Swedish video artist Johanna Billing’s films address questions of social engagement such as how we interact with one another, act seemingly alone with our thoughts, and as an individual within a group dynamic. In her filmed narratives of what we might call “real fictions,” Billing invites people to be a part of a situation that would not be part of their ordinary life, engaging them in often prosaic and even mundane activities in which they might not normally engage. Through these contrived situations Billing encourages the participants to collaborate with their new surroundings and fellow actors. Much of Billing’s work centers on the dynamics of group conduct, and the relationship of the individual to the group, often noting that individual freedoms and actions are directed by physical surroundings. Billing’s films also expose the complicated relationship of private and public, inside and exterior. In the two exhibition films, Magic & Loss and Where she is at, public and private spheres are probed and intermingled by the camera’s intervention. Through her filmed interactions, Billing often addresses political climates and cultural specificities, but more importantly she adapts her filmmaking as a fictive space to examine the borderlessness of actual and contrived events and how that filmed compression illuminates their overlap.

In Where she is at, 2001, a young woman stands on a diving tower above a lake. The camera and the other bathers watch her as she thinks about jumping off the platform. She stands at the edge of the platform, walks back and forth across the platform, and she looks around. There is nothing frenzied or anxiety producing in her mannerisms, yet the viewer is drawn into her subtle drama over whether to jump or not. Like most of Billing’s work, the filmed event is quiet and low energied, turning the protagonist inward, along with the audience toward her own thoughts.

Born 1973 in Jonkoping, Sweden, Johanna Billing lives and works in Stockholm. She has had exhibitions at Kavi Gupta Gallery, Chicago, IL and at galleries in London, Norway, and Sweden. Her videos have been screened in places as diverse as Bangkok, Munich, Geneva, Ghent, and many other cities.