Jubal Brown: Shock and Blah

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.