Art

It would take a tough-hided cynic to view certain video works by Johanna Billing without cracking at least one goofy smile. Her new commission, ‘I’m Lost Without Your Rhythm’, involves teenage Romanians performing a ramshackle contemporary dance to a live, rough-edged rendition of the titular song. An older piece, ‘Magical World’, has a choir of little Croatian kids singing and toe-tapping their way through a pop number with lyrics about transformation. Sugared melancholy is clearly a key ingredient for Billing but that doesn’t do justice to the buoyancy of her approach.

The settings are neglected modernist buildings, the architecture of choice for the fallen Eastern European regimes from which these youngsters are emerging. Cracks in concrete and tired old curtains evoke the failures of communism. Yet the group performances, slightly out of step but just about held together by people working together, speak of hopeful new beginnings. With ‘I’m Lost…’ this life cycle is euphorically conveyed as Billing’s footage cuts between dancers, workmen and musicians, even the flow of street traffic, all capturing the fluctuating energy of a day in the dance school and a country regenerating.

Billing likes pop covers and again it’s startling how much she is able to express through this ubiquitous phenomenon. Songs warbled by guileless voices (still so distant from the Western TV polish of ‘Pop Idol’) become a charged comment on patterns of history, repetition and variation. Participation is another theme, realised in films where people move house, play in bands or go sailing, as in the rapturously romantic ‘This Is How We Walk On the Moon’. Here a small band of fledgling sailors navigate an immense sea and skyscape, scored by the industrial miracle of a vast bridge. What overwhelms is the achievement of collective endeavour, however fleeting.