds become exotic. People in cities are far away from what is really nature, and that’s why they lack empathy for biodiversity, making it easier for them to destroy it.

We’re destroying our biodiversity because people experience nature as something remote, or as animal flesh packaged in plastic for consumption – Aleph Molinari

Aleph Molinari: People don’t understand that these are living, sentient, and emotional beings. And we’re destroying our biodiversity because people experience nature as something remote, or as animal flesh packaged in plastic for consumption. The experience of nature is increasingly reduced by the expansion of the urban space, and that’s why people no longer connect to it. This is the tragedy.

Björk: Yes. I think this is a philosophy that came from Western civilisation over the last few hundred years. But Iceland and the majority of other countries don’t share these views. So when we read books about the Romantics in 18th- or 19th-century Germany, who were claiming to have invented this idea of enjoying nature, it’s like, ‘Come on, give us a break.’ People have enjoyed nature for a hundred thousand years. The Aboriginals in Australia walk singing songs for each valley because of the resonance and physics of the different landscapes. Each melody lives in a different type of valley. So they are talking to nature, and their sounds and melodies are shaped in the same way as nature. And this is the world I come from.

Chloé Siganos: For me, Björk, you have always shown the future and the need for protecting biodiversity and endangered animals, when nobody was speaking about this. So you were a lonely voice, a voice of alarm. And of course, the Caterpillar is also for me a symbol of [the] metamorphosis of the Centre Pompidou, a chrysalis that will be embodied with the sound of the past and the promise of important mutations in the future. I hope it’ll be a beautiful butterfly when we reopen in five years.

In Nature Manifesto, you say the ‘apocalypse has already happened’. Can you tell us more about your sense of the post-apocalypse, as that relates to your ideas about post-optimism?

Björk: In Iceland, we watched European people go through World War I and World War II, but we didn’t go through all that pain. We were always the voyeurs. And to this day, Iceland is the biggest unspoiled natural area in Europe. Rather than aligning myself with the European philosophers, I find more in common with people like the Potawatomi botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer, who weaves together science and Indigenous plant knowledge, or the spiritual ecology of the Sufist Lewellyn Vaughan-Lee, or Jane Bennett, who wrote the book Vibrant Matter. And through the years, I have felt that there’s an affinity between my views and those of people in South America, Southeast Asia, all the Island people out there – and not to forget the perspectives of women, queer people, and people of color who are trying to create their own history. It’s not better or worse, it’s just a different story. And the story is that the apocalypse has already happened.

When I was living in New York, I could just feel the paralysed guilt of Western civilisation. It is just not helpful. So we propose ‘post-optimism’. It is an easier place from which to build things up again, a more proactive headspace. Also from the angle of thousand years of animism in Iceland, this aligns with a lot of the ideas of Timothy Morton, who is part of OOO [the philosophical school of thought known as object-oriented ontology] which states that every object is vibrant, even the rocks are vibrant. There are other countries where this idea is still alive today, like in Bali, or in Japan. When Aleph and I were writing the text, we wanted to rework the manifesto in the Cornucopia concert and take it to the next level, and really make it into a sci-fi story. It’s about having faith that biology can handle it, but we have to go forward and be mutants. I think fantasy can help us imagine that future, and then we can become it.

I think fantasy can help us imagine that future, and then we can become it – Björk

Aleph Molinari: We tend to live with the weight of recent history that has been very tragic for some countries. What you’re talking about is a larger sense of history, or perhaps a pre-history, that takes hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of years. When you say that we should be mutants, we are mutants. We are the product of an evolution of millions of years, as are the voices of these animals.

Another work that is part of the biodiversity forum is a short film by Anohni titled Benazir, in which she states that she doesn’t know if Mother Nature will be able to bring back these species, if the type of destruction that’s underway will leave us with a deserted planet like Mars. So it’s a way of extrapolating history into a larger context of evolution, and asking how we are going to evolve to get out of this situation. So that’s where the optimism lies. It’s about rewriting a new history.

Björk: I think we have to accept what we have and work with that. That’s one of the things we did with the fish farming in Iceland. We collected funds and we are now running four court cases. The problem is that the legal structures cannot handle environmental problems. In many cases the laws don’t even exist. So we have to write the laws to protect nature. We have to literally invent them. And that’s one of the great things about stopping bottom trawling-protected marine areas, which is a campaign that’s linked to this Nature Manifesto.

Chloé Siganos: Empathy links to action. I really have this in mind – when you are not hopeful about the future, you’re not doing anything about it. So that’s exactly what we’ve done with this project. It’s a call to action. I think this manifesto is a political statement as well, not just an artistic statement.

Aleph Molinari: It’s extremely important to include artists in this dialogue, because you have the scientists, who have the hard data, sounding the alarm of a critical threat, but the problem is that it needs to have a narrative and emotion in order to transmit to people that something needs to be done. So it’s crucial to involve artists, filmmakers, musicians, poets, [and] writers to translate this data [into] emotion and empathy, for people to understand that they need to actively do something.

Nature Manifesto includes videos created by the artist Sam Balfus, using AI. This is often considered a very ‘unnatural’ technology…

Björk: Well, this pessimism comes up every time a new technology comes along. It was like that with the telephone. People were saying that we were never going to talk to each other ever again in person. I think you always have to figure out the morality, and what it means on every level – socially, personally, and politically. That’s what we’ve been doing for the last twenty years with the internet. You have to figure out where the line is. It’s a work in progress, and it’s not a yes or no question. It’s something that makes humanity, is that we all define it together and we all have a voice.

From our collaboration with the IRCAM [on] some of the sounds, we know that they use what is known as ‘frugal’ AI. In the early days of computer games, synthesizer sounds were compressed into an 8-bit format. They were so small that they could fit into computer games, but then it actually became an aesthetic and a whole new music genre, because of the harsh, rude sounds. So that also became an aesthetic gesture for artists. So I think artists want to be informed about what frugal AI is, which isn’t more environmentally toxic than using your laptop, and what is the most energy-swallowing AI.

Aleph Molinari: I think it’s important to be aware that AI is already part of technology today and it’s going to be integrated into every aspect of digital life. But just using your phone is an anti-ecological act in many ways, from the materials used to produce it, the labor conditions, the use of computing power of every app, the agendas behind it. So the larger question is how do we have a more sustainable use of the technology that we require to operate in today’s society?

Another aspect that has been highly critiqued is creativity in the age of AI. People think that creativity is basically gone with the advent of AI. But, as you were saying, all of these technologies bring new possibilities of expression. It’s just a medium, a tool. And so it’s more about what’s going to be the final product or the message of this artwork that’s created. To create the videos for the Nature Manifesto, Sam needed to first create the environments, the textures, the lighting, the characters, and then give them life by stitching a realistic narrative using AI. And working with him we were privy to how artisanal the process of generating unique animations with AI is.

I think you always have to figure out the morality [of a new technology], and what it means on every level – socially, personally, and politically… It’s something that makes humanity, is that we all define it together – Björk

Björk: I’ve had this discussion every time I put a drum machine on my record and people were like, ‘Oh, there’s no soul in this album.’ The computer is not supposed to put soul into music, it’s all humans. I’ve heard a lot of soulless guitar music. We have to bring soul to things made by AI. And like all the monumental things mankind has done, we can do it. 

I was happy that some people were commenting on my socials about my use of AI. My fans are nerds and ask questions and they don’t take any bullshit and they want to learn. I want to have that debate, and I’m curious, too. I have always been a craft kind of girl, so I put a lot of work into my harp arrangements, string arrangements, beat programming, and editing. I may be a singer, but ninety percent of what I do is me in front of a laptop, editing. Techno comes from the Greek word tékhnē, which means art or craft. There can also be an emotional trajectory inside technology, it has nothing to do with the technology itself. 

What’s the significance of staging this installation in the industrial architecture of the Centre Pompidou?

Björk: Well, I’ve always felt the activist side of me. I have separate personas – the activist persona and the musician persona. And for me, the activist side is not really the artistic side of me, it’s not the libidinous poet who sings. So for me, the Caterpillar was the most challenging structure I’ve ever had to put work into. If you had to write a recipe of what sounds bad, it would be a plastic tube with metallic parts and an escalator inside, where you are moving the whole time. It was challenging to put music in a place that doesn’t resonate like a concert hall, but also very educational. 

The Pompidou has an extremely industrial architecture, like the palaces of steampunk. Aesthetically, I’m more attracted to 21st century biologically-inspired architecture. It is where the intelligence of the digital and the structural spirituality of nature meet. It definitely was a project I would not have thought of by myself. But sometimes it’s very healthy to be pushed out of your comfort zone, and I hope that people enjoy it and are inspired to find some kind of optimism in it.

Nature Manifesto is on display at the Pompidou Centre until 9 December 2024.