Toby Kaufmann-Buhler

Lives and works in Lafayette, IN, USA

Artist statement

In my current practice, my work explores history, memory, identity and sensory perception in relation to my family and myself, within individual lives and across broad sweeps of history and culture. This work is in video and sound media, along with film, installation, performance and interactive work. Many members of my family from different branches are published writers (or have produced work now in the public domain), and I often draw texts and materials from them as important material and conceptual resources, translated through visual and aural processes. Much like the electronic signals that pass through video and audio devices, I interpret the evidence of the lives I explore as signals that pass through their respective cultures and time periods; these signals are continuously transformed as they reach our current perception of them. This work amounts to a type of surveillance of these signals, and an examination of the connections between them and myself as they manifest in a broad variety of work. This body of work is collected in the project Self-Surveillance.

Artwork