Je n’ai pas de problème avec l’idée du genre, je crois que nous sommes tout à la fois féminin et masculin. Je me suis souvent sentie queer, et on dit que ma musique est queer. Dès les années 1990, je mettais en scène mes séances photo avec humour, pour éviter les clichés de l’image de la femme sexy. L’Islande est un pays froid, donc nous n’exprimons pas notre énergie érotique avec des porte-jarretelles au beau milieu des tempêtes de neige. Il nous faut trouver d’autres moyens d’exprimer notre sensualité [rires] ! J’aime l’idée que la sexualité s’exprime différemment dans le monde. Au Japon, par exemple, l’endroit le plus érotique du corps est la nuque. Les Islandais sont très sexuels, et les femmes peuvent exprimer leur désir, initier le sexe, de manière totalement égalitaire. Je n’ai jamais rejeté le masculin, seulement le patriarcat.
I think that’s more a British than an American thing. Americans tend to like things that are not what they see every day, they’re even a bit addicted to it - their Minnie Mouses, Donald Ducks, "Star Wars". But the British are more conservative. They’ve also got this Imperialist way of thinking. It’s just very hard to explain to a British person, I’ve got a British boyfriend and he kind of almost doesn’t get it when I explain.
It’s like sexism, it’s so deep that you don’t realise it, and the biggest sexists, they are the ones who think they’re not. It’s the same with British people. They’re so sure that they’re much better, they don’t even think about it. They tend to treat other people like rarities, like something you should keep in a box and put in a museum. They don’t deal with them as equals with feelings.
You can see that a lot in their films, how they portray Indians and Chinese people. It’s kind of like something pretty to look at and then throw away. An object, like a rhino’s skull from Africa. That manifests itself in the rock business as well, you know. They take someone like Ofra Haza... I guess I’ve been caught up in that as well.
I think it’s funny and actually I couldn’t be more pleased with the situation. When I was growing up, I always had this feeling that I had been dropped in from somewhere else. That was how I was treated at school in Iceland where the kids used to call me ’China girl’ and everybody thought I was unusual because I looked Chinese. It gave me room to do my own thing. In school, I was mostly on my own, playing happily in my private world making things, composing little songs. If I can get the space I need to do my own thing by being called an alien, an elf, a China girl, or whatever, then that’s great ! I think I’ve only realised in the past few years what a comfortable situation that is.
I’ve been an adult for a long time now, I’m 27 ! I pay bills and drink alcohol like an adult. What more can I do to prove I’m an adult ? I thought I was an adult. I’m just having fun, y’know ?
Do you hate it when people think you’re a bit mad ?
Yeah, very much so. I just think it’s a misunderstanding.
What’s the misunderstanding ?
Well, it’s obvious. Just look. You just have to be an airplane and watch the city from above. Just watch. And this place is alive, and if you’re not going to be alive, and refuse all those things in, you’re fucked.
I’ve been called weird since I was three or four. I had got used to it by the age of five. I made a decision then : I’d either live my life by what people thought of me and to a set of rules which I didn’t really know or understand which would make me incredibly unhappy, or I could just do what I wanted. And that’s a lot more fun, isn’t it ? Call me a freak for thinking that, but it’s what I do.
I do get hour long interviews in which all the questions are ’why are you so weird ?’, things like that, but I don’t think I’m weird. Everybody sees things from their own viewpoint, and because no two people are the same, that makes everybody weird. It means that what is normal to me is not normal to you, and vice versa, which doesn’t bother me. I’ve got quite comfortable in my own little misunderstood position. I grew up that way, since I was at school, and quickly learnt to turn it to my advantage.
Can a grown woman be driven to fits by the constant use of the word pixie ?
It’s other people’s problems if they see me that way, not mine. I don’t think there should be any standard of what a girl my age should look like. I think a lot of people look at me and say that I’m weird. But what I’ve noticed - and thise used to worry me alot when I was little - is that I don’t know one normal person. I’ve never met one, actually. We all have our special, odd little things, and we should be proud of that.
I don’t analyse it much. Then I start worrying about it and I’ll go mad and they’ll have to lock me in an asylum. It’s a lot to do with the fact that I’m a singer and the fact that I’m a girl. I never set out to be famous. I look at the mission I’m on in the sort of range of Aphex Twin or Black Dog rather than the other front-cover people.
I’ve got the right to be an idiot and I’ve got the right to be clever, both at the same time, and I refuse to be only one or the other. I insist to be happy. I make an effort not to forget all those different colors : to get hilariously drunk sometimes and to pay all my electricity bills and to forget what time it is and run a band without a fault.
I follow my instinct and if that supports young girls in any way, great. But I’d rather they saw it more about a lesson in following their own instincts rather than imitating somebody.
