Photos par Santiago Felipe
Presse
In the first half of the show, Björk lays out Utopia’s thesis across the curtained screens, urging the audience to : “Imagine a future. Be in it.” This particular utopian vision is a matriarchy free of capitalist values that threaten the future — represented by the youth choir — as well as our fragile ecosystem. It echoes some of the themes Björk addressed on 2011’s Biophilia, which wrought her last extensive tour as well as an educational project. Cornucopia’s formal run, pre-encore, closes with “Tabula Rasa,” a song that is initially directed at her daughter, who she wishes a life “immersed in grace and dignity.” Midway through, the perspective shifts, and Björk becomes a matriarch to all as she sings that it is time “for us women to rise and not just take it lying down/ It is time/ The world is listening.”
At the conclusion, Björk thanked the audience and shuffled offstage. The room went dark for a few minutes, and then the audience was treated to a message from Greta Thunberg, the teen Swedish activist who has led global student protests for climate justice. She speaks directly to the crowd, urging adults in the room to take responsibility for her future and for the future of children everywhere. Her message is explicitly anti-capitalist : “It is the suffering of many who pay for the luxuries of the few.” The irony of hearing those words in Hudson Yards, of all places, wasn’t lost on me, but I found the massive projection of Thunberg’s youthful face to be deeply affecting. Here is a real-world example of someone who is trying, against all odds, to make another future possible. Björk’s work is fantasy, Thunberg’s is based in harsh reality, and the intersection of the two grounded Cornucopia in the now. Stereogum
