Uncomfortable Gaze: Profile of Jesper Just
By Ysabelle Cheung
Portrait of
In Jesper Just’s latest video, viewers linger on an image of a bollard fence that runs along the border between the United States and Mexico. As the camera pans out, we see even, mossy pastures on either side; as it closes in, we see individual, rusted posts, punctuated by slices of grass. The camera fixates for a long time on these scenes, past the point of comfort. But then the meandering shots are suddenly interrupted: a dirty blond female, wearing a gray hooded zip-up jumper and a candy pink tutu walks along the fence, knocking the structures with a stick. With these decisive whacks, the hollow bollards—which the audience might have initially only seen as a divisive wall—are rewritten as instruments, keys on a changeable scale in which pockets of stirring wind, paired with the protagonist’s irregular drummings, can elicit varying pitches.
