Bjork Shares Email Correspondence With Philosopher Timothy Morton

Ahead of Björk’s career-spanning retrospective at New York City’s Museum of Modern Art, which concluded last month, the Icelandic artist reached out to philosopher Timothy Morton to contribute to the exhibit. The result is a collection of Björk and Morton’s email correspondences, some of which can now be seen over at Dazed.

In one of her initial emails, Björk asks Morton -- whose work often focuses on ecology and environmentalism -- to help her discover her “ism” and questions how her Icelandic heritage and position as matriarch play a role in that identity.

“So I have been doing a little reading and trying to find folks who could help me define what ‘ism’ I am," she writes. "I guess I managed to avoid being analyzed for all these years but now since I am a little older and supposedly ‘wiser’ I would like to offer up a collaborative hand and wave hi to theory.”

When speaking to Dazed about her emails with Morton, Björk offered this statement:

last year i reached out to the philosopher timothy morton to see if he would be interested to start a dialogue with me, to search for a definition of me and my friends’ stance in this world, which i felt his writing came very close to already. of course i’m still searching but this email chat of ours got pretty close and we shared a couple of coordinates trying to define what “ism” a pop musician from iceland would be .....

Thames & Hudson will soon publish Björk: Archives, a series of seven booklets documenting the singer's work. One of the booklets will be dedicated to her three-month correspondence with Morton. Read more of their emails at this location.