Venice Biennale: Jesper Just
Jesper Just’s installation at the Venice Biennale, titled ‘Intercourses’, explores Paris…in China.
The Venice Biennale is a chance for countries to represent their nation within their Pavilion. Fascinated by this concept, Just aimed to explore the irony of representing one country within another. The result, portrayed within the Danish pavilion, is a dimly lit environment that utilises a multi-channel film to immerse viewers within a city that they are prompted to believe is Paris, France. As the film unfolds it becomes apparent that these images are not from the Paris we know.
What Just has captured is in reality a replica of Paris recreated in a suburb of Hangzhou, China. The Chinese Paris is a fully functioning city, however it exists without the shine of the European Paris and is in varying states of decay. He shifts the viewers’ understanding of the city and creates a distorted perception between factual or fictional connections to a place.
“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 wanted to explore how you could take something as superficial as this architecture and then turn it into something connecting humans,” he says.
‘Intercourses’ is on display at the Danish Pavillion until Sunday 24 November 2013 as part of the Venice Biennale.
This post forms part of fluoro’s coverage of the 55th Venice Biennale.
