Björk: Experiments and Explorations
Björk shows a residential recording studio in Spain.
"To record in privacy away from media attention, Björk's tour drummer Trevor Morais offered his residential studio. It's located on the lower level of a 7-bedroom villa in Marbella(near Málaga), Andalucia, Spain. Björk had originally intended to stay only briefly, but later decided to record the entirety of 'Homogenic' there(1997)."
Now and then, I will post some extraordinary videos about artists producing intricate, elegant, and thoughtful work. Innovation does not happen in a vacuum. Artists need to share ideas, have fun in the production and respond to environments, cultures and the complexities of living within diverse societies.
In this new series of blog posts, I want to focus on artistic research and production, and I hope to shed some light on the creative life of individuals and groups willing to share their experiences. As a creator or producer of work, I have found that the pandemic severely hampered creative output. The connections necessary to exchange ideas and challenge the mind are best played out with face-to-face contact.
Since its inception, the idea of S.A.I.L. was a metaphor for launching something small into a vast sea with no known trajectory. There is no doubt that creative collaborations coalesce and bear fruit at different times. Still, there will also be intermittent times where ideas need some breathing space before they may become realized in the studio. My hope is that by observing how people produce work together, we can begin to build again “post” pandemic in whatever new reality is before us.
In this "documentary", you can see all of the different parties sharing expertise while they work towards a "final" composition. Those willing to rework and try new things embody the interactions and the imagination that generate new ideas. As musician Brian Eno once said about imagination and play, "The fact that we can imagine; we can imagine a bridge and then build it. We can imagine a new kind of treatment for an illness and then implement it. We have to practice imagining all the time. We're born with the equipment to do it, but we aren't born with the capability of doing it. We develop that through life and through play and through art." 1
The notion of collaboration comes into full view when we understand how ideas intermingle to form the subtleties of meaningful works and have lasting power. Sometimes creative ideas weave in and out of unconscious and conscious thoughts; sometimes, they come into the light through a trigger or event; maybe they are conjured by memory, materials and technologies. Whatever the reason, the creative person must reconcile the meanings that will eventually bifurcate and change through time and place amongst the vastness of experience.
1 (Adam Buxton podcast ‘Play & Art- Brian Eno in conversation with Adam Buxton’ – April 2018)
