Subvertising the Military Industrial Media Complex

Détournement (literally, diversion or hijacking), is the act of turning the expressions, both visual and literary, of the capitalist system and its mediatized military culture against itself. In Glen Rubsamen’s War Series this détournement is directed against an increasingly intrusive and instrumentalizing technocratic culture whose function is the manufacture of consent through the manipulation of symbols. In his works Rubsamen uses the visual language and rhetoric of military recruitment culture to critique that paradigm, encouraging idiosyncratic, unintended interpretations. Rubsamen’s paintings warn us to beware of an invasive military media by exposing the subtle methods of its domination. His art raises our guard as we slide toward a world where young consumers will identify more with the media products they devour than with any notion of personal morality or socio-political ethics.