Working alongside painter Natalia Kleszczewska, the video features handcrafted creatures and dystopian CGI visuals.
When Björk approached CGI director Natalie Liu to work on the video for her new song Nerve Bloom, alongside painter Natalia Kleszczewska, the task was to build a digital video that would live within Kleszczewska’s visual world and bring it to life. “The concept was heavily reliant on Björk’s new song and the lyrics of Nerve Bloom, so that way Björk already had a rough storyline for the film in mind,” Natalie explains. The three of them met early on to sketch out a storyboard together, working from Kleszczewska’s existing creature, named Black Beauty, and her wider painted universe – though Natalie had, in her words, “freedom of interpretation within that world”.
What followed was a collaborative production between them. Kleszczewska hand-painted the creatures and backgrounds, and Natalie, as computer graphics director, built the digital dimension around them. Meanwhile Björk steered the overall dramaturgy and creative direction throughout. A full month went into research and development alone, while the oil paintings were still being finished – standard practice in CGI production, Natalie notes.
However, she brought in 3D motion designer Luca Struchen to help carry it. “We researched different methods, techniques and new technologies to find the right visual language for each part of the music,” she says, moving between newer CGI tools and familiar ones like C4D and Houdini. “It was truly an experimental approach to design.”
Natalie’s favourite section lands in the final chorus, where the video’s creatures fuse into one. She listened to the song, by her own count, close to a thousand times over the course of the project, and that particular passage never stopped landing. “Each time when I came back to this section it would move me deeply every time,” she says, pointing to the lyric that anchors it: “the only vessel that lasts is sound… our spinal fluids as one, sound is eternal, all else will fade.”
Visually, she rates the tension among CGI, 3D, and oil paint at that moment as one of the strongest in the film. That relationship between the handmade and technology is a focal point of the project. “The whole method was based on Björk’s idea to bring together traditional craft and new technology,” Natalie says. “Painting and computer programming are both forms of craftsmanship, with a firm belief that they can coexist and strengthen one another.” She adds, “Of course they have been done before, but they are rare and especially this sort of merge between music, CGI and oil painting hasn’t really been done that much before, which is thrilling, really. I hope to help and push emerging technologies forwards, recognising it more as an art form.”
The project is an apt addition to the rest of Natalie’s wider practice, which pairs commercial CGI work with a personal practice built around plants, organic material, and what she calls a “femme lens,” pushing back against “harsh raw inhumane technology”. Raised in a small town outside Gothenburg to Chinese parents, split between Sweden and China, and shaped early by watching her materials-scientist father study circuit boards under a microscope, Natalie has spent almost a decade in CGI and moving image – training at Hyper Island in Stockholm, then an internship at FIELD.io that pulled her to London for good.
Her recurring themes of female voyagers, the space between east and west, and surrealism all trace back to that “hugely impactful” upbringing. She explains, “Growing up, my life has had many magical moments through two wonderful cultures converging, whilst also tumultuous because of my mum’s mental health history, so emotionally I’ve found perspectives and themes that really stay close with me within those experiences.”
What she wants from Nerve Bloom, and from her work generally, is for utter absorption from her audience. “I hope for people to dwell and immerse themselves in this fantastical world we built together with Björk and Natalia K.” She’s still working with Björk, dreaming bigger about film, music and art projects, eyeing residencies as digital art finds firmer footing in the art world – and, by her own excited admission, heading to Björk’s rave in Iceland. “See y’all there!!!”
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