Björk is crouched in a womb-like Icelandic cave, throwing her body against the stones that surround her. Slowly, she starts dancing triumphantly through corridors of black volcanic rock. Welcome to the second part of our Björk residency – the first look at “Black Lake”, the cinematic centrepiece of her recent MoMA show, never before seen outside of the New York museum’s walls.
“I'm very proud of ‘Black Lake’,” says Los Angeles fashion and music filmmaker Andrew Thomas Huang, who shot the video filmed in Iceland’s highlands for good reason. “Björk wrote the song while sat in a ravine. It is our first chapter in creating the character for Björk’s epic soul journey about loss, healing and the promise of solutions.”
With the help of visual effects studio Wolf & Crow, chorerographer Erna Ómarsdóttir, cinematographer Lasse Frank, art director Thorgeir Odinsson and Iris van Herpen, the video is the lovechild of a guild of some of the most talented and Björk-ready artists working today. “‘Black Lake’ is one of the most ambitious music videos I’ve done,” says Huang, “because of the emotional weight and power of the song, and the rigorous conceptual development that we had over many months in planning it correctly.” To celebrate the launch of ‘Black Lake’, here is a quote from Björk herself, detailing the lengthy process of making the video, and what the future holds:
"dear folks
here comes the black lake video
a video me and andrew thomas huang did
i would like to thank him and james merry so strongly for going through with me the longest video process yet
especially to andrew for his talented elegant patience and to take my first visual impulses and weave into them his own magnificent vision :
im so honoured !!
it was a complex yet adventurous process to synchronize with so many departments
i would like to thank klaus biesenbach for commissioning the video
and ta to the haxan cloak , the speaker collaborators , the architect david benjamin , marco perry who all helped me make the most ideal sound room possible for that song
and then thank derek and emma birkett and tamsin . and iris and erna
and arca for producing the music with me
i guess its time for "stonemilker" and "black lake" to get out there into the world after a 3 month stint in a museum ..... ( after all the effort , stonemilker was like black lakes spontaneous baby sibling ha ha ha ) we tried to make it in a way it was both at home in an exhibition and also in the context of a no nonesense music video ( still my fav format) and i hope you dont mind the wait
and back to M U S I C ...
can i thank new york for a feisty 5 months , 8 lush gigs ?
most curious though about them next things
perhaps we dont even have the best tools yet
and technology might be where all the senses can merge even better ?
!!! here´s to some more VR vulnicura releases soon !!!
enthusiasm
björk"
Black Lake was commissioned by The Museum of Modern Art, New York
