Johanna Billing
Project for a revolution, 2000
Production shots
Cinematography by Johan Phillips & Henry Moore Selder
courtesy the artist and Hollybush Gardens, London
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Johanna Billing
Missing Out, 2001
Video still
Cinematography by Manne Lindwall
courtesy the artist and Hollybush Gardens, London
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Johanna Billing
(b 1973, Sweden)

Project for a Revolution (2000) and Missing Out (2001) each show a group of young people invited by Billing to participate in staged activities choreographed by the artist. Ambiguous and elusive, Billing's films are made with an acute awareness of the changing society in which these actions take place. The gathering of young people apparently waiting passively for something to happen in Project for a Revolution was inspired by a fervent meeting of student activists in Michelangelo Antonioni’s film Zabriskie Point (1969), while the group activity depicted in Missing Out draws on the artist’s memories of taking part in breathing exercises at school in the 1970s. Both films are intended to be shown on a loop, and are projected in the gallery in such a way as to implicate the viewer in the more or less open activities depicted on screen.