björk - it's in our hands

2002

björk - it's in our hands (2002) Director: Spike Jonze Era: Post-Millennial Avant-Garde (2002) - Released as the lead single from Björk's Greatest Hits compilation, marking a transitional moment between her Vespertine chamber-electronic era and wider retrospective recognition. Exceptionally high. This video represents one of the most formally radical entries in both Björk's and Spike Jonze's bodies of work, a near-unedited nocturnal nature film that inverts every convention of the promotional music video. The combination of confirmed directorial authorship, documented production innovation (night-vision acquisition, scale compositing), and the biographical specificity of a third-trimester subject make it an irreplaceable artifact of early-2000s avant-garde music video culture. Tier 1 archive priority. Context: Released November 25, 2002, 'It's in Our Hands' served as the sole new single from Björk's Greatest Hits compilation. Co-written and co-produced with Matmos and built around a sample from Gigi Masin's 'Clouds' (1989), the track occupies a hinge point in Björk's career, bridging the crystalline introversion of Vespertine (2001) with a more outward-facing, politically resonant gesture. The video's deployment of night-vision technology and nature macro-photography predates the widespread use of such techniques in mainstream video production and aligns with contemporaneous concerns around organic life, surveillance aesthetics, and environmental consciousness. The imagery of a visibly pregnant subject miniaturized within a living ecosystem carries potent symbolic resonance around fertility, vulnerability, and the human relationship to the natural world. Director notes: The video was directed and shot by Spike Jonze using a night-vision camera, featuring Björk, who was in her third trimester of pregnancy at the time of filming, moving through an outdoor environment among bushes and large plants at night. Jonze employed forced-perspective and compositing techniques to transpose Björk's image against extreme close-ups of flowers, plants, and insects, making her appear smaller than the surrounding vegetation. Underwater footage is interspersed throughout. The video was released on DVD as part of the 'It's in Our Hands' single package on November 25, 2002. It represents Jonze's second of at least three known collaborations with Björk on music videos.