Volta will be known to me forever after this interview as the "ecofeminist album." I bet if she gave a book list of those books she had been reading over the course of the year, starhawk and carolyn merchant would be on it. In response to your last comment Neal (about her latent orientalism) do you know of any place where she has talked about orientalism, it would be strange if no one had ever said any thing to her about it in an interview. I havent read all the lyrics, what do you think of them?

Somehow I doubt Starhawk and Merchant would make it to her list. I think it's more of a move on her part to let themes that have always been in her writing come to the fore. On the one hand, her all female militant punk band KUKL ("sorcery" in Icelandic) had already dealt with feminist issues and even her first album, "Debut" features "Human Behaviour", a song about the human relation to nature, it's self-destructive logic, and the disaster of its outcome. Or there are more personal songs like "Hyper-Ballad", where she metamorphoses by giving herself to the sea in a final leap off a cliff into jagged rocks at the edge of her island. Or the video for "Hunter", which has her transform slowly into a polar bear. Or Vespertine, where there are a lot of hibernation themes, a song about self-completion through authophagy and the eating of the sun, and even a plea to the goddess Aurora. So I'm inclined to think that Björk is capable of this turn in her work on her own and with reference to her Icelandic culture, though who knows--i could imagine starhawk popping up in the most undesireable of places.

As far as the latent orientalism (activated for the cover of Homogenic), I do know that her husband was asked about it. I think he may have been influencing Björk, if anyone. Someone asked him in an interview if he was comfortable with his relation to orientalism (he had just shot a film called Drawing Restraint 9 where there is a Japanese wedding tea ceremony in which he and Bjork carve each others' flesh away). He simply responded that he's willing to go anywhere to construct the syntax that can articulate what he wants to create. I guess that kind of pastiche is telling, although I wouldn't deny that there seems to be something innovative behind both he and Björk's recent approaches. I could see the idea of using certain aesthetic elements like a Japanese wedding tea ceremony or Samurai warrior garb as a prop for further displacement such that one is already transported to, say, Björk's vision of warring bodies in Volta's first track before one gets comfortable with some oriental fantasy. Also, a friend was telling me that when she was in San Fran this past summer and there was a showing of Drawing Restraint 9, there was a sit-in by some activists who gave their accusations of orientalism against the film. I haven't seen it yet, though I want to. At this point, orientalism seems more of something like a threat for Björk and not something that she has completely succumbed to.

i'm going to dot some bjork videos that really like...

Interesting. good videos also.

incidentally, i once attended a wto protest planning meeting with starhawk. we did some hold hands and voice our fears and concerns type shit. grayhaired hippie dudebra wouldnt stop talking about how he sees this long jewel-encrusted dragonsnake whenever he closed his eyes and how hes all wanting to ride it and wield it like a sword against his enemies and im stting there all 'um GAAAYY' and starhawk is getting all turned on and it was just the best time ever!

ps- oh and it was at the new school uni building in sf. needless to say i ddint go with those peeps. at lunchbreak i was SO tschuessy.