Johanna Billing, This is How We Walk on The Moon: Kavi Gupta | 835 W. Washington Blvd. Chicago, IL, 60607
Kavi Gupta is pleased to present Johanna Billing’s most recent film This is How We Walk on the Moon, 2007, which debuted this past summer at documenta 12. Billing is well known for her films that engage a group of people in a collective experience. Throughout these constructed realities, Billing examines issues of group dynamicism as well as detachment. A feeling of melancholy runs through all of her work and often a narrative emerges though subtle and without dialogue.
This is How We Walk on the Moon was made in collaboration with the Collective Gallery in Edinburgh, Scotland. Intrigued by the fact that the population in this town is somewhat detached from the ocean despite its geographical location, Billing invited a group of local musicians to go sailing for the first time. As they set sail into the unknown, a string version of Arthur Russell’s song This is how we walk on the moon begins to underscore the film while throughout the adventure hand written notes poetically punctuate the journey’s developments. The group starts out weary, cautious, and uncertain about what to do as they rely upon the leadership and guidance of the ship’s captain. They soon start to move about the ship as if in a dance, understanding and taking ownership of their individual roles. Sailing through treacherous weather conditions at times, the film ends with the crew returning back to the dock more comfortable and connected to the landscape that surrounds them.
Johanna Billing (b. 1973, Jönköping) lives and works in Stockholm. Billing recently exhibited two concurrent solo exhibitions at Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Basel and the Dundee Contemporary Art Centre. A 255 page book was recently produced on the occasion of her solo exhibitions titled Look Behind Us a Blue Sky. Other recent solo exhibitions include projects at Collective Gallery, Edinburgh and Fundacio La Caixa in Barcelona. Billing will also be featuring two of her films in Here We Dance at the Tate Modern, London opening March 14 – May 26.
