Johanna Billing

"I'm Gonna Live Anyhow Until I Die" is the 4th soundtrack from Stockholm-based visual artist Johanna Billing. The underlying 15-minute film installation is playing in Ostia, Rome, and formulates the utopia of free access to informal learning environments.

A group of young children is leaving the parental dinner party in a restaurant and starts to explore Ostia: ancient ruins, beaches, streets, green backyards and parks. The runaways gain access to an elementary school and discover a storage space filled with outdated teaching aids. The group completes its voluntary school visit by painting Rorschach images on the empty school corridor, then head back to their parents – here the film loop starts – still dining at the restaurant.

The film was shot in neighborhoods in Ostia, where Pier Paolo Pasolini lived until his death in 1975. Johanna Billing's supervised music replays two folk themes from "Fetus", the infamous 1971 musical collage by the young composer Franco Battiato. 

Furthermore, Johanna Billings' record presents alternative versions of the Battiato themes and two acoustic film outtakes on the B-side: a lively conversation between the kids while playing Rorschach, and a discussion between Swedish studio musicians and Johanna during the making of the movie soundtrack back in Stockholm.

The record is presented by Apparent Extent, Cologne, Germany in collaboration with Laveronica Arte Contemporanea of Modica, Sicily, and the book collective Dent-de-Leone, London, UK.

The record comes with extended interviews, text, and images from Johanna Billing, and by curators Cecilia Canziani and Lorenzo Bruni.