Decades into a scene-shaping career, Icelandic music legend and fashion icon Björk is keeping with her niche by continuing to create intricate, deeply evocative multimedia art. Just last year, she released her latest full-length record, Fossora, via One Little Independent Records. Now she’s back with a visualizer for “Victimhood,” a song nestled in the middle of the 13-track opus.
The video cuts “Victimhood” down to a mere 4:50 from its sprawling album length of nearly seven minutes. Featuring animations from Icelandic visual artist Gabríela Friðriksdóttir, amorphous shapes and illustrated animals alike drift across the screen while handwritten lyrics fade in and out of the bottom third. The song and video in tandem feel like an omen, as Björk sings of the woes of sacrifice in a self-pitying world over a looming, at times atonal building instrumentation that darts between orchestral and electronic.
Björk says the inspiration behind the track is rooted in her experience as a woman and mother.
“Sometimes it becomes the role of the women, in difficult situations to take on the catharsis and emotional work,” Björk says. “And if there’s some dark shadows or forces in a situation, we’ll convert it into sort of good energy, for other family members, so they don’t have to, we will take care of it. That’s a strange kind of victim hat too, you choose to do that, nobody asked you to. That’s maybe where the humor comes in. It’s very interesting.”
Check out the video below.