danish pavilion at venice art biennale 2013

the danish pavilion by jesper just, venice art biennale 2013
image © designboom

at the venice art biennale 2013, the danish pavilion features a multi-channel video installation and architectural intervention by danish artist jesper just. upon arrival, visitors are greeted by a brick wall surrounding the exterior of the building, rather than the normally open columns of the pavilion, forcing all to enter through a single door to one side. inside, five film projections of different sizes grace various walls and rooms of the interior, their audio and visuals bleeding into each other to create new narrative experiences. the projections trace the interwoven stories of three men in a single city. the urban center depicted is in reality a suburb of hangzhou, china, that was constructed as a near-exact replica of paris, complete with eiffel tower.

jesper just explains, ‘I wanted to shoot this city as if it were the ‘real’ paris, using french actors, while leaving a bit of ambiguity there because of certain cultural stereotypes of the city that exist. it will be clear to anyone that proportion and scale are slightly off. I was interested in making a piece that is hard for one to put in a box and say, ‘this is where it is.”

the video installations and landscape of the pavilion are intertwined. the bricks used in the pavilion’s exterior wall– built directly into the existing neoclassical columns– reference materials and activities seen in the projected films. ‘I liked the idea of a ruin in progress,’ jesper just elaborates. ‘in the film, they’re still building the city but it’s already falling apart’. one corridor of the pavilion features a wall of plants, growing beneath magenta-hued artificial light.

installation view, ‘intercourses’, danish pavilion at the venice art biennale 2013
image © designboom

the five projections interweave the stories of three men in a chinese suburb constructed as a replica of paris
image © designboom

image © designboom

in the pavilion, the sound from five different projections bleed together, creating new narratives and soundscapes
image © designboom

as part of the intervention, jesper just built brick walls to block off the normally open columns of the danish pavilion
image © designboom

closer view of the brick walls constructed between the existing neoclassical columns at the 2013 danish pavilion
image © designboom

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