shot

Description:
In this piece, the German word “Bürde” was shot out of the page with a 45-calibre pistol. A new sheet of the same copied page was shot over and over again for target practice.

Text source:
The text that the word was shot out of originates from a book by Micha Brumlik, Kein Weg als Deutscher und Jude (There is no way to be a German and a Jew).

It all started with my desire to shoot German words whose sound I hated. Not the meaning, but the sound. A list would include such words as rasch, Bursche, Knecht, nimmer, Bürde, Stachelschwein, Heim, daheim, Sims (as in Fenstersims), Schemel, Schelm. I could go on. So I had them shot. In this piece, I had given the hated word as target practice to a security guard in training. Instead of the usual human figure, he now practiced on what he called a “birdy,” a little bird, as people do in amusement parks—shoot a birdy. Over and over he tried to hit the word right in the center. These are enlarged “shots” of the sheets he practiced on.