In her new video piece, Magical World, Swedish artist Johanna Billing simultaneously orchestrates and documents the earnest efforts of a young after-school group in Croatia to learn a song by American psychedelic-soul rockers the Rotary Connection. While her young charges struggle with the foreign language and message of the song Magical World, Billing stresses the camera's observational nature through cuts from rehearsals to atmospheric views of the local landscape, where people mingle in courtyards, and construction sites emerge through window blinds. Symbolizing the future of a country recovering from conflict and moving toward EU membership, the somber and sincere performers give new meaning to hopeful lyrics.

-CK

Magical World is also on view at Kavi Gupta Gallery in Chicago through April 22 and at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center in New York through May 8.