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The collective as an option by Äsa Nacking An interview with Johanna Billing for Rooseum Provisorim 2001 Åsa Nacking: At Rooseum's forthcoming exhibition, We -intentional communities, with the group in relation to the individual as its dominant theme, you will be showing your film Project for a Revolution from 2000. But you are also working on a new work. Could you, by way of introduction, say something briefly about both works and how you see them fitting into the theme of the exhibition? Johanna Billing: In a sense, the new work will be a continuation of my latest film Project for a Revolution. That film is about not knowing how to set about being a revolutionary today. Should one be looking for a new approach or pursue the tried and tested methods of the past? My new work, which is also a film, is about an individualism that's been taken too far, and the sense of something being lost in the process. Both works treat the idea of the collective as a positive option in the face of the current tide of individualism. ÅN: In the film Project for a Revolution we are shown a group of young people sitting in a room and waiting for something or other and thereıs a quite distinct sense of anticipation and earnestness. I understand that the film's set-up is taken from Antonioni's film Zabriskie Point from 1970. JB: The idea came from the film's opening scene which shows a student meeting. I was born in 1973 and so cannot know what things were like then, but it's in my mind as a picture of what a meeting of actively involved young people might have looked like. When I saw that film last summer it had, in fact, a certain topicality, in Stockholm anyway, due to the Reclaim the City movement, for there was a very strong sense that the younger generation wanted to do something. Reclaim the City attracted a lot of sympathizers but at the same time the only thing that came out of it all was that they wanted to "demonstrate" and it was unclear what they were for or against. It was this, that it's easy to adopt a form while substance gets left behind, that I wanted to capture in my work. I haven't attempted a direct remake of Antiononi's film but used it as a contemporary inspiration, rather. ÄN: How do you see the late sixties and the seventies and their significance for young people today? What remains of the mood or the popular impetus of that time, even if it's only found in individuals? JB: My generation is continually being accused of passivity and yet I know that somewhere there is a real readiness to work for things that are important. In fact people do a lot even though it can be hard to see it because of preconceived ideas about how such things should look. I wasnıt part of the Reclaim the City protest, which was partly due to the fact that they were younger and coming from somewhere else, but I do regard it as positive that something like that could happen. It's often the case that one mixes with a small group of like-minded people and when there is general agreement you rarely get to discuss larger issues and so it can be difficult to move beyond where one currently stands. The very fact that they were able to assemble a large group was in itself a positive thing. It was more their preconceived idea of the shape protest should take that I have difficulty with. Why must it be a demonstration when there are so many other ways of getting a message across? And it would have not been difficult to agree on a definite focus for the protest when the opportunity was there. Why not the fact that SL costs too much when everyone agrees that it does? It was almost as though they wanted commotion in the streets before the police arrived on the scene, which they wanted to happen - only then would it be the real thing. ÅN: You seem to be looking for some sort of selectiveness and structure in what young people seek to communicate. JB: It was our parents' generation who brought the revolution. They took care of all that for us and we were told that now everything had been done and it wasnıt something we needed to be bothered with. We were to pursue a career and invest in our own lives. We felt that it was our duty, almost something we owed them. It was as though it had all come to a halt at some point. I think that it's easy, today, to be fascinated by pictures of demonstrations and protests from that time. I am at any rate. You can get the feeling that it has a meaning for you. To talk about more or less genuine commitment doesn't get you very far but what we lack today compared to that time is the kind of hope that shines out of the people in the pictures taken then. They believe in something. Today lots of young people are working really hard, wholly idealistically, even though I can be difficult to pin down what their efforts amount to in a broader perspective. There are a lot of them who do or want to do something, although what interests me more is that one can be trapped. Our opportunities to realize ourselves often turn into such a high hurdle that it's hard to overcome it and there's scarcely the time to give a thought to anything other than the opportunity one's been given. ÅN: That it can lead to a sense of inadequacy. That the pressure just becomes too much. These thoughts surface again in the new work you're in the process of producing. Could you say a bit more about the shape it's going to take? JB: If, as with the new individualism, you have the opportunity to do what you want, itıs easy to think that you do what is best for yourself. My new work is about physical reactions, how bodily functions can tell us when something is wrong. Basic functions breaking down. An image attached itself to my retina and I couldnıt understand where it had come from. Rather annoyingly, it looked like a fashion picture, taken from above, of people lying spread out across a floor. I then realized that the image represented an early personal recollection from nursery school where I and my class-mates were lying on the floor doing breathing exercises. The curious thing is that I have hardly any memories from that time but the reason for my remembering this is that I was praised by my teacher for my breathing technique. She said: "Look at Johanna! Thatıs how to do it. Very good!" That such a simple and basic thing like breathing should be linked to performance was of interest to me in relation to my new work. The preoccupation with performance and the demandingness of our everyday lives can lead to our not even being able to manage the most basic and simple things. That one should have to work at something like breathing, which should be the most natural and automatic of functions, figures in the work as absurd. The reference to fashion, something that suggests stylization, is to bring out the contrast between inner and outer. The uncontrolled is juxtaposed with the tightly controlled and itıs a struggle to maintain a status quo - to manage that the individual needs the group. ÅN: In Project for a Revolution there's a split between the atmosphere in the room which, on the surface, suggests dynamism and a feeling that something ought to be happening, but there's something there that's not quite right. Itıs precisely here -in this dysfunction - that thereıs a parallel between the two projects. Your film for the annual graduate exhibition at art school (Konstfack), a dance film where the students graduating were invited to take part, was also about the idea of the collective. JB: When you're an artist a lot turns on the ego and it is all very much about self-realization. Although it is something that is important for everyone sometimes it works out and sometimes you wonder what youıre doing. One of the things my film is about is my own determination to succeed. The striving to succeed overshadows everything today, even for those who have opted to be a cog in a big wheel. No one can get away from it, everyone has to pursue a career of some sort or achieve personal happiness. What I found amazing during my time at art school - and I graduated in 1999 - was that everyone was only interested in finding a gallery straight away and becoming part of the establishment. There was no suggestion of 'To Hell!', no sense of 'Now-we'll-let-them-have-it'. If instead we turn to the music scene and the same age group we find almost the opposite is the case. Even getting reviewed in the papers is sometimes an embarrassment. If you've given a successful performance to a hundred people you're satisfied. It's not about getting particular individuals or record company bosses to come to hear you. If you want to you can release your own music under your own label, you just cut the CD at home. Å: One difference between the art and the music scene is that musicians are more independent of the system when it comes to reaching the public. The traditional image of the artist, which still has some life in it today, is of a somewhat isolated individual who needs an institutionalized context to show his or her work. Another thing is that executants often perform in ensembles which means mutual affirmation. The differences lie in the structure. JB: All the same it's odd that people belong to the same age group, frequent the same venues, attend the same cultural events and yet that there should be such a difference between the music and art worlds. It's often said that the music world is corrupt and that as an artist you are free and untrammelled, but at the same time there's a tremendous amount happening in music today. This applies not least to immigrant musicians, who have settled in the outskirts of the city, and who really have succeeded in making an impact with their music. They communicate - they have something to say, and an audience. You don't find that kind of commitment in the art world. ÄN: What you did with Make it Happen was to inject something of the music scene mentality into the art world. JB: When Make it Happen started almost three years ago it functioned as a record company whose focus was non-established musicians and artists who work with music. Since we chose primarily to operate within the music world it hasn't, in itself, been an art project. But the work of a record company bears a lot of resemblance to how I work with art, and is very different from that of the commercial music industry. It enables the structures governing the normal functioning of a record company to be clearly visible. It's not that we initiated a new mode of working for art institutions but it was a case, rather, of the music front allowing us to offer artists who work with performance art and music the opportunity to reach an audience in contexts not so thoroughly institutionalized as that of the art world. We offered them a platform for their activities that lies somewhere between those two scenes and thus closer to their own working methods. And it's precisely that - actively seeking out one's audience and being there where things are happening that I'd like to see more of in the art world. <<<