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02/04 – 21/05
Johanna Billing
Each Moment Presents What Happens
invited by Hollybush Gardens, London
Opening in the presence of the artist: 02/04, 3–7 pm
For her solo exhibition at Jan Mot, Johanna Billing presents Each Moment Presents What Happens (2021), a collaborative project that reimagines Untitled Event (Theatre piece number 1, 1952) by John Cage – the first known happening or multimedia art work held in Black Mountain College, USA. The film records students mostly from Bristol Grammar School, UK engaging in an experimental, improvisational and multidisciplinary process open to failure, exchange, and imagination.
In lieu of photographic or video documentation, the original happening lives on today through imprecise memories, audience testimonies and recollections. These contradictory memories, gaps in historical revision and the anonymity of Cage’s content serve as a proposal from which the students create and experiment across disciplines. The project encourages a practical and poetic approach to learning, which challenges the values of failure and success, process and outcome. Collectively, the students were invited to imagine what could have taken place around, before, during and after this event through dance, music, theatre, poetry, painting, philosophy, photography, dj-ing and film production. The project thus invites a means of thinking the past through the personal, coincidental and relational.
Billing’s work is proposed by Hollybush Gardens, our colleagues and guests at the gallery. This invitation follows our previous presentation of Sven Augustijnen’s Summer Thoughts at Hollybush Gardens in [removed];
Each Moment Presents What Happens (2021) is 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.
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