For the first release from her forthcoming new album, co-produced by Arca, Björk has teamed up with a super-troupe of contributors to create a hallucinogenic new video. Director Andrew Thomas Huang lends his tech-savvy hand to envision a kaleidoscopic world inhabited by the singer-songwriter, who is clad in an iridescent otherworldly garment designed by Gucci’s Alessandro Michele. Here, Huang talks about the project:
“The Gate picks up where 2015’s Vulnicura left off. It is the first glimpse into Björk’s utopia. The doorway lies within the wound from Vulnicura, which now appears transformed into a prismatic portal channeled between the chests of two lovers. Not lovers in the quotidian romantic sense, but in a broader cosmological way. As a throughway into Bjork’s new album, The Gate is a declaration of hope sung by a woman refracted and re-formed into a luminous whole.
“I am especially proud of this film as I feel it is a culmination of my five-year collaboration with Björk and James Merry. It’s been such a nourishing three-way relationship and this film is the perfect synthesis of our brains and our hearts. Having Alessandro Michele’s design as the centerpiece in this film is a dream.
“I want to give a special shout-out to my visual effects partners Wolf & Crow, who have pulled off an exceptional feat for this visually packed video. Building a world like this takes a village and I feel blessed to be in this company of artists.”
Courtesy of Nowness