Johanna Billing
Johanna Billing (born 1973) is a Swedish artist. Billing's video works share an interest in music, movement and rhythm, often merging the production modes of collective live events with a cinematic language. Her work has been featured in major group exhibitions such as Dokumenta 12, Istanbul Biennial (2005) and the 50 Venice Biennale. Life and work. Johanna Billing was born 1973 in Jönköping, Sweden. She lives and works in Stockholm, Sweden. Billing studied at Konstfack University of Arts, Crafts and Design in Stockholm, Sweden graduating in 1999. In her work, Johanna Billing deals with issues related to  learning and how time plays a key role in this process. Billing in part directs participants as well as activates a series of improvisations and contingencies to challenge the notion of performance. In turn, her videos orchestrate an engagement with social dynamics to test the interaction between individual and society, public and private, performance and spontaneity. Her work often addresses political climates and cultural specificities. Within a documentary premise she creates a fictive space to expose the mutual relation between actual and contrived events. Billing's videos often feature modified scores and music composed by the artist or in close  dialogue with participants, using sound as an essential device for collaboration and communication. Many of Billing's printed catalogues and booklets are made in collaboration with Åbäke. Recent works include: "In Purple" (2019), "Pulheim Jam Session" (2015) and "I'm Gonna Live Anyhow Until I die" (2012). Other significant works include: "I'm Lost Without Your Rhythm" (2009), "Another Album" (2006), "You Don't Love Me Yet" (2003) and "Magical World" (2005). Many of the film’s soundtracks exist as soundtrack records published by the german label Apparent Extent. Between 1998–2010 Billing ran the independent record label Make it  Happen. The interest in music is also expressed through the long term and ongoing touring project "You Don’t Love Me Yet" (2002-2021) in which over 300 artists and groups in different cities have interpreted the song with the same title, originally written by Roky Erickson 1984. Exhibitions. Billing has exhibited internationally. Selected solo exhibitions include: