Johanna Billing, by Juliana Enberg, (Tiny Movements, Catalogue, ACCA, 2009)
My introduction to the work of Johanna Billing was her video situation, Project for a Revolution. During the short film, young adults assemble in a room – like a University seminar space or meeting room. Marshaled to the call to rally by a poster, the participants collect and wait. And wait. And…Billing’s film work settles on faces and body gestures. Attitudes of boredom, anxiety, confusion, frustration, impatience and resignation are logged. As the minutes tick by, no-one steps up to organize the situation. Therefore energy is displaced; anticipation climaxes then wanes.
It’s a great study in group dynamics - this revolution without plot, cause and protagonist. Akin to business training methods that place participants in anxious unspoken meetings, or psychological control groups, to see who will step up and who will hold back, Billing’s film identifies inertia without leadership. The participants have volunteered their enthusiasm and energies to an unspecified cause, but without a motivator stepping up to identify the necessary action or target, this social potency can become dissolute and disaffected.
Obviously Billing’s ‘experiment’ offers up numerous social, psychological and political metaphors. In particular Billing’s focus is upon a very specific age group - the young 20-somethings; a demographic that might, but is yet to nominate itself as a force for change. The lack of evident leadership can be read as a political and social commentary. The behavior between participants, in this instance, distant and uncommunicative, might indicate a lack of social cohesion or team-based ability. An audience will no doubt bring their own interpretation based on their particular experiences. Billing leaves it open - up to both participants and audience. There is no obvious outcome, only the situation itself.
That is not to say everything is normal in Billing’s work. She is interested in open observation, but equally she is crafting that delivery. Looking is something she doubles when constructing what the viewer will see. Editing is critical in this process. Billing’s decisions make powerful use of gesture and faces to enhance intensity. Real time is compressed and isolated. Billing’s works manufacture a plausible realism. Her material – video – and the transit of time, suggest a ‘real time’ encounter. Billing’s meticulously edited work shrinks time and extracts an essence of realism out of her encounters.
Billing’s works move between staged and found choreo-graphies. At the centre of her practice is an investigation of the ways in which individuals and groups behave: singularly or as communities, and an observation that, in either instance, life is made up of encoded, tiny movements, that glue things together or dislocate our common expectations. Billing gives emphasis to these ritualized motivations by isolating the observation of action away from the normalizing anchors of spoken narratives and ambient sounds.
Silence is a critical component of these studies of people and movement. Verbal interactions are absent, and ambient sounds are subsumed or co-orchestrated by the introduction of a music ‘soundtrack’, it is as if we watch the world, slightly detached, with earphones on.
This makes Billing’s work somewhat surreal; slightly hall-ucinogenic in its dislocation from common communications, and from the usual expectations of consensus outcome desired in psychological experiments. And because her protagonists tend to exist as a specific demographic, there is the added factor of inclusion and exclusion that seeps into the work. If, for example, these were mixed aged groups of people, I wonder, would an elder step forward and instruct or incite. Would the inclusion of younger people make such encounters more unruly or chaotic? What power plays and shifts are lost in this generational exclusion zone? Equally, what collective power is harnessed inside this generational cloister?
These are some of the questions provoked by Billing’s works
Purplewashing: Claiming Ambiguous Space in Johanna Billing's In Purple, 2020
A Bench Moving Still, James Merle Thomas, 2016
Jamming in Traffic And Other Orchestrated Scenarios, Mark Scherin, Hyper Allergic, 2016
Learning How to Drive a Piano, Press, 2016
Keeping Time, Villa Croce, Genova, Press release, 2016
Pulheim Jam Session, Press release, 2015
I Wait, You Wait, He/She/It Waits by Lisa Marei Schmidt, 2013
Learning How to Drive a Piano, by Johanna Billing (Pulheim Jam Session Catalogue), 2013
Situation(s), Mac/Val, a conversation about You Don't Love Me Yet, 2012
I’m gonna live anyhow until I die, Press release, 2012
I’m Lost Without Your Rhythm, press release, 2011
Introduction by Bruce Haines, for I’m Lost Without Your Rhythm catalogue), 2009
Iasi, Romania, October 2008, by Christian Nae, 2009
Conversation with Cristian Nae, (for I’m Lost Without Your Rhythm catalogue), 2009
How To play a Landscape, Bryan Kuan Wood (This is How We walk on the moon, Mercer Union, 2009
Johanna Billing, by Juliana Enberg, (Tiny Movements, Catalogue, ACCA, 2009)
While Doing, interview by Robert Cook (Tiny Movements, Catalogue, ACCA, 2009)
A song between us, by Hannah Matthews, (Tiny Movements, Catalogue, ACCA, 2009)
Making Things happen, by Polly Staple (Look behind us, a blue skye), 2007
Forever Changes, Conversation with Philipp Kaiser (Look behind us, a blue skye), 2007
More Films about songs, cities and Circles, interview by Helena Selder, (Look behind us, a blue skye), 2007
Projects for a Revolution, by Rob Tufnell, (Look behind us, a blue skye), 2007
Waiting for Billing, by Maria Lind, (Look behind us, a blue skye), 2007
Getting there, by Chen Tamir, (Look behind us, a blue skye), 2007
Editing is Musical, by Carole Bertinet Look behind us, a blue skye), 2007
Some Thoughts on Billing, Stein and repetition, by Malin Ståhl, (Look behind us, a blue skye), 2007
More Texts About Songs and buildings, by Magnus Haglund (Look behind us, a blue skye), 2007
Regarding Us, by Cecilia Canziani, (Look behind us, a blue skye), 2007
Who is going to finish it? By Ivet Curlin, What How and for Whom (Look behind us, a blue skye), 2007
Sentimental Season, Johanna Billing’s Magical World by Mika Hannula, 2005, (Look behind us, a blue skye), 2007
The Lights go out, the moon wains, by Anne Tallentire, (Look behind us, a blue skye), 2007
A possible triology, by Jelena Vesic, (Look behind us, a blue skye), 2007
City Dwellers and Seafarers, by Kate Stancliffe, (Look behind us, a blue skye), 2007
Lets Go Swimming, by James Merle Thomas, (Look behind us, a blue skye), 2007
Malmö Konsthall, This is how we walk on the moon, interview by Jacob Fabricius, English/Swedish, 2007. (PDF)
More Milk Yvette A Journal of the broken screen, interview by David Berridge
Keep on doing, DCA, Dundee, Conversation with Judith Winter, 2007
This is how we walk on the moon, press release, Documenta, 2007
Another Album, press release, 2007
La Caixa Forum, Another Album, Conversation with Sylvia Sauquet, 2007 (PDF)
No More Reality, interview by Jelena Vesic, 2006 (PDF)
Setting the Scene, A note on the editing of the work of Johanna Billing, by Carole Bertinet, 2006
More films about Songs Cities and Circles, Marabouparken, interview by Helena Selder, 2006 in English, (PDF)
More films about Songs Cities and Circles, Marabouparken, interview by Helena Selder, 2006 in Swedish, (PDF)
Radikal Suplement: Sentimental Season, Johanna Billing’s Magical World by Mika Hannula, 2005
Istanbul Biennal, Interview by Angela Serrino, 2005
Magical World, Press release, 2005
Moscow Biennal, Johanna Billing by Jan Verwoert, 2005
If I can’t Dance I don’t want to be part of your revolution: You don’t love me yet, by Tanja Elstgeest, 2005
A future that might have worked: Between indecision and optimism: Johanna Billing by Nada Beros, Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb. 2004
Untitled as yet, Yugoslav Biennale of young artists Belgrade & Vrsac, Serbia & Montenegro, 2004
E-cart, Romania, Interview by Anders Jansson, 2004
CREAM 3: Johanna Billing, by Charles Esche, 2003
You don’t love me yet, press release, Index The Swedish Contemporary Art Foundation, 2003
Moderna Museet Projekt: Where she is at, Catalogue, text by Maria Lind and Mats Stjernestedt (PDF), 2001
Where she is at, Press release, Oslo Kunsthall, 2001
The collective as an option, interview by Åsa Nacking for Rooseum Provisorium, 2001
Make it happen, Interview by Frida Cornell for Organ (in Swedish), 2001