WHILE DOING (from the ACCA catalogue Tiny Movements)

Johanna Billing and Robert Cook

This interview occured in late July 2009, via email. Both of us faced water: Johanna was somewhere on Sweden’s west coast, I was somewhere on Australia’s west coast. The questions I asked (heavily edited here to honour Billing’s restless, turning, searching voice) were about formal aspects of her work that were interestingly and intriguingly and compellingly unanswered when looking at, and reading about, her practice.

The very idea that I could have been surprised that something was ’missing’ in the writing about such a young artist’s work is interesting. Aside from it reflecting a common awareness of the bounteous body of secondary material about her work, it made me wonder whether my own need to seek clarity was not actually overdetermining things – going against the grain of work that is simultaneously, radically open and deliberately, (un-literally) pragmatically structured.

I figured maybe it’s best to let it alone, let it speak on its own. And, at the same time – in a complication that is typically Billingish – I so loved the words that circle the work, and wanted more. This interview ends, inevitably, with a question about this and a beautiful response. Billing’s words make me aware that the written–talking that unfolds below, and that unfolds elsewhere (in essays, catalogues, exhibitions, talk between viewers), is another perfomative voicing of her work with its own rhythms, repetitions, nuances. So, maybe, these answers are not answers, but, as she intimates, part of the work’s looping, ongoing presence.

(RC) Your work sets up situations whereby others, who are not actors, explore in a free and un–directed fashion the nuances and problematics of specific activities, locations. Yet in each work there is something ’Billingish’ that holds the work together as ’a work’ – your directorial voice, which is present, but only at the point of its imminent erasure. What do you feel about this voice, its role?

(JB) This ‘voice’ moves back and forth. You feel there is a frame holding something together, but the next second the focus shifts. I really enjoy working this way, moving between genres, sometimes it’s dry and sometimes it’s more cinematic. But also, many times, whole projects are made up in these ‘in-between fields’, in situations that you are not quite sure of – are they real or unreal, a rehearsed play or, instead, a recorded rehearsal? And there are, at the same time, different things going on, on different levels. I like the fact that you, as a viewer, while constantly looking, sometimes need to question yourself or redefine these things again and again. It is a deliberate confusion I want to get to, where you cannot immediately locate or label what type of film you are seeing. This I think sometimes makes it easier for another type of understanding or communication to take place, things can pop up in these ‘in–between’ gaps.

When it comes to the actual filming process, my method might resemble a documentary filmmaker collecting hours and hours of footage. (Although the films are never documentaries, as such, as the set up is an unreal, almost fictive, event). And even though there is a lot of freedom and improvisation during the process for the people involved – a wish to explore something that has an open ending, or not knowing exactly where we are heading – and I try not to interfere and direct while things are happening, there is always something that I am hoping will come out. That something is what I spend months later on looking for in the filmed material. I probably can’t exactly explain in words what this something is, but it is certainly about intensity, a kind of concentrated moment, about trying to capture, almost, what somebody is thinking while doing something. The fact that the people taking part often are not actors and are doing things they normally wouldn’t do, makes me also sometimes want to underline the ’unrealness’ of the invented situation. By doing this I perhaps try to rescue the participants, even though they are in an uncertain situation somehow, looking like they could be part of any of these reality docu soaps where people might also be playing themselves in a – to them – new situation. For me it is very important to find a way to frame people so it does not become a portrait like that. So even though the editing process is sometimes about almost reconstructing the actual event, I feel it is not so much about manipulation, as it is about trying to get closer to what was actually going on. It is somehow about trying to capture the underlying atmosphere of the event.

Related to this is how you create specific characters in, and amongst, your situated ensemble casts. Is this procedure planned or does it happen during the filming?

There is often a focus on somebody, almost like a main character. This is something that just happens and is not always planned. It is often a mix of what is going on and what the different cameras (many times there are several people filming) are ‘choosing ‘ to focus on. Or sometimes it is what I bring forward in the editing. Sometimes I have focused on one person in a more classic, narrative way where you follow somebody that comes a bit later to the place where people have already gathered, and somehow you start looking at things through the eyes of this person. But sometimes it is just something very organic. But either way, there are never any created characters like with actors.

 Perhaps it’s because you don’t work with actors that your films are imbued with a touching sincerity. There is no posturing, no smirking, no eye–rolling. Is this natural to your performers or is it something you encourage or bring about through your organisation of the event/scenarios?

I am glad to hear you feel this as this is what I am striving for. It is always a delicate balancing act though, as many of the situations – on the surface – have the look of something that you are not used to taking so seriously. Either it is about something very simple, a kind of everyday situation, or it is about something that you are used to taking in as entertainment – like Graduate Show (1999), which is basically a dance film. Or the You don’t love me yet (2003) film that resembles a music video, or the more well-known collaborative efforts in music studios such as Band Aid, etc. I guess many of the projects are placed within these already loaded areas that we might not consider as ‘serious’ in terms of culture and what we expect it should ’deliver’ or mean. I am always drawn to these situations that you might already have preconceived ideas about but in which there is always something else going on underneath the surface. The ’sincerity’, as you call it, is never something I can script or tell people to have/do. But it is the constructed situation itself that is creating it, when you are focusing on people who are very focused or concentrated on making something. At the same time, there is no room for people to make a joke about it. I also strive to create a situation with a lot of freedom for people to make their own choices; decisions and movements in which trust plays a major role. But from the very beginning there is also probably something earnest in the proposal and in the reasons people have for taking part that altogether creates this.

I find it hard to put into words why, but the sense that we should always learn, in a humble, open fashion – something that is I believe implied and captured in your work - is incredibly moving to me. Is it something that hits you, as a maker, on an emotional level as well?

It probably does yes. The films are all based around some kind of performance and achievement. In earlier works the idea of performance was more related to performance in a double–sided context of pressure, stress and anxiety, but this has shifted, a bit, away from that now. I am always drawn to situations that carry this type of potential for learning. It does not have to be about learning a new skill, it could be about seeing things in a new way, from other perspectives. For me, this learning is part of the project on many levels; something that goes on for the people taking part, for me as an artist and the people I collaborate with, and, finally, hopefully, for an outside spectator. I have many times referred to the projects as catalysts, the way they are about a search, about finding out something on the way, while doing.

I’m interested in your attitude to ’the group’. I figure it’s more complicated than people might assume. I mean, each group dynamic is totally different; each group is an individual. If it were the early 1990s I’d say you were deconstructing ’groupness’. What do you say about it in 2009?

 Yes, the group is never as important as one might assume. And the group as such is never the actual focus for the work, more part of a set up somehow. But, of course, it carries a lot of references as well, and it was more specific in the works made in 2000 and 2001 for example, films like Project for a Revolution and Missing Out, that had almost the function of being portraits of a group or generation (even though that was never my original intent). But even in those films, which on the surface look like something that is socially connected – a certain group in the community – people are actually even more isolated from each other. So there is very seldom any social interaction between people. That is why it is a bit odd that there is a tendency to talk about the work as being ’social’ or participatory just because it involves a group seemingly doing something together, or actually, more ’at the same time’ than ’together’. The work shows more what ideas we usually connect to the image of a group than what actually goes on in the films. I am not sure what I would say at the moment in 2009. More and more, the way I am working with people in the films is about creating a relation to what goes on around each individual, something that is the ’other’; society, other people, etc. Actually, more and more recently, every time I come up with a new idea for a film I feel, ’oh no, not a group again…’ but it is a bit about how the projects have come together, as they are often being shaped around an activity that has ’required’ a cast of more than one.

A question that is possibly dull, but possibly necessary: how do you personally trace the shifts and changes from work to work to date? Is there a ’developmental arc’ of the ‘broader project’ that you can ascertain thus far?

I am not sure I can say, myself, if there is a broader project. To me, on one hand, the films are all very different from each other. Yet, at the same time, they are probably about the same thing, just from different angles and aspects. I think definitely each work is growing out of the previous one and that they are depending on one another. I work very slowly, with around one big project per year, or sometimes even less. Often, I am trying to develop my way of working in a way that might not be as visible for others as it is for me. My working methods have had a tendency to be a bit dogma-like; I have enjoyed having certain rules to structure the work. For example, for a while I only worked with the sound/music from the actual event/recording. Another is that I have not wanted to use dialogues – or put the soundtracks on records, etc. These became rules for a while that later I started to try and break as a reminder that I am free to do what I want. It is so easy to get stuck in methods that become rules, but not in a creative way. So for every work there is always something I want to break up, that I have so far not dared or wanted to do. I think it is just a very practical way to keep yourself challenged. And sometimes it could just be about getting back to some place where you once started. For example, in the most recent film I just finished, I’m lost without your rhythm, I am collaborating again with a choreographer I worked with in another film ten years ago. And after having made a couple of more documentary type of projects, I felt the need to work a bit more abstractly. I have also always said that I never work with actors, but this time I worked with acting students – but in a situation where they are not really acting but instead involved in a choreography workshop. This led to a very different collaboration and expression that was new to both them and me. So somehow there has to be something new to explore both for me and for the other people involved, even if it is just about taking tiny steps each time.

 I read, somewhere, about you ’doing research’ for a particular work. But for some reason I found it hard to imagine the sort of research you might actually do. How does the process of inspiration, planning, research, doing, etc, go for you?

 I can understand why you wonder about this. The last couple of years I have made quite site-specific work in other countries, so the research part often involves a lot of travelling and spending time in a specific place. Many times I bring some kind of idea or ’question’ to these places, but then I need to anchor it; see if it can make sense in this specific place and, if so, I spend quite a lot of time meeting with people, looking around for locations, etc. finding out the history of the specific themes and buildings and societies, etc. These things might not be as evident in the final result, but for me it is important for the foundation of the work, that no matter how crazy an initiated art project can sometime appear, it is connected to something real somehow and can make sense for the people taking part and for the place where it is made. So even though I am into the field of art, I am driven by a functionalistic approach which means there has to be some kind of ’usefulness’ involved.

How do you determine the length of your works? Is there a certain level of experience you want to deliver when you come up with an idea, a subject? Or is it something that is more organic, that develops out of the footage?

I never know the length of the film until towards the end of the editing process. This is one of the most difficult and sometimes most stressful parts of the whole process; not knowing what type of film I am making until quite late in the process. With This is how we walk on the moon (2007), a project that was filmed during two days, there were many possibilities and I did not know until after having reconstructed this journey into ’one’ that it had to have the specific length in order to ’feel’ it. The film I just finished editing a couple of weeks ago had forty hours of footage that I had to edit my way through during five months in order to understand how long it had to be. So this is determined by the footage. But that is also what I love about making these types of films, and to make them in the field of art, that it is possible to play around with formats this way; that the film itself decides if it should be 3 minutes long, 30 minutes or even 30 hours. The length of films in the film world, as well as the length of songs in the music world, is many times so extremely standardized and conventional. I find it quite amazing that it is so seldom broken up.

Connected to the idea of time is my feeling that there is a kind of languor in your work. Or maybe not languor exactly, maybe it’s the sense that in your work activities take place in the time it requires for them to fully occur. What are your thoughts on pacing?

This time aspect I do not always think too much about, but it is probably a key thing somehow – the working pace I have; making work very slowly, focusing on one project per year or even less, letting it take a long time. But I know I have also, in the beginning, had a desire to create a place where you can freeze time for a moment, to press pause for a bit and focus on the things in the everyday that you normally don’t pay too much attention to. And I think art is also the place in which you can focus on this kind of reflection which requires time. More and more I have been interested in working with these rhythms within the work, and so there is a mix of different speeds happening at the same time and a kind of dynamic in between them. Some works are rhythmically cut up, in a quick rhythm, while at the same time showing something going on slowly during a longer time. It is probably a feeling of how the inner pulse meets the pace. In the most recent work it is actually all about rhythm and the increasing of speed. There’s a lot of running which was linked to the phenomena of how we, as human beings, start to run in a situation of crisis. And how we, in this ongoing increasing of speed in society, can find ourselves in a constant ’crisis’ reaction, ’running’ around.

In an interview once you talked in a really beautiful way about your art school beginnings; the sense of trying to make something, trying to be, to figure stuff out. And now your work is about the activity of learning, and the space and time of learning. It’s like you are both making and extending your own ideal art school.

That is a wonderful way of looking at it. To me, when I started making art and listening to teachers and looking into the universes of other artists, it was not only about art and artists, but also k_o_n_s_t_n_är_s_s_k_a_p_ _which I think could be translated from Swedish to mean artistry. It’s a word that embraces process somehow – both the art, the making of it, and your self. Suddenly it gave another perspective of how to look at these things and that it was possible to think about your own so-called artistry in a very long perspective and to look at it as a continuing, ongoing process. This way you are never finished and the idea of going to an art academy for a couple of years is not about getting the education and then starting, it is very floating. I was also lucky to have a couple of teachers who were very non-hierarchical in this way, always reminding us students that we were all in the same boat. They were never above us students, it was all about still finding out what and how to do things, about redefining, twisting and turning, and learning.

 On this idea of constant twisting and turning, your work loops seamlessly and our knowledge of what we have seen (already a memory, unreliable) shapes how we see the present loop. How important is this specific kind of looping for you?

I really have a need to see things over and over again; to see the variations and the nuances. The making of loops started in a way with the film Project for a Revolution, and the idea of the word revolution and its circular meaning; also the way history is repeating. It became also a form I could use in a physical sense to, in the film, show people getting stuck in this form, not being able to break out. Then, for each film, I have enjoyed finding out other ways of using the loop and/or the repetition in a way that creates a different meaning for the specific film. In Magical World (2005), the loop shows a constant, ongoing rehearsal for something: an ongoing adjustment, something that might never be finished. Or in Where She Is At (2001), where after having jumped finally, the woman on the diving board starts to climb up again and there is never any ending or climax, just the way it should be, fulfilling a norm. The loop has also been a way to stay in this present-tense, the here and now, the frozen moment. In You Don’t Love Me Yet the repetition becomes like a mantra, each version is repeating but slightly altering, changing something, taking small steps towards a goal that is not also predefined, like in Arthur Russell’s ’This is how we walk on the moon’ lyrics: ’Each step is moving, moving me up, one tiny, tiny, tiny move, it’s all I need, and I jump over’.

This last question is about the reading of the accumulation of tiny moves that compose your work. You’re a young artist, yet there are a lot of interviews, and your voice and words are very present when one comes to the work. Do you have any thoughts about this presence, and more broadly how the work is interpreted and written about, and indeed how it is/should be experienced by the viewer?

I have been so lucky to have the possibility to produce work in the time I have needed, very slowly. And I have also had the opportunity to show the films a lot – even the work I made ten years ago I show again now, alongside more recent work. So that, and the possibility for myself to then see the films again and again in different contexts and places, is (for myself) creating a kind of never–ending and growing reflection on what I do. It really is a luxury situation, a way to keep the slow rhythm of the making of the film alive and also afterwards in the meeting with an audience. But when the work is also project-based with a conceptual background (even though I feel I have also one foot at the same time within a more intuitive way of working), there is a tendency to read the work very conceptually – from A to B, etc. I always try, though, to work with many layers and references, and these can all be active at the same time; I am not after one type of understanding. And I am really interested in the possibility for people to enter it from different directions and levels. On another level, it is interesting that many of my art experiences do not even come from having seen a work, but reading, hearing about it. There is something about this potential of ’talking about art’, the vision and ideas floating around, that I think is so beautiful and inspiring. A work is not just a work in a gallery, it can have a history around it and it can live and exist in talks, discussions and interviews. This goes back to the idea of works being catalysts, to raise discussions, which for me is what it is all about.