battlefield #144
(2020)

Jérôme Leubas artwork presents a ‚corn’ cob made of fake teeth that is shown from different perspectives. This is set into vibrations and fast rotations, so that it is not fully visible at first. The object is filmed from various angles against a black background, with the camera's focus dynamically oscillating between sharpness and blur. As the video progresses, the cob zooms in closer and closer so that towards the end you can see the individual fake teeth, but no longer have the whole cob in view. At the end there is just a black screen.

This work was produced by the artist especially for the food cycle of videocity.bs. It refers to a previous work, “battlefield #62”, from 2010, which also features a corn (20 cm). The image is a documentation of the corn's installation in gallery space. Here the artist has taken up the theme of nutrition and food in a very direct and existential way and put it into relation. “This video is really made for a big screen in the public space (importance of the context), playing with visual codes of advertising (re-enforcing the ambiguity of what we are looking at...ads? something else?). And of course without sound at all.“ (Jérôme Leuba to Leoni Reiber, email, 16.04.2020)

Leuba concentrates on seemingly ordinary, seemingly everyday pictures, which he places in a new context. In this context, he clarifies the power structures that lie behind such constructions of images. His work refers to the seemingly obvious and reveals hidden references.

Corn originally comes from Mexico and is distributed all over the world. The grain is a staple food for many populations and cultures, as in Africa and Latin America. Moreover, according to the World Grain Index, corn is the most harvested cereal and the most traded cereal after wheat. In Europe, teeth or hard corn mixes (type of corn) are the most common. Jérôme Leuba could refer to these with his filmed or photographed teeth object, which he designed himself. He clarifies that we need our teeth in order to eat food.

For many people, corn is a staple food without they cannot survive because they have limited access to food. If hardly any other protein sources are available, feeding on corn leads to deficiency symptoms, as it has a low biological value. Furthermore, a large proportion of corn is cultivated as a monoculture and harms biodiversity. This can cause the soil to lose nutrients and the fields to be extended to other natural areas, thus deforesting valuable forests. The video “battlefield #144” hence also points out the negative aspects of using corn.

Jérôme Leuba's oeuvre concentrates on his “battlefield”-works. This is a concept he has developed over the years. It shows conflicts as if they were carried out on battlefields, as well as the theories and the struggle for them. In “battlefield #144” this could be the fight for food and survival. The artist views everyday life as a conflict zone. For this reason, his “battlefield”-works could be seen as recurring reactions to everyday and social conflicts.

Leoni Reiber, translated by Leoni Reiber