Chris Burden: the world’s most extreme performance artist
When taking up performance art, it becomes difficult to figure out where the person ends, and the performance begins. Although every move made on a stage or a platform is meant to have some sort of meaning, it’s not as easy to parse out what’s going on when having to focus on someone’s every move. Then again, it would be almost impossible to forget anything that Chris Burden ever did during his art pieces.
Inspired by the violent excesses of the world, Burden took all of the feral sides of humanity and turned them on himself most of the time. Even though some performance artists might endure a few scrapes and bruises from their time performing, Burden’s visions blurred the line between entertainment and masochistic activity.
In some of his art pieces, Burden was known to put his body through its paces, including one scene where he spent five days inside a locker in the fetal position. While there might not have been as much harm done in laying flat on the ground, Burden kept upping the ante every time he engaged in his next piece, like getting run over by a Volkswagen Beetle.
The real jaw-dropping material was to come with his piece Shoot. Made during the 1970s, this performance involved Burden taking a .22 gauge firearm and shooting himself in the arm. While the results might have been grotesque and off-putting to anyone with working retinas, it’s important to remember when Burden came up with this piece.
With the backdrop of the Vietnam war looming large over the world, violence had hit an all-time high overseas, which made for horror stories and PTSD for the sad folks who returned home from war. Although Burden might not have accomplished anything important by shooting himself in the arm, it could be argued that the war was the same way, with the country not wavering for a second about the war despite some massive protests to stop the violence.
The grotesque reaction is exactly what Burden’s performance might have been going for, making the viewer see all of the self-harm he’s done to himself, just like the country was doing to its citizens. It’s also important to remember the kind of weapon he uses on himself, brandishing a pistol instead of a knife to inflict harm on himself.
In the wake of the war and folks coming home, brandishing a gun in any suburban home became much more pronounced. Although the sleek and silver finish of a firearm might be fashionable for someone looking to defend themselves, this piece is showing the invention of the gun for what it was meant to do: destroy anything in its path.
It’s not like the performance piece doesn’t hold up, either. For all the years that have gone by since this insane display of violence, gun violence has only risen, with mass shootings running rampant across the US and abroad. Some snobs might turn their noses up at Burden for being too hungry for attention, but underneath all those artistic war wounds is a lost soul praying for the violence to stop. Other performance artists may have given their all to their performances, but nothing will top potentially fatally wounding one’s self to get their point across.
