ARTEXT : La Biennale di Venezia
55 Esposizione Internazionale d'Arte
Giardini di Castello - Danimarca 

INTERCOURSES
Jesper Just

Jesper Just confronts the paradoxical nature intrinsic to Biennale commissions in the Giardini: the pavilion as physical representation of one country in another country. Using this as a point of departure, Intercourses examines themes of architectural pastiche and cultural dislocation by creating an immersive, multi-faceted environment. Made up of five channels, the film is set in a replica of Paris, France, in a suburb of Hangzhou, China. Unlike many replica cities, this one is fully functional, though in contrasting states of construction and decay. Just's treatment of the location challenges the viewer's preconceived notions of space and time, rendering obsolete the distinction between real or imagined memories, between factual or fictional connections to a place.

The film follows three men, interwoven within the scenes, but it is the city that is the main character. Just explains, I've worked in the past with the idea of architecture performing, with a building or structure as a main performer, a main protagonist. And here there was the possibility of working with a whole city. I was thinking about ways to make the city the protagonist or mediator between these characters, making them connect via the architecture. I wanted to explore how you could take something as superficial as this architecture and then turn it into something connecting humans.

The projections vary in size from one meter to 15 meters depending on the scale of the room they inhabit, underscoring the spatial element of Just's presentation. The exhibition begins before the visitor has entered the pavilion, with architectural interventions defined by Just that create a new geography, engaging the viewer on a visual but also a physical level. The architecture orchestrates the audience's relation to the work, choreographing the viewer's experience of the pavilion.

- Can you speak a bit more about the architectural elements of the pavilion?
- I wanted the experience of the work to start before you're even inside the pavilion, to make an installation that dissolves the work as a physical entity with a singular, physical presence. I wanted the pavilion itself to be a part of it.

In the film, they're still building the city, but it's already falling apart. That's why it looks so strange-like a ruin already. I liked the idea of a ruin in progress. So I am using bricks that mirror those in the film, filling in some of the neoclassical elements, creating walls or partial walls. There will be an exterior wall that creates a kind of promenade that leads you inside the pavilion. I wanted to let the installation orchestrate the audience's relation to the work to let it choreograph the audience's experience of the pavilion.

Once you're inside the pavilion, you will likely see two films at a time. The sound will bleed from all of them to create one soundscape and to kind of underline that it's one film [ made up of five channels]. So there's this expanded narrative. Five projections will be looping, each approximately ten minutes long. You'll never have the same experience because it's a loop, not finite.
By transporting yourself from one scene to the other you're almost editing yourself into the project. You might hear in one what you see in another. Hopefully it will be a visual and spatial experience.

Curatori : Lotte S. Lederballe Pedersen.
Artisti : Jesper Just

Web site : http://www.danishpavilion.org/