Text copyright Matt Packer. First published in Enclave Review, Spring 2011, p.11

Johanna BillingThe National Sculpture Factory, CorkMatt Packer

Johanna Billing’s first screening of work in Irelandwas jointly programmed between the NationalSculpture Factory and the Cork Film Festival. This,in itself, is indicative of Billing’s practice ofcollaboration that eludes any single catchment. Herstaging and filming of participative situations, has –in recent years – coincided with the post-objectdiscourses of public art, resulting in opportunitiesfor her work to exist fluidly across culturalplatforms; particularly arts institutions andinitiatives that have outwardly sought direct publicengagements and project-based works. Scheduledon three consecutive evenings, the programme atthe National Sculpture Factory provided anintroduction to her work that an exhibition as suchcouldn’t have done any better. In fact, there wassomething particularly fitting about the largescreen installed on the ‘factory floor’, co-existingwith the lathes, welding equipment, and otherexpectant apparatus of sculpture caught in theshadow light of the projector beam. Additionally,the National Sculpture Factory’s Mezzanine space –normally given over to talks, meetings, andpresentations – was converted for the

presentation of Billing’s work, allowing for twoworks to play simultaneously on each evening ofthe three-day programme.

It’s a Magical World (2005), shown on the firstnight – presents a group of young children fromZagreb, rehearsing a song written in 1968 bySidney Barnes of the band Rotary Connection.Billing might have devised the situation and chosenthe song, but the work’s participations seemrelatively unenforced. There is something raw andplaintive about the children’s open andunsuspicious involvement, in fact. Sung in alanguage that they barely understand, their lipsfollowing the song’s enchanted lyrics (‘Why d’youwant to wake me from such a beautiful dream,can’t you see that I’m sleeping… I live in a magicalworld…’) - the film has the makings of a metaphorfor Croatia’s new sense of future and impendingWesternisation. It’s a Magical World, like most ofBilling’s films, is looped without pause or break thatinduces the film to be seen more than once,indeterminately or otherwise. This sense ofcircularity not only emphasises the rhythmicpatterns of the situation and song (theircodependency, also), but somehow encrypts thesense of time passing; the magical world that thechildren sing of, kept perennial.

While the collaborative nature of the work and itsquasi-documentary mode is both typical of Billing’swork, It’s a Magical World is something of anexception in the participation of young children.The greater majority of Billing’s work involves theparticipation of an older, more independent bunch.In works such as Project for a Revolution, we see agroup of students listlessly and silently sit about alarge room, as if waiting for something (arevolution, perhaps?). Or, I’m Lost Without YourRhythm, featuring a group of similarly ageddancers in an experimental choreography workshopled by the eminent Anna Vnu.

Is it a cynical mis-appropriation to make anythingof the cutely spectacled and quirky-fashionedstudents that populate these films? Is it a travestyon the part of this writer to be recognizing thegood looks hidden behind the fringes of arty middleEuropean boys and girls? In recognizing the waythat Billing’s participants assert and submit theirparticular individuality in the dynamic of groupsituations, these questions might have somevalidity after all. The individualities and identitiesthat are often present in Billing’s works are themodern, dialectical type. They are the fashions ofnew freedoms in one sense, but also fashionslearnt from another generation’s coy aesthetics ofarty collectivity. Billing’s films are delicate in howthey involve participation, and though the situationis orchestrated by the artist (often in conjunctionwith musicians and other practitioners), it comesacross that the participants do more than simplyparticipate, but actively negotiate theirsubjecthood.

Text copyright Matt Packer. First published in Enclave Review, Spring 2011, p.11

Installation Shot of Johanna Billing at the National Sculpture Factory November 2010in collaboration with Corona Cork Film Festival. Photography by Mike Hannon.

A similar negotiation takes place in Billing’s ongoingproject, You Don’t Love Me Yet. Presented as anarchive of documentary materials at the NationalSculpture Factory for the entire three-dayprogramme, You Don’t Love Me Yet is a multipartproject that invites local musicians in different citiesto perform a cover Rocky Erickson’s 1984 song ofthe same name. As the title suggests, it’s songabout love and its anticipations of return, which inthe different versions seems to renew its particularaddress. The documentation of these variousperformances might allow us to compare styles,instrumentation, and competency between oneversion and the next. And yet the project is less amusical typology, and more a conduction of thesubjective spirit that lives and repeats throughpopular music.

Perhaps doubly because of its muteness and itsfocus on a single individual, Where She Is At firstof all seems like a very different work. In the 7minutes 35 seconds of the film’s duration, wewitness the hesitation of a young woman at thehigh diving tower at the Ingierstrand Baths in Oslo.The diving tower itself is one of the last remainingexamples of functionalist architecture in Oslo,designed in 1934 by Ole Lind Schistad and EyvindMostute. As the woman wavers at the edge of theboard, deliberating the jump into the water below,we could read the situation as a metaphor for thehistoricity of individual action, set against thecollective consciousness of the public architectureand baths. Like much of Billing’s work, Where SheIs At postpones the delivery of what seemsimminent. Eventually and significantly, she jumps.

Matt Packer is Curator of Exhibitions and Projectsat the Lewis Glucksman Gallery, Cork. JohannaBilling was on view at the National SculptureFactory, 11-13 November 2011.