Building Trees (The Shooting Goes On) (2022)

• 71%
• 2022
• Toby Kaufman-Buhler

A family tree is usually a rigid form, documenting relationships and family structures through time. This work uses forms playing on my family tree, loosening that structure to bring in more distantly (and tangentially) related elements and to follow lines from one point of origin down through its connections and repetitions, tracing cultural and historical "family resemblances." A machine gun invention by a member of my family is part of this tree, as are its descendants, and many relationships grow from it. Beginning in one place, a sound rings through time together with corresponding image-objects, and the relations are gathered around them, showing their conflicts, contradictions and alliances.