A Song Between Us (from the Tiny Movements Catalogue, ACCA, 2009)

Hannah Mathews

Johanna Billing likes music. It’s a trait she shares with many contemporary visual artists, some of whom even make it themselves. But what sets Billing apart, and what draws me into her work, is the way music functions across levels of action and reflection, expression and identification, metaphor and form. Music can be found in the title of her films, their accompanying soundtracks and the activity of her subjects. Its composition imparts context and can anchor her work to a period or mood. Titles and lyrics provide layers of narrative, reinforcing meaning and intent. Music even offers an entry into works that may otherwise appear silent or impenetrable. Through these means, Billing employs music for its social function; its ability to connect and communicate with the wider world. And, more specifically, by locating her conceptual-filmic practice within the tradition of popular music as a socially expressive form, Billing’s works reside in an unusual interstice between the very categories of art and music themselves.1

Unsurprisingly, given its centrality, music has played a role in Billing’s practice from the start. In 1998, while studying at art school in Stockholm, Billing founded the record label, Make It Happen, with her brother, Anders. In its eleven-year history, the label has undertaken tours with unestablished groups and artists working with music, and released eighteen records on CD and vinyl. Significantly, many of these acts have grown out of Scandinavia’s demo-scene and the label operates in such a way that artists retain the rights to their work. 2 As its title suggests, Make it Happen is grown from a DIY tradition and has an intent that is at once active, creative and political.

Music has also come to manifest itself in Billing’s visual practice. The exhibition, Tiny Movements, introduces a selection of Billing’s video works from the last nine years that reference the influence of music, along with other conceptual concerns. One of the earlier videos, Magic & Loss (2005), depicts a group of people silently packing up the contents of an apartment in Amsterdam. The owner remains in absentia as box after box is filled with books, photographs, clothes and plants, and furniture is disassembled and lowered to the street. Through her use of a generic inventory of domestic items and the silent activity of each subject, Billing draws our attention to the fundamental anonymity of the individual in society. The impact of the work is expanded, however, through the borrowing of its title from Lou Reed’s 1992 album, recorded as the musician grieved the death of two friends. With this in mind, the intimacy and ephemerality of life is emphasised as these objects and personal keepsakes, familiar to the home, are methodically removed. In his rock song, Reed sings, ‘There’s a bit of magic in everything, and then some loss to even things’. In Billing’s work, we watch as evidence of a life lived systematically disappears in front of us.

I was introduced to Billing’s practice through a more recent video, This is How we Walk on the Moon (2007).3 The work was recorded while the artist was on residency with Collective Gallery in Edinburgh, Scotland. It centres on Billing’s observation of the apparent disconnection of the city’s population to the North Sea, and captures a group of local musicians embarking on their first sailing trip on these waters. The day-long adventure is documented from start to finish, beginning with preparations on land at the Port Edgar Marina and culminating in the students’ voyage out to the Firth of Forth Rail Bridge. Their journey is punctuated with instructional diagrams and directions, and changing weather conditions that echo the students’ first awkward steps into unknown territory. The work is titled after a 1984 song written by musician Arthur Russell, and is accompanied by an improvised version of this song performed by Billing and friends. In a literal sense, the song references the human desire to conquer the elements; from vast seas to the voids of space. However, the original lyrics also evoke the feeling of excitement and adventure: ‘One tiny, tiny, tiny move, it’s all I need and I jump over’. Together, the work’s audio and visual elements combine to function like a good music video, with the accompanying song remembered as the soundtrack to one of life’s significant moments.

Magical World (2005) further illustrates Billing’s understanding of music’s ability to mark time and exist as an allegory of larger complexities. Shot in Croatia during a summer’s day in 2005, the work documents a group of children obediently rehearsing Magical World; a song about transition, which was originally recorded in 1968 by one of America’s first racially mixed bands, Rotary Connection. In the film, the song’s lyrics are determinedly sung by the children in their second language of English, and speak of transformation and uncertainty about new futures. Throughout the work, scenes of the children rehearsing alternate with shots of the quiet suburb outside; images of construction and advertising are juxtaposed with a small boy who sings, ‘Why do you want to wake me from such a beautiful dream? ... Can’t you see that I am sleeping?’. Billing’s editing style draws an overt association between the children and the place: like these children, Croatia is now tentatively and cautiously taking steps towards defining a new national identity and assimilating with the West. In a 2006 interview Billing spoke of the relationship between the song and her film: ‘I was interested in the possibility of being able to express something personal with a voice of one’s own in the midst of a rapid course of events’.4 Billing’s appropriation of this song recognises its power and ongoing ability to express the impact of change across generations and culture.

The exhibition Tiny Movements at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art is also accompanied by a live music event titled, You Don’t Love Me Yet. Essentially a music gig involving local musicians, each performing a cover version of a 1984 song by the same name, this event has been presented in twenty cities across the world since 2002. The song performed at these gigs was originally written and sung by American singer/songwriter, Roky Erickson, a founding member of the 13th Floor Elevators and pioneer of the psychedelic rock genre.5 The song’s lyrics, ‘I just won’t forget because you don’t love me yet’, offer a lovelorn yet hopeful lament to unrequited love. In attending one of Billing’s gigs the audience hears numerous versions of Erickson’s song played one after another.

Billing has commented in the past that she was drawn to the song through its ambiguous meaning and uncanny ability to stick in her mind. At the time, she felt the song harboured great potential and this point is significant as it motivated the project’s conception. It was also behind Billing’s decision to use the format of the ‘cover’6 as a catalyst to explore ways of maintaining originality and uniqueness of personal, as well as artistic, integrity; both on an individual and collective level. On one hand, this framework locates the project alongside recent practices of remixing, in which producers or musicians rework famous songs that are then released on a remix album. On another, the experience of listening to cover after cover creates a sense of repetition, which in a formal way ties into the looping device employed by Billing in her videos. This device slowly creates a sense of being caught in a pattern, of being fixed in a re-occurring cycle. Billing has likened this gesture to a desire to ‘be in the moment’.

For Melbourne audiences, the You Don’t Love Me Yet project sits within a local landscape shaped by a long and thriving music history and a recent resurgence of interest in artists working with music.7 For this chapter of Billing’s ongoing event, ACCA has partnered with Marco Fusinato to present the gig as part of his occasional series, You Don’t Have to Call it Music: music by visuals artists at The Toff. This city-based music venue, with an established audience and program of gigs, is important to Billing’s project as it firmly locates the event outside the gallery and in a music context. Billing also seeks to work with musicians: people with an established musical practice who perform publicly. Nevertheless, these performers are invited to take part in the gig with full knowledge of Billing’s motivation and awareness that You Don’t’ Love Me Yet is by no means a typical covers night.

The line-up for Melbourne’s You Don’t Love Me Yet event was developed locally by Marco and myself, and represents a snapshot of Melbourne’s independent music scene – without becoming a spectacle of diversity. The final programme comprises both established and emerging musicians whose collective sounds traverse the genres of rock, pop, folk, electro, country, jazz and noise. These include Henry Wagons, Beaches, Melbourne Ukulele Kollective, Sophie Brous, Super Wild Horses, ZOND, Fabulous Diamonds, German Shepherd, The Broadside Push, Olympic Doughnuts, Tic Toc Tokyo, Francis Plagne, David Franzke and Teeth & Tongue. Supported by Billing, these musicians have been invited to take part in the gig, held a few days after Tiny Movements opens at ACCA.

The performance is accompanied in the exhibition by a You Don’t Love Me Yet archival installation. This consists of a film made in 2003 that depicts a group of musicians recording a cover version of the song in Stockholm’s Atlantis Studio. Video documentation of those gigs held over the last seven years is also presented. Visitors to the exhibition can sit down and work their way through more than 200 cover versions of Erickson’s song, which demonstrate the possibilities inherent in the cover; a rich mixture of genres, generations and geographies.

The You Don’t Love Me Yet project, in particular, expands upon the distinctive location of Billing’s practice between art and music. But what is also relevant, and most interesting, is that it opens a space for her work to be considered in light of tradition. In essence, the You Don’t Love Me Yet gig gathers people together to perform their own interpretation of a popular song written over two decades ago by another author. There is an emphasis on participation and revival. Similarly, within the folk tradition, oral history is passed down through generations by way of stories that become nuanced in their repetition, yet remain authentic expressions of times now past.

As an extension of this, folk music encompasses songs that have originated with an individual composer and have become absorbed into the unwritten, living tradition of a community. Each time the song is performed its existence is continued, yet it is also located anew; attached to a new being and a new moment in history. As a result, folk music functions as a physical reification of time and significance moves away from the song’s lyrics to the actual act of revival through performance. Billing’s ongoing You Don’t Love Me Yet project works in a similar manner, recognising the potential of such traditions and the ability of each performance to be unique. In this way, music continues its social function within Billing’s practice, and like folk music, works to ‘reset the moment’9.

Billing’s work is not often discussed in light of its location at the intersections between disciplines, genres or traditions. However, it is its ability to conflate and exist within these fields that make her practice one of the most interesting and elusive. Within her works, Billing’s embrace of the folk tradition is apparent in her emphasis on the handing down of skills, stories and songs across generations and cultures. Yet her relationship with music also introduces an element of ‘present-ness’. Music works in partnership with folk to tie time together; when we listen to music we associate it with our experience of the here and now, or relate it back to past feelings and situations. Music doesn’t tend to position us in the future. The looping commonly found in Billing’s videos, and the repeated performance of an original song in her You Don’t Love Me Yet project, works to reinforce this sense of the ‘now’.

Billing’s clever use of music from various genres – rock, country, psychedelia – not only demonstrates her considerable music knowledge but also her understanding of music’s social function within popular traditions and popular culture. In this way, she opens up her work to various trajectories of music and uses their ability to communicate and connect with different audiences. Billing’s practice of recording, both in her video work and performance projects, must also be noted, as it creates a tension with the tradition of folk, and its oral rather than written custom. In this way, Billing further emphasises the ‘present-ness’ of her works which, although drawing on long traditions of sharing and community, continue to be located in the here of today.

With reflection, it seems that music is a subject matter that provides a shared, communal language that might, arguably, be missing from the visual arts. Music is something that can reliably connect and tie audiences together, and that, in fact even creates audiences. Seen in this light, Billing’s video works move beyond the time-based happenings of previous generations10 and reach out and between cultural layerings and cultural affiliations. In this way they become personal, and in the company of Billing’s honest and knowing relationship with music, we become connected by this song between us.

Footnotes:

1 In this way, Billing’s relationship with music sits outside the minimalist exploration of sound as field (eg. John Cage, La Monte Young, Bruce Nauman) and the more recent work of artists who marry the formal qualities of sound with visual outcomes (eg. Christian Marclay, Mike Kelley, Gary Hill). Her interests also exist in parallel to sound art and its long history of experimentation with technology and composition. Closer comparisons can be made with the 1960s ‘happenings’ of Allan Kaprow, et al and a recent project by UK-artist, Phil Collins, whose 2005-07 video trilogy documents fans of 1980s band, The Smiths, performing karaoke to their album, the world won’t listen, in Bogota, Istanbul and Indonesia. None of these examples, however, capture the distinct layering of Billing’s work.

2 The demo-scene was comprised of musicians who remained unsigned by record labels. Today this scene has essentially been usurped by Myspace and other social networking sites where bands can now actively promote and distribute their own music.

3 Documenta 12, devised by artistic director Roger M. Buergel and curator Ruth Noack, was held in Kassel in 2007 and featured the work of 109 artists from 43 countries. This is How we Walk on the Moon was presented at the Aue-Pavillon, accompanied by custom-made seating that referenced the outlines of the boat’s sails and the functionality of the common folding chair. These seats have been recreated for the Tiny Movements exhibition at ACCA.

4 ‘…….’, Look behind us, a blue sky, ?, ?, 2007, p. ?

5 In music history, Erickson has come to stand as an interesting figure of institutional resistance and comeback. In 1965, after refusing to cut his hair, Erickson dropped out of high school and formed a number of bands before being hospitalised for paranoid schizophrenia and involuntarily receiving electroconvulsive therapy. Released in the mid-70s, Erickson formed a series of new bands before going un-medicated and developing an obsession with mail: he was subsequently arrested for mail theft. In 2001 Erickson’s brother was awarded legal custody of the musician and secured medical treatment that has enabled Erickson to stage a comeback with recent performances at California’s Coachella Festival and the South by Southwest music festival in Texas.

6 In popular music, a ‘cover version’, or simply ‘cover’, is a new rendition (performance or recording) of a previously recorded, commercially released song.

7 Recent projects facilitated by visual arts organisation that involve artists working with music include the Linden Centre for Contemporary Art’s United Artists concert held at the Palace Theatre in 2008; Fremantle Arts Centre’s Bon Scott Project of the same year; and the Ian Potter Museum of Art’s upcoming The Shiloh Project which invites artists to complete the cover art of Neil Diamond’s 1970 album. In 2008 Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces also presented 21:100:100, a major survey of 100 works by 100 sound artists produced in the 21st century.

8 Video documentation of these performances will be viewable at ACCA’s website after the event. See www.accaonline.org.au

9 D. Kennan, ‘Let me see where I am and let me kick out the jams: an appreciation of 21st century sound art’, 21:100:10, exhibition catalogue, Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces, Melbourne, 2008, p. 350.

10 According to Wikipedia, Allan Kaprow first coined the term ‘happening’ in the spring of 1957 at an art picnic at George Segal’s farm. In an art historical context, the term is generally used to describe a performance, event or situation that is often multi-disciplinary and seeks to involve the audience in some capacity. Key contributors to the form included Carolee Schneemann, Robert Whitman, Jim Dine, Claes Oldenburg, Robert Delford Brown, Lucas Samaras and Robert Rauschenberg.