From the countless videos and films of director Michel Gondry’s I watch, my favourite of his works will always be the 1997 music video for Björk’s Bachelorette. I may be slightly bias as it is a video for my favourite song (I still get goosebumps from her vocals in this track haha) from an artist I greatly admire, but the video itself is truly a marvel in how it can tell a story in an incredibly creative a fresh way in just 5 and a half minutes.

Gondry is known mainly for his use stop motion work but what I really admire about his work is its vibrancy and charm, which is overflowing from the video for Bachelorette, starting as a silent film before become a musical stage show. I love that Björk and Gondry have such a long history of collaboration and is something I definitely hope to have in the future, as there is nothing more satisfying than collaborating with someone who is on the exact same wave length creatively while also bringing a unique perspective to the work.

“Michel Gondry: Alfred Hitchcock is not my favourite director, but he made a lot of movies. There are these two famous pictures of him: one in which he is piling up all the scripts of his films like a tower, and the other in which he lined up all the film cans in a row on the floor. There is one Björk now, but there have been many Björks in the past. Do you see them piled up, like the first picture, or lined up, like the second one? In other words, the lined-up version illustrates more clearly the notion of time and the tower is more like the inside of a tree-trunk, or layers of dirt in the forest. Is there only one Björk that grew?
Björk: Ha, that’s an amazing question! I think I see us kinda like a planet with our lives orbiting around us like a moon, and the trick is to somehow to get rid of unnecessary luggage on our moon as it circles. If we can’t process stuff, our moon goes off orbit inwards and we implode… and if we get too neurotic or involved in craziness, our moon shoots off its orbit into space. Does that make sense? So that means I wouldn’t be into either of those back catalogues. Ha ha. It also explains why my digital exhibition suits my character better than huge, weighty retrospectives…”