When asked to describe his work, Jacob Brundrett simply says, “Porn!”
Ben Taylor (he/him) // Crew Writer
Rachel Lu (she/her) // Illustrator
When asked to describe his work in his own words, Jacob Brundrett simply said, “Porn” half jokingly, but half serious. Born and raised in Port Coquitlam, British Columbia, Brundrett is a video artist primarily experimenting with a blend of analog and digital technology; DV cameras, CRT TVs and OBS. As a graduate of the Motion Picture Arts diploma program here at Capilano University and a member of the local Cineworks Independent Filmmakers Society, Brundrett is an established filmmaker in the Vancouver experimental scene.
Through processes such as feedback loops and data moshing, Brundrett’s work takes on an ethereal quality, but perhaps the most fascinating aspect of his films are the manner in which he uses forgotten videos from the depths of the web. And true to his description, lots of his films are indeed made up of clips from pornographic films.
These old videos are synthesized with lush colours and harsh, digital distortion, paired with soundtracks often composed of pure noise or chopped unintelligible vocals. The result is esoteric video art that is deeply imaginative and impactful, often exploring themes of love, identity and sexuality. Brundrett’s practice reveals myriads about the nature of the internet, and an artist’s relationship with their source material, demonstrating that art can be created from many sources, including digital trash.
At first, the decision to use the internet’s trash for his own artistic intent was a purely functional choice. Brundrett simply did not have the resources to capture everything he wanted to put into his films. He began to seek out pre-existing material, and where better to find and easily repurpose old footage than the internet? Brundrett doesn’t have a specific process for how he selects his content; he simply knows it when he sees it. “I’ll see something in a video on the internet archive, and it’ll incite an emotion it wasn’t intended to incite,” he says. At this point in the process, he understands he can use it in another context.
Oftentimes, the videos he pulls from are of a religious or pornographic nature, as he intuitively selects images with the most powerful emotional resonance for him. The nature of pornographic content reveals an intense intimacy, something that Brundrett draws out without the intent of being erotic. From this source material, he extrapolates meaning by stripping it down to abstract forms: outlines and silhouettes reveal its simplicity. Rather than creating something entirely new, Brundrett is enhancing the emotion that the original media wasn’t intending to create, and through this process urging introspection within the viewer on the essence of what they are being shown.
The film MANUAL (2023) serves as an example of pornographic content being reshaped by Brundrett’s lens. In a nod to one of Brundrett’s inspirations—Derek Jarman—the film is monochromatic, entirely made up of the colour blue. Over the course of its two-minute runtime, digital and analog feedback coalesce with human figures in states of pleasure; lips kiss, a woman is seen sucking on a cigarette and a soundtrack of reverberated moans lays atop of otherworldly chords. Out of the amalgamation, bodies come together to kiss once more, as the film concludes with everything returning to a state of simple blue.
Despite most of the source videos used in this film being pornographic in nature, Brundrett’s messaging goes beyond the goal of eroticism or shock value. In MANUAL, he exposes the essence of these videos, the raw, unadulterated feeling associated with intimacy and sex. The strings of distortion develop an association with these feelings when viewed in this context, and the film, although abstract, becomes cohesive.
Brundrett’s ability to reshape the purpose of these videos is something truly unique, and his capability for finding the essence in videos that have been lost to time is what makes his films powerful experiences. This film, and Jacob Brundrett’s work, makes it hard to look at untouched videos in the internet archive as trash, but instead as things that are simply untapped, waiting to have their meaning discovered by someone like Brundrett.
When asked if he considered the videos he worked with off the internet archive to be trash, Brundrett replied, “I think it’s valuable to have information exist, even if it isn’t very useful. I don’t think it’s trash.” Though he may be right that a vast majority will continue to be buried, Jacob’s films have shown that even old ‘trashy’ porn can be repurposed. With the increasing accessibility of filming devices, the amount of history and information that we can record has expanded exponentially, and the internet simply became the vessel to hold all of this information.
Brundrett’s work proves that this should not be taken for granted, the fact that we can easily and freely access this amount of recorded history is a blessing. What’s valuable and what’s trash on the internet is not clearly defined, and—in Brundrett’s case—the fact that there is so much digital trash is what makes it valuable. The opportunity to experiment with a wide variety of source material has been indelible to where Brundrett is today, and without the internet’s catalog, his films would have taken a completely different route.
In this sense, trash does not truly exist on the internet. Everything is information that serves a purpose, even if it is not initially apparent. For instance, learning algorithms use data like what’s stored on internet archives to train artificial intelligence. Whether perceived as a positive or negative thing, it certainly can’t be said that this content has no use. Brundrett takes this same approach when it comes to finding material for his films, uncovering a meaning in it rather than disregarding it.
As the age of the internet continues to provide us with mass produced content, being accelerated by tools like generative AI which pump out their own slop to add to the chaos, it becomes increasingly important to look critically at what it is that we consume. This theme is prevalent in Brundrett’s work, as his use of pre-existing material makes one consider their relationship to what it is that they are watching. Are Brundrett’s films merely artistically altered porn, or do they have a deeper intent and purpose? The answer is something the viewer must decide for themselves while watching, but—as is often the case with experimental media—the very process of discovering how one feels while watching something makes Brundrett’s work so appealing and interesting.
Brundrett’s films are not made up of trash. They consist of carefully selected moments that reveal the soul of forgotten videos, lost to the internet. He won’t run out of material anytime soon either. This method of creating will forever remain relevant as long as we continue to have access to the internet. There are few artists working in the Vancouver experimental film scene with the same level of technological proficiency and conceptual ingenuity as Brundrett, and it will only continue to evolve over the coming years. His in-person screenings are particularly valuable, as they grant viewers the opportunity to hear insights on his process. His films can be found on the YouTube channels, c0nvoluted04 and FOUR, as well as on his Instagram @kiljacov. One can also find his films screening occasionally at Cineworks studio in the Cinematheque.