Llano

Llano

Llano is set in the ghost town of Llano del Rio, founded in 1913 by the socialist Job Harriman – at its origin, the promise of an ideal community; in its present state, an empty, forgotten space. Llano del Rio’s architect, Alice Constance Austin, imagined a proto-feminist, gender-neutral design, including communal kitchens located in tunnels between the homes, intended to liberate women from domestic work. But the failure of irrigation and water supply finally caused the project, and the town, to be abandoned, nearly a century ago. Observing this desert and the vestiges of this utopian city in the sheeting rain, it becomes evident that the film seeks to explore this ruin, both as a concept and as a historical and archaeological object, full of inherent dualities. At the center of the ruins, a woman struggles to prevent the collapse. Like Sisyphus pushing his rock, she replaces the bricks and stones falling from the already disintegrated structure. According to Just, “Llano is a ruin of a place that is no longer, but also a place that really never happened. Here, we have a double meaning – a strange mix of utopia and dystopia, filled with failure as well as potent ideals.”
Screening Schedule

No physical screenings scheduled.

Direction: Jesper Just
Cinematography: Kasper Tuxen
Editing: Jesper Just, David Barker
Sound: Jakob Garfield
Actors: Hannah McIalwain
Production: Apart Projects
Production Design: Devin Corrigan
Format: HD
Color: Color
Production Country: USA
Production Year: 2012
Duration: 8'
Contact: Perrotin Gallery France

Jesper Just

Jesper Just is a Danish artist who lives and works in New York. From 1997 to 2003, he studied at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts. His work has been presented in several solo exhibitions, in venues such as the Galerie Perrotin in Tokyo, Japan (2021) the Galerie Perrotin in New York, USA (2020), the MAAT in Lisbon, Portugal (2019), and the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, France (2015), whereas he has work in museums including the Guggenheim Museum in New York, Tate Modern in London, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. In 2013, Jesper Just represented Denmark at the 55th Venice Biennale. 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. Interested in how public and private spaces define and shape human interactions, Just further plays with the notion of architecture as a performer, to echo and expand his characters’ enigmatic journeys.

Filmography

2002 No Man Is an Island (short)
2003 This Love is Silent (short)
2004 Bliss and Heaven (short)
2005 Something to Love (short)
2006 It Will All End In Tears (short)
2007 A Vicious Undertow (short)
2007 Some Draughty Window (short)
2008 A Voyage in Dwelling (short)
2010 Sirens of Chrome (short)
2011 This Nameless Spectacle (short)
2015 Servitudes Film #7 (short)
2017 Continuous Monuments (short)
2018 Circuits (Interpassivities) (short)
2023 Interfears (short)