PEP (Process of Entanglement Procedure) (2019)

Synopsis

Jordan Strafer's PEP (Process Entanglement Procedure) was exhibited at SculptureCenter as part of In Practice: Total Disbelief (2020). Strafer’s PEP (Process Entanglement Procedure) is, among other things, a video about betrayal, the public nature of victimhood, and behavioral conditioning. Its narrative spreads across at least two related timelines. In the present, the video opens onto a witness testimony at a public hearing acted out by a plastic doll in glamorous closeups. Meanwhile, sequences shot to give a handheld, first-person perspective read as composed flashbacks of events described in the hearing. Notably, these sequences include the speaker’s compulsory attendance at a makeshift behavioral bootcamp in the woods at the behest of her two fathers, who later appear as villains in realistic rubber masks. (SculptureCenter)