A Bullet for Buñuel

A Bullet for Buñuel  encompasses a body of research works including ballistics tests, video and sound, a shirt-making commission, military grade aluminium prints, and a paperback book published by Primary Information, New York.

The project is based on a protracted attempt to realise an undertaking that the late filmmaker, Luis Buñuel, was deemed too powerful to achieve. In a story told by once-surrealist Georges Sadoul, Buñuel tried to create a bullet possessing such a weak charge that it would be able to slide “harmlessly” off the filmmaker’s clothes when fired at him but instead, he had highly charged results.

Consulting with the Buñuel Estate and sources ranging from online forums for bullet makers to a ballistics lab associated with the United States Secret Service, I sought to make the low velocity bullet that Buñuel had been too powerful to create.

The notion was to use this bullet as a device to animate a shirt that had been worn by the filmmaker, but unlike Buñuel, while trying to bring this two-year endeavor to completion I was able to achieve failure upon failure.