Screening of the film Pulheim Jam Session by Johanna Billing, at Triennale di Milano

Johanna Billing combines performative modes, documentary language and a meticulous editing process to make videos that weave music, movement  and rhythm. Her looped video-installations give the impression of swinging between real life and film fiction, dwell on routines, rehearsals and rituals, showing people in specific situations, where changes are taking place, are about to take place or could take place.

Pulheim Jam Session is a video work that was born from an extensive participatory process and staged two different situations: a traffic jam and a musical jam session.

The film was the result of involving  60 cars carrying over a hundred people in a traffic jam  constructed by the artist in a region of the Cologne district, Pulheim. The traffic jam turns into a break, a hiatus, a stop in time.  Parallel to the car jam, in a nearby barn, the Swedish musician Edda Magnason is improvising on a grand piano, just as in 1975 Keith Jarrett had improvised live at the Cologne Opera House the solo known as “the Köln Concert”. Billing works on such connections to draw a portrait of the place.

The project was produced by the Cultural Department of the City of Pulheim as part of the project series Stadtbild. Intervention, with the support of nctm e l’arte.