Jose presents ... Excerpts from the video work of artist Jubal Brown

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Total War

Excerpt #3




Excerpt #9





Reviews and reactions:

In his latest video work, Toronto artist Jubal Brown shows there is nothing more shocking—or more banal—than war and its prevalence in our culture.

Using violent imagery culled from from YouTube, mainstream movies, television and other sources, Brown confronts the viewer with a rapid-fire mashed-up barrage of the worst that our so-called civilization has to offer. From homemade night-scope videos of “recreational” gunplay to news footage of bombings in Iraq, it’s all here—and it’s all disturbing. An aggressive electronic soundtrack underlines the effect, while related print materials argue that the work speaks to Baudrillard’s theories on “violence done to the image” through technological manipulation.

The difficulty that lingers, as in many Brown works, is that the aggressiveness of the artist’s means can overshadow the work’s theoretical and moral points. Or, from another angle, Brown’s imitation of violence can be a bit too perfect, suggesting a glorification rather than a critique.

In the end, what continues to make Brown notable, for good or for ill, is his willingness to inhabit and explore these thorny, bloodied issues and images—when most of us would rather, quite frankly, just change the channel.

–Canadian Art, Oct 16th 2008.

There may be shooting scenes from Rambo flicks and clips from Afghanistan plucked from the evening news, but the premiere of Toronto-based video artist Jubal Brown's 52-minute Total War (2008) is hardly about bullets or bravado. This found-footage feature--which lifts clips from YouTube--weaves together flashy action films, canned-laughter TV shows, and teens in their suburban bedrooms lip-syncing to their webcams. Naturally, the clips are flanked by commercial breaks for Toyota and Sears.

The shock-jock Brown is probably best known for vomiting colored gelatin on Raoul Dufy and Mondrian paintings in museums back in 1996. Though he was never formally charged, more recently he has opted for spastic, almost hypnotic short video collages (like his Party Tape series from 2007). But in Total War (through October 18, 2008) he goes the long-winded route for his first breakout work--a meandering pace that is far more tortoise than hare. It's not really about shock-and-awe, gut-wrenching war, but the everyday sludge of the mundane. While some showy bits do pop like firecrackers, the film mostly has a stream-of-consciousness style that calls to mind James Joyce.
The tension thickens between war clips and stuff about narcissistic "tweens." Blurred together, it's like seeing prom kids flying past in a limo during silence on Memorial Day.

–artUS, spring, 2009



Other Works

I die you die




Anti feelings




The Star Wars




Brain scan


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