Johanna Billing TEXTS Where she is at

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Where she is at, Oslo Kunsthall August 30 - October 7, 2001

Oslo Kunsthall is proud to announce the opening of a new exhibition with the Swedish artist Johanna Billing (b.1973 in Jönköping, living in Stockholm). Billing is showing her new video work "Where she is at" in Oslo Kunsthall from August 30 to October 7.

The exhibition is a collaboration between Oslo Kunsthall and Moderna Museet Projekt where the museum invites artists to produce a new body of work for other environments and situations than Moderna Museet i Stockholm. For this exhibition they are collaborating with Oslo Kunsthall.

Johanna Billing´s video "Where she is at" was shot at Ingierstrand this
summer. Ingierstrand Bath was designed by Ole Lind Schistad and Eyvind Mostue in 1934, and is one of the few remaining pieces of functionalist architecture in Oslo. The sea bath consists of a restaurant and dance-floor in addition to splendid swimming possibilities and a tower for diving. A young woman climbs up on the tower, but instead of jumping she doubtfully stands at the edge. The video shows a condition of insecurity in a person´s meeting with nature. She also faces physical challenges and her own apprehensiveness. What kind of thoughts run through her head when she is standing in front of overwhelming freedom?

In a sharp contrast to the ideals of the thirties about health and well-
being, Ingierstrand bath is now in a depressing condition. Even if the
citizens of Oslo demand the government to take responsibility, the buildings slowly decay. Johanna Billing will debate further this actual situation about Ingierstrand in the Norwegian paper Morgenbladet´s series called Rotation - an artproject in media space.

Questioning the spirit of the time has also been obvious in other projects
by Billing. In "Project for a revolution" (2000), which was inspired of
Michelangelo Antonio¹s classic film, Zabriskie Point (1973), she shows a
group of young students of today that quietly and passively joins up
together into something that reminds of a mass-meeting at a university. The video deals with the individual´s relationship to the society and how social engagement appears among young people of today. Questions around protest and possibilities for revolt in relationship to popular culture stands in center of many of Billing´s works.

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