Killing Rolando is an immersive video installation that utilizes contemporary and archival footage to explore the disparate constructions of masculinity across the generations of one American family.  The project is ongoing, with the first incarnation (currently installed at HallWalls Contemporary Art Center in Buffalo, NY) focusing on the remaining two “Rolandos,” a father and son estranged for over four decades, who are unlikely to ever see one another again.

The family from which the Rolandos hail – one in which men for centuries have been named some variation of “Rowland” – has been marked by producing hyper-examples of individuals either achieving great success, or failing miserably at being productive members of society. For every accomplished doctor, engineer, solider and shaman, appears an equally focused drug addict, perpetual ward of the state, or disjointed wanderer. Suspended between these two identities, the installation studies the overlap between a seemingly organized mental state and pure bedlam, and the way these two conditions are not opposites so much as the transitory manifestation of a cultural need.

Music by Jake Mohan