SERVITUDES

Jesper Just

PYLON is pleased to present the online viewing of 'Servitudes' by Jesper Just, starting on September 26, 2022.

Jesper Just uses the language of cinema to confront and divert the stereotypical Hollywood constructs of masculinity and femininity, as well as the biased representation of minorities and people with disabilities in mainstream culture. His short films and multi-projection video installations question the mechanisms of cinematic identification and break viewers’ expectations of narrative closure by unfolding surrealist, emotionally ambiguous, open-ended, and often silent situations or encounters. His use of lush, elaborated film scores plays a crucial part in creating an overall deceitful sense of narrative progression, and music rather than speech often serves as the sole means of communication between the protagonists of his unfathomable plots. Interested in how public and private spaces define and shape human interactions, Just further plays with the notion of architecture as performer, to echo and expand his characters’ enigmatic journeys.

The online presentation is kindly supported by Kulturstiftung des Freistaates Sachsen.

Gefördert durch die Kulturstiftung des Freistaates Sachsen. Diese Maßnahme wird mitfinanziert durch Steuermittel auf der Grundlage des vom Sächsischen Landtag beschlossenen Haushaltes.

Servitudes

Servitudes explores the tension between femininity and autonomy in our capitalist society. A young girl (Dree Hemingway) sits alone in an office eating corn. Her hands are secured by Continuous Passive Motion (CPM) devices which both aid and hinder her ability to eat. As a symbolic nod to the disparity between identity and commodity, the individual and social constructs, the woman in the film’s interaction with the audience waivered between flirtation and apathy.

“Servitudes is not an individual but a construct, the embodiment of a social mechanism. She cannot criticize a system whose existence inherently begets her existence. This tension is expressed in her actions--as she eats the corn, her hands are restrained. Even the corn itself relates back to the political system--a world of GMOS and capital gain. She too is modified, manipulated, a pawn in a power play that is both hidden and transparent.” - Jesper Just

First premiered at Palais de Tokyo in 2015, Servitudes has also been shown at the screens on Times Square in New York and is part of the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

Courtesy Perrotin and Anna Lena Films