Johanna Billing: Each Moment Presents What Happens

11 Oct 2023-14 Jan 2024

Overview

Each Moment Presents What Happens (2022) is a film realised over several years by artist Johanna Billing (b.1973, Sweden) in collaboration with staff and students from several Bristol schools, as well as other invited guests. The work centres upon a reinterpretation of the American composer and music theorist John Cage’s 1952 performance piece Untitled Event (Theater Piece No. 1).

Untitled Event was uniquely staged at Black Mountain College, the renowned US experimental liberal arts school (1933–1957). The original performance featured artists from different disciplines, such as dancer Merce Cunningham and visual artist Robert Rauschenberg, each simultaneously improvising solos. It is widely regarded as the first artistic ‘happening’ and, despite being undocumented, inspired the emergence of new collective and multi-media art forms.

Given the impossibility of recreating Cage’s Untitled Event, the students in Bristol instead imagined what could have happened. Billing’s film shows them experimenting with various forms, including spoken word, dance, drawing and DJing, against the backdrop of daily school life. As in Cage’s original work, all experiences – on and off ‘stage’ – are equally valid.

By encouraging learning through process, chance and failure, the project raises important questions about artistic freedom, experimentation and imagination at a time when these seem under increasing pressure and scrutiny.

Commissioned by Bristol Grammar School to commemorate the opening of the 1532 Performing Arts Centre. Produced by Josephine Lanyon in association with Bristol City Council. Supported by the University of the West of England.