taking a stand

Juergen Teller : Since the film, you seem to be much more grown-up, deeper, more aware of what’s around you.

Björk : For sure, I’ll be learning from it for years, But I think I was going in this direction anyway. A lot of the songs I recorded in London were written when I was still a child or a teenager. So that was my mentality when I lived there in the early 90s-very youthful. Then when I moved to Spain to do Homogenic, I sort of made a new beginning. I gave myself the chance to catch up with myself, and to kind of be the age I am.

Juergen Teller : And Dancer In The Dark came right after that.

Björk : Yeah. And I do think the film forced me to take a stand on a lot of things, especially when I didn’t agree with Lars. I had to think about all of these big questions in life that I usually feel embarrassed to talk about because they just sound too pretentious. In that sense, I guess the film was healthy for me.

Juergen Teller : What sort of things did you disagree about ?

Björk : Lars doesn’t consider it his responsibility to make sure people are psychologically stable after he’s worked with them in such an intense way. As far as he’s concerned, they can be ruined emotionally, but that’s just not his responsibility.

Juergen Teller : Right. Hmm.

Björk : Also, I wasn’t comfortable with the way he worked with his group. My father was a union leader, and very working class, so I definitely didn’t agree with the kind of hierarchy that I witnessed in Denmark. Lars has a team of people he’s worked with since he was a teenager, and so do I. Of course, I left my team behind to do the film, so when I came back, it was as if I had a big mirror to see how I was communicating.

Index magazine, june/july 2001