Björk - Venus As A Boy

JUL 01 1993 · 12:00

Björk - Venus As A Boy (1993) Director: Sophie Muller Era: Post-Punk Art Pop Solo Breakthrough (1993) - Björk's debut solo era, marked by eclectic European art-pop and world music fusion emerging from the UK alternative scene Exceptionally high. This video is a canonical artifact of early-1990s UK art pop, representing a rare convergence of avant-garde literary influence, feminist body-art performance, world music instrumentation, and the intimate domestic surrealist aesthetic that would define Björk's visual identity throughout the decade. It is among the most intellectually and culturally layered videos of its era and documents a breakthrough moment in both Björk's career and the evolution of the art-pop music video form. Context: Released in August 1993 as the second single from Björk's debut solo album Debut (One Little Indian), 'Venus as a Boy' arrived at a pivotal juncture in UK alternative music culture, when post-rave chill-out aesthetics, Bollywood sonic fusion, and art-pop experimentalism were converging in London. The song's fusion of Indian instruments, including tablas played by Talvin Singh, reflected Björk's immersion in the South Asian music community she had encountered in London. The video's literary grounding in Georges Bataille's erotic surrealist novella Story of the Eye placed it within a tradition of high-art provocation rarely seen in mainstream pop video, while its intimate domestic setting subverted conventional music video glamour. The single reached number one in Björk's native Iceland and charted at number 29 in the UK, and was later nominated at the inaugural Icelandic Music Awards. Director notes: The music video was directed by Sophie Muller and features Björk in a kitchen fondling and cooking eggs. The usage of eggs was inspired by Björk's favourite book, Story of the Eye by Georges Bataille, a novella dealing with the sexual perversions of teenagers, in which a character uses boiled eggs for sexual stimulation. Björk gave Muller a copy of the book a couple of days before filming but Muller did not have time to read it, which Björk noted was a sore point. A creative tension arose over whether the egg should be fried, poached, boiled, or raw. The video was released in August 1993 to accompany the single on One Little Indian Records. At the time of this production, Muller was already well established from her extensive work with Annie Lennox and Eurythmics, and had recently won her Grammy and BRIT Award.