Björk - “Mouth Mantra” (Official Video)

Björk worked with the producer Arca on her most recent album, the heart-ripping Vulnicura. And now, in making a video for the album track “Mouth Mantra,” she’s teamed up with Arca’s most frequent collaborator, the bugged-out visionary Jesse Kanda. It’s an inspired pairing, especially when you consider that Kanda is probably the closest thing we have now to Chris Cunningham, Björk’s “All Is Full Of Love” director. For this clip, Kanda used some kind of hyper-advanced camera to film much of it from the inside of Björk’s mouth, and so much of what we see is a twisted, terrifying psychedelic whorl of tongue and teeth. But the camera also pulls back long enough to show us Björk in full revelry. Dazed premiered the video this morning. Watch it below, and read some words about it from Björk and Kanda.

Björk writes:

i am so extremely grateful to jesse to be up for going on this journey …. it was brave of him to take it on and i feel spoiled having witnessed him grow , making hi tech mouth models and inventing cameras all to match a little therapeutic song about the throat . his dedication and devotion is overwhelming !!!
i am especially grateful for those sassy dancefloor moments we managed to squeeze in there aswell : true magic !!

Kanda writes:

If there’s one thing I’d like for people to take away from this video, it’s the power of vulnerability. That is what Björk’s album Vulnicura is all about to me, and hopefully this video reflects that. It’s about having the courage to express yourself and seeing yourself in that mirror. Doing something that scares the shit out of you and sharing it, growing from it, spreading love and courage to others and making the world a warmer place to be and relate to each other.

Making this video was as much a terrifying horrific experience to me as it was a dream come true and pure ecstasy. It was a year-long roller coaster which triggered and ran parallel to some major growth in my own self as well. I have no words to express how grateful I am to Björk for this extremely intimate creation and her love.

Thank u everyone on the team who made this possible – the miraculous John Nolan and his team for the animatronics, beautiful warrior Inge Grognard for the face art and support, ever loving Juliette and Hannah at Prettybird UK, beautiful warm womb crew in Iceland and London, everyone at Dentsu Lab Tokyo and Rhizomatiks Research, lovely Ellie and Pegah, Derek and Andrew at One Little Indian, and my sister Alejandro of course for the beats and looking at it million times with me. Also my computer for not melting down!