By Ray Rogers
For her Cornucopia performances at The Shed at Hudson Yards, Icelandic powerhouse Bjork pushed the boundaries of live performance with a dazzling display of lights and imagery—offering a glimpse into a future world where art, nature and technology peacefully, magnificently co-exist. A stage set that looked like a stark, sculptural mushroom forest where digital images of woodland and sea creatures, flora and fauna all morphed together (sometimes with Bjork’s visage popping out of them) and floated across the theater’s screens echoed the evening’s clarion call: the urgent need to address climate change now. The Hamrahlid Choir—a 52-member Icelandic children’s choir which Bjork herself once belonged to—began the show, in a nod to all the delicate beauty that’s at stake, and the need to protect our planet for future generations. A sobering pre-recorded video of teenage climate change activist Greta Thunberg drove that point home. On a gorgeous rendition of “Future Forever,” the powerful closing track from her most recent album Utopia, Bjork implored her audience to: “Imagine a future. Be in it.” Anyone lucky enough to be in attendance at The Shed felt that call.
