Björk: Encyclopedia II - Björk - Personal Life

Björk - Personal Life

Björk and her contemporary media artist boyfriend Matthew Barney have a daughter, Isadora, born October 3, 2002. Björk also has a son, Sindri, born June 8, 1986, by Þór Eldon who was her bandmate in the 1980s post-punk group "The Sugarcubes". Her son Sindri Þórsson now has his own band called "Desida", where he plays bass. They garnered some positive reviews after their performance at Iceland_Airwaves in 2005.

On the negative side, Björk has complained of being hounded by paparazzi in England and in 1996 two separate incidents gave the media much to chew on. First there was "The Bangkok Incident" - a rather notorious brawl that was captured on tape. After a long flight to Thailand an obviously exhausted Björk emerged from an aircraft at Don Muang airport with her then ten year old son. A television reporter attempted to get her attention as she hurried past the TV crews, but failed. The reporter then made a move towards Björk's son and seemed to try to grab a hold of him as she put the microphone in his face. Björk suddenly snapped and attacked the reporter, landing several blows in a confusing mêlée that was quickly broken up. This incident may be connected to her overall frustration with the media invading her privacy at that time, or it may simply have been caused by exhaustion, jet lag and the confusion of the situation.

Later that year a more disturbing story emerged - this time casting Björk as the victim but causing her still more distress. An apparently deranged fan from Florida named Ricardo Lopez (not to be confused with the boxer) filmed himself in the process of making a bomb intended to at the very least disfigure his idol if not kill her outright. While the device, which was intercepted in the mail sorting room near its final destination in England, has frequently been described as a disfiguring "acid bomb" - Lopez says on one of the many tapes he made of himself: "I am the angel of death for her". This, and his eventual on-tape actions seem to indicate that he did not expect her to survive.

The more than 20 hours of videotape detailing his deranged obsession with Björk, the construction of the device and general rantings then end quite dramatically as Lopez takes out a gun. Believing his device had either killed Björk or would soon do so, Lopez shot himself on camera in an apparent attempt to meet her in the afterlife. He was successful in taking his own life, if not that of his idol, and the tape (which eventually made its way onto the internet) continued to run for approximately five minutes after his death. It is not known if the camera stopped at that point or if the version making the rounds had an even longer silence edited out at the end. There is apparently also a version that ends right after the fatal gunshot.

Already a private person, Björk was loath to comment on either of these incidents and later told the Guardian: "It just got a bit much."

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Personal Life", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki