Biophilia Keeps Growing - Grapevine talks to Björk about her new film and education project

Grapevine talks to Björk about her new film and education project

Björk’s Biophilia continues to run and run, still growing new branches and tendrils three years after its live premiere at the Manchester International Festival.

One addition is Biophilia 203, a continuation of the education project that the album spawned, which is currently making it’s way out of Iceland and into the curriculum of other Scandinavian countries. The project has been taken up by the Nordic Council of Ministers until 2016, after going through a refining process via a group of notable Nordic scientists, professors and educators, and Björk herself.

“I knew from the start was that this would be the only thing in my lifetime that would be philanthropic, and pedagogic,” she explains, speaking to Grapevine about the educational project. “It tapped into that side of me. I think a lot of people who do what I do, for as long as I do it, at some point either go into art schools and teach, or go into music schools, or they do lectures. Or, they just happen to pick up disciples on the way, in an obvious or non-obvious way. I was thinking about what to do, and decided to put all that energy into this one box.”

Another new branch is Biophilia Live, an ambitious concert film shot in London’s Alexandria Palace at the last full in-the-round show of the world tour, and showing in Reykjavík this week.

“One thing I love about playing shows is that nobody knows exactly what it is that makes one better than another,” says Björk. “Like when you walk offstage feeling like you didn’t deliver as much or get to be as generous as you wanted. And it’s not about technical stuff, it’s some sort of emotional unison or merge between the musicians and the audience. I don’t know what it is, nobody knows. But at that gig, we walked off stage and we knew that was good one. I was like, “Yesssss!”

Biophilia Live is showing at Bíó Paradís until Sept 25th as well as worldwide in coming months. Read an extensive Björk interview in the new Reykjavík Grapevine issue, out later this week.