What the Hell Even was Björk’s Cornucopia?

Cornucopia
Director: Ísold Uggadóttir
Snowstorm Productions, S101 Films
Released: 05.07.2025

There are certain types of films that feel more like an experience than an actual artform. Marvel buffs hooped and hollered when the last of the Avengers duked it out with Thanos in Endgame. Local theaters became inhospitable in spit atoms and pink sparkles when “Barbenheimer” became a cultural phenomenon. Plus, don’t get me started on the literal brain-rotting badlands that “chicken jockey” exacerbated your regular viewing of A Minecraft Movie. Obviously, these are the more extreme cases, but cinema that can tantalize all five senses becomes more than just buttered popcorn and recliner seats. Belle told us to live again. Come and See warned us to survive at all costs. And Cornucopia told us… something? However, when the Icelandic sprite of the avant-garde Björk releases a new album plus an entirely new concert experience for one night only, you’re going to stop and listen!

Following the release of her studio album Vulnicura, Cornucopia thrusts us into a live 2023 performance at the MEO Arena (formerly known as the Altice Arena) in Lisbon, Portugal. With dazzling projections and some eldritch horror mounds of organic/mechanical hybrids, Björk puts on a vibrant, theatrical art show of sights, sounds and heavy-hitter talents straight from the land of fire and ice. There’s the symphonic wundermont of flute septet viibra, the heaven-above angelic voices from the Hamrahlid Choir and the multi-instrumentalist Bergur Þórisson jamming out on everything from xylophones to mic’d-up fish tanks with wooden bowls splashing about. The star of the show, obviously, is Björk herself frolicking in a Bionicle face mask designed by James T. Merry and what looks like a dress made from crimson lace lingerie and a deployed WWII parachute. Starting to see the picture now, aren’t you? 

The music alone crosses breeds with symphonic techno, sensory deprivation and possibly even the classical revival from Fantasia 2000. Its clash of orchestrated dissonance and post-modern proxy transmits music that sounds almost out-of-this-world. Every elongated puff from a wind instrument and sound-dampening bounceback in the domed reverb chamber feels and sounds biological. My viewing felt like Björk was teasing an All Tomorrows cosmic beast — one not seen by the naked eye, but one that can be threatening if disturbed from its slumber. This invisible force echoes a spiritual grip to nature and its unknowingly complex future, which Björk uses as an environmental call for action. However, to the disdain of my fellow theatergoers, I burst out into a fit of laughter during the beginning segment of “Ovule,” especially when she muttered, “I have placed a glass egg / Above us floating / An oval ovule in a dark blood red void.” I’m sorry / love, it caught me off guard…

I have always been interested in Björk, just like so many other interviewers and reviewers. I used to joke that I found her “interesting” the same way I find a homeless person relieving themselves in the street interesting, but she’s one of the last creative minds left in this corporate world. Sheer talent alone is one thing, but her generosity with her collaborators feels so warm. The final note will conclude or the choir will finish with a triumphant conclusion, and you’ll see Björk genuinely happy, like a mom watching her kids at a graduation ceremony. You can see how truly proud she is to make something great. So when I asked, “What the hell even was Cornucopia?” the answer is that it’s everything Björk was working towards. It’s heartache, it’s environmental activism, it’s hope for the future, but more importantly, it’s a testament to Björk’s craft and hardships. So if Björk ever reads this (and I pray to whatever God there may be for that day to come), thank you for being so uniquely… you! —Alton Barnhart

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