1

CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION: “Proof That The Seventies Have Finally

Begun” – The man who got shot, “for his art”

Page 3-8

CHAPTER 1: “What kind of art is this?” – the Viennese

Actionists and “Shoot” as a failure.

Page 9-14

CHAPTER 2: Burden’s death wish – assisted suicide and

indirect self-destructive behaviour.

Page 15-18

CHAPTER 3: Good Guns/Bad Guns – The American tradition of

shooting.

Page 19-25

CHAPTER 4: “Generic” Violence – “Shoot” in relation to

television violence and actual violence.

Page 26-33

CONCLUSION: Is “Shoot” actually violent?

Page 34-39

ILLUSTRATIONS

Page 40

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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INTRODUCTION:

“Proof That The Seventies Have

Finally Begun” - the man who got

shot, “for his art”.

3
In 1971, the American artist Chris Burden shot himself (fig. 1). More specifically, Chris Burden

got his friend to shoot him from fifteen feet away in the left arm at the student run F-Space in

Santa Ana, California. And more specifically still, Chris Burden spent weeks preparing to be

shot by his friend from fifteen feet away. His friend was only meant to graze his left arm, and

he practised by shooting around Chris Burden. The bullet however went straight through

Burden’s left arm and he was taken to hospital, where he fabricated a story about a bottle of

vinegar falling on the gun while out hunting (Searle, 1993, p. 20). And then in 1973 American

Esquire called Burden “Man of the Year”, along with the then head of the FBI and a

psychophysiologist; “Proof That The Seventies Have Finally Begun”. He then went to the local

photo shop and the man behind the counter said “Your fa-a-a-a-mous!” That’s how Chris

Burden became the artist who “got shot for his art” (Tumlir, 2001, para. 4-5).

fig. 1 Chris Burden, Shoot, 1971 (www.nhuhuy.com)

The use of the artist’s own body was by this point nothing new; the 1960’s had inducted the

method via the Fluxus group and the Viennese Actionists, amongst others. This form of body

4
art grew out of the traditions set by previous artistic groups like the Futurists, Dada and

Bauhaus, who had set up their own theatre and cabaret performances in order to illustrate the

methods of being and political points. The 1960’s again exaggerated these points but instead

of dressing up as puppets and writing ballets, the performance art of the 1960’s stripped away

the almost archaic theatricalities and instead used their bodies directly to explain their

thoughts of the world around them. Many exalted themselves in Happenings, particularly

partaken by the Fluxus artists and many involved the audience as a way of realising the

piece, as in Wolf Vostell’s You (1964), a Happening held on a farm in New York State where

the public were instructed to “try to be the most friendly to everyone” (Frieling et al, 2008, p.

92). The purpose of these performances is clearly stated in Vostell’s own words; “What is

important is what the public itself takes away as a result of my images and the Happening”

(Goldburg, 2006, p. 134). In Vienna, Wiener Aktionisten (a.k.a. The Vienna Actionists) partook

in ritualistic performances reminisant of the orgiastic Ancient Greco/Roman Bacchanalia.

These where a lot more extreme than many of the Fluxus Happenings, involving much more

aggressive imagery such as castration (Rudolf Schwartzkogler) and animal sacrifices

(Herman Nitsch). Nitsch described the work of the Viennese Actionists as “an aesthetic way

of praying” (Goldburg, 2006, p. 163), where else Otto Mühl described the group as “not only

a form of art, but above all an existential attitude.” (Goldburg, 2006, p. 164). Such ideas

resulted in pieces like Nitsch’s 48th Action (1974), in which Nitsch was crucified up side down

and naked, smeared with the blood of a pig’s carcass stretched out next to him.

By the 1970’s performance art had taken on a more minimalist look; gone were the

post-theatre stages and Happenings and instead came the more existential body-as-the-

canvas kind of performance pieces. By this I do not mean the likes of Andy Warhol’s paper

dresses displaying the Brillo logo or the likes of Yves Klein’s Anthropometries of the Blue

Period (1960), which used woman’s bodies as a paintbrush. Works such as these left

artefacts that could be displayed again in different settings. Minimalist body art battled with

the idea of the immediate; using the body as a piece of raw canvas to retain on in the memory

of the viewer. Sometimes the performance never even had a viewer to recall it, and so sparse

video footage and photography was kept in order to prevent later distortion. Like the Viennese

Actionists, this style of body art was controversial in its supposed degrading actions and

5
masochism (see Contract with the Skin: Masochism Performance Art and the 1970’s by

O’Dell, p. 1-11). This view is understandable when you consider the likes of Vito Acconci’s

Seedbed (1971), performed in the Sonnabend Gallery in New York, where Acconci

masturbated under a ramp to a video of the gallery’s visitors who came to see the piece, or

Gina Pane’s Psyche (1974), see fig. 2, in which Pane proceeded to lacerate her body with a

razor as she applied make-up.

It is silly, however, to prescribe these works as being shocking for shocking sake. Not

every human emotion can be discussed with the twitch of a paintbrush. Performance art has

existed for nearly a hundred years now precisely for that reason (see the chapter on Futurist

performances in Goldberg’s book Performance Art – from Futurism to the Present, p. 11-30),

and when you consider the fact that we have passed through some of the bloodiest wars and

tumultuous years this past century. In my opinion, it may seem almost pathetic for some

artists to scribble on a piece of paper and say ‘this is what I feel of this situation’. The

Viennese Actionists were part of a society that had been wrecked by the Second World War,

in which their performances could be perceived as “attempts to purge themselves of guilt

through sacrifice” (Barnes et al, 1996, p. 338), in some kind of repenting quasi-religious act.

Pane herself has stated “One has to understand ‘My Body in Action’ not as the skin of a

painting enclosing its interior but as a WRAPPING/UNFOLDING bringing back death to the

edge of things” (Barnes et al, 1996, p. 357). Sometimes extreme situations involve extreme

art, and Burden’s Shoot is one of those pieces.

Chris Burden was an unsuspecting American boy, born a year after the Second World War

finished, in Boston, Massachusetts, and who busied himself with Meccano and a small

camera. As the young Burden grew older life became less about building small metal castles

and more about the world around him. By 1971, Burden had received a MFA from the

University of California and had graduated from architectural sculpture to installing his body

as the sculptural form, as in Five Day Locker Piece (1971), in which, as the title suggests,

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Burden sat in a college locker for five days, with a two gallon container full of water above him

and a two gallon empty container below him:

“I thought it was just going to be an isolation thing, but it turned into this strange sort

of public confessional where people where coming all the time to talk to me… There were

periods of time when I was alone and I knew my vulnerability might inspire someone to do

something crazy. But that was only towards the end…” (Horvitz, 1976)

Burden’s transgression into performance pieces inspired a more mature aspect to his art,

displaying a conscious awareness of his relation to society and how his art fits in with this.

With this comes an understanding of society at large and societies needs and worries.

Indeed, in the early Seventies, America was concerned mainly with its involvement in the

Vietnam War; “The volatile mixture of Vietnam, the counter culture, and the Civil rights

Movement led to a near breakdown in the American body politic… many observers thought

that the United States was on the brink of a second American Revolution.” (Wiest, 2002, p. 7).

fig. 2 Gina Pane, Psyche, 1973 (http:arcotheme.chez-alice.fr)

Along with every other American, Burden had been observing the atrocities of the war in the

East and the atrocities of the aftermath in America itself. On the fourth of May 1970, the

National Guard killed four students at the Kent State University in Ohio during the protests

7
against the American invasion of Cambodia on the first of May. Two of the students that

where killed were not even protesting. This shocked many Americans, many in disbelief that

their own country could kill their own people. Burden thought was concerned with the idea

that at a time when “everybody’s trying to avoid being shot, I flip it over and do it on

purpose?… I’d be right there in that weird grey area” (Hoffman et al, 2007, p. 29).

To explore the “grey area” I will need to look into why Burden was so interested in the

idea of being shot. This will include art’s interest in shocking the audience, America’s cultural

relationship to guns, as well as the audiences exchange with seeing these violent images.

8
CHAPTER 1:

“What kind of art is this?” – the

Viennese Actionists and “Shoot” as

a failure.

9
There have been people that have described Chris Burden’s work as shocking. The 1973

New York Times article that ran the headline “He Got Shot – For His Art”, described Burden

as the kind of artist who "uses 'art' as a license to think up odd deeds-in themselves"

(Plagens, 1973, p. 3). These articles gave the impression that Shoot was not art; “Many

people felt not only that they were being put on by these antics, but also, as art, such

performances could have little meaning or value.” (O’Dell, 1998, p.2). Burden was heralded

as the wild child of the west-coast art scene, a manic and subversive publicity seeker.

The fact of the matter was though that Burden might not be seen as the most

shocking thing to happen to art. Although it may seem strange to allow someone to shoot you,

it may seem even stranger to exalt in the disembowelling of animals and then the gracing of

their blood over your naked body in front of a crowd, only then to be buckled to a make-shift

crucifix, upside-down.

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fig. 3 Gunter Brus, Action, 1964/1965 (www.photographie.com)

The above describes the work of Hermann Nitsch’s Orgien-Mysterien-Theater

(“Theatre of Orgies and Mysteries”), started in the 1950’s and later in the Sixties and

Seventies, morphed into the performances of the Viennese Actionists (fig. 3), along with

Günter Brus, Otto Muehl and Rudolph Schwarzkogler. The Actionists work came out in a very

violent and direct way, “drawing attention to man’s innate cruelty in a deliberately shocking

manner” (Barnes et al., 1996, p. 338). Brus partook in his Selbstverstümmelung

(“Mutilations”), in which he sliced his own body up; Muehl made videos such as Sodoma

(1969), a grainy pornographic movie set to dramatic orchestral music, reminiscent of the

Marquis de Sade’s 120 days of Sodom; and Schwarzkogler performed actions with dead

animals and in 3rd Aktion (1965), had his head and face wrapped in bandages and then

another person inserted what looks like a corkscrew into the head, until a halo of blood

appeared (fig. 4).

The aim of these actions was to change the ideas of art and experiences through

transgression; art transgressing into life and life transgressing into the breaking of boundaries.

Indeed, all the main Viennese Actionists have either served time in prison or had a warrant for

their arrest (apart from Schwarzkogler) after breaking decency laws. The art of these

Actionists set out to question the nature of human sex, violence and superiority via the

exaggerated performing of these topics.

But these actions may not seem as ludicrous and shocking as they first look when

you consider where the artists where coming from. They where all born before the outbreak of

the Second World War and would have experienced the atrocities afterwards with buildings

ripped from their foundations, deconstructed before their eyes in their native Vienna.

Otto Muehl also was an art therapist from 1954 – 1963 (Biography – Otto Muehl,

n.d.), working in a home for emotionally disturbed children under Eva Rosenfeld, a

psychoanalyst who was a pupil of Sigmund Freud. Art therapy “is a form of psychotherapy

that uses art media as its primary mode of communication” (What is Art Therapy?, 2008), in a

way of externalising internal turmoil that could not be expressed in words. This fact is

important as it may explain why the Viennese Actionists work was so extreme; indeed,

11
Schwarzkogler, the man who castrated himself (although he didn’t actually), killed himself in

June 1969 by jumping from a window.

fig. 4 Rudolph Schwarzkogler, 3rd Action, 1965 (www.tate.org)

Art had allowed itself since the second half of the nineteenth century to openly display

the emotions the artists making the work, via movements such as Expressionism; it was the

first time that artists where allowed to discuss only themselves, in an almost existential way,

via the medium of art. Since then, artists have had to come up with new ways of expressing

themselves as old ways become exhausted. With Otto Muehl’s background in art therapy and

the onset of body art, it is perhaps no surprise then in my view that the Viennese Actionist

where as extreme as they where.

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If Burden’s Shoot is not shocking in the same way as the Viennese Actionists work, then how

is it shocking?

“I remember being interviewed on TV by Regis Philbin. He says, ‘What kind of art is

this?’ and I tell him that I’m gonna be a big deal someday, and he’s kind of dubious. The next

guest they had on was the chief of police, and Regis was going, ‘Was that legal? What d’ya

think of a guy who goes out and shoots himself?’ He was really upset.” – Chris Burden

speaking in Artforum, 2001 (Tumlir, 2001, para. 5)

Part of the debate surrounding Shoot question’s what Burden calls the “weird grey area” of

why someone would want to be shot. Indeed, the initial question was ‘was Burden even shot?’

as the initial plan was “that the bullet would go by and scratch [his] arm, and one drop of

blood would come out.” (Searle, 1993, p. 19). Burden was in fact more worried about whether

his assistant who had volunteered to shoot him would miss him completely, not whether he

would aim more to the right and shoot Burden in the chest.

Shoot raises questions about what the gun means in American culture and why

shooting people, an “American tradition almost” (Searle, 1993, p. 20) as Burden himself puts

it, was seen to be frowned upon in this particular case.

“I think the audience was important, sort of, as a witness. I think the myth of being

shot is something that everybody… I think the reason that piece works, and continues to

work, is that you see it on television and in films over and over, and it’s always fake if you

actually see people being shot on television. Actually being shot is quite different.

I think everyone subconsciously has thought about what it’s like to be shot.

Being shot, at least in America, is as American as apple pie, it’s sort of an American tradition

almost. To do it in this clinical way, to do something that most people would go out of their

way to avoid, to turn around and face the monster and say, ‘Well, let’s find out what it’s

about’, I think that touches on some cord, that’s why the piece works…” – Chris Burden

(Searle, 1993, p. 20)

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The idea of doing it in a “clinical way” is important, as it conjures up several images; firstly it

identifies it with the Minimalist movement of art, secondly, that it was devoid of emotion,

suggesting that Burden was some kind psychotic, and thirdly that it was some kind of

scientific experiment. Although I do not think that Burden was a psychotic, the scientific

element of his work is very apparent, as Burden said in 1973 “In some of my pieces I am

setting up situations to test my own illusions or fantasies about what happens” (Hoffman et

at., 2007, pg 65), and many of his works are just about testing what would happen (see The

One Minute Air-Plane Factory (1999) at the Tate Modern, in which a plan for a machine to

make an fly mini air-planes failed spectacularly). Burden has said that the fact that the pieces

had failed was a good thing, as it inspires you to question why and the effects of its failure. So

it is true, in that way, that Shoot was a failure.

If Shoot is, as I have already deducted, a failure in terms of Burden's original

intentions, would it have been as effective if it had worked as originally planned, i.e. the bullet

had just skimmed Burden's arm. My gut instinct says no, of course not, I would not be here

speaking about Burden and Shoot right now if it wasn't for the fact that he actually got shot.

The whole idea that it wasn't planned the way you see it just makes it even more shocking.

Burden would never then had article's printed about him and his performances and therefore

become the "big deal" he predicted in interview with Regis Philbin. The failure of Shoot also

allowed Burden to realise his own physical limitations; if he could handle being shot then he

could also handle crawling semi-naked through broken glass (Through The Night Softly,

1973) and being crucified to a car (Trans-fixed, 1974) (fig. 5).

fig. 5 Chris Burden, Trans-fixed, 1974 (http://jalopnik.com)

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CHAPTER 2:

Burden’s death wish – assisted

suicide and indirect self-

destructive behaviour.

15
It may be said that Shoot was a death wish Burden placed upon himself, in the sense that he

was willing on his death. I have already explained how easy it would of Burden to have been

killed, if he stood just a few more centimetres to the left he could have been killed. It could be

argued that Burden was playing, or maybe even, prompting on suicide.

It is no secret that Burden was experiencing a “great deal of turmoil in his personal

life” (Hoffman, 2007, p. 373) during the making of Shoot, so it may be possible that even if

Burden didn’t want to physically die, he may of wanted to “kill” himself metaphorically, hence

all the self-destructive performances.

Jurgen Kind in his book Suicidal Behaviour –A Search for its Psychic Economy

describes suicide:

“Suicidal behaviour primarily expresses the wish to change an object relation, not the

desire to die. However, the need for death may follow from a failure to change the object

relation.” (Kind, 1999, pg. 17)

So maybe Burden was displaying suicidal-esque behaviour in order to change part of his

being. This I can understand, it is reminiscent of the Dionysian attempt to destroy in order to

recreate (see Friedrich Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy for a more elaborate explanation of

this philosophy). There are however some correlations between Burden’s Shoot and the

phenomena of assisted suicide.

Assisted suicide is the name of the practice partaken by some terminally ill people,

often those who are paralysed or in a similar state, that wish to commit suicide instead of

living a life in pain. It is called assisted suicide (other names include ‘aid in dying’ or ‘death

with dignity’) because the person who wishes to die is often incapable of doing so and in

which case a doctor is required to either administer a dosage of drugs or special equipment

(Assisted Suicide, n.d.).

It is a controversial practice, however, as some people believe it could lead to ill

people being encouraged to die. Recently, the UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown stated that;

16
 “I believe that it’s necessary to ensure that there is never a case in the country where

a sick or elderly person feels under pressure to agree to an assisted death or somehow feels

it’s the expected thing to do. That’s why I’ve always opposed legislation for assisted deaths.”

(Brown refuses to back law allowing assisted suicides, 2008, p. 11)

Assisted suicide is illegal in many countries, including the UK, and many people decide that

they would rather travel to the few countries where it is legal, like Belgium, Switzerland or the

Netherlands (Assisted Suicide, n.d.). I understand where Gordon Brown is coming from when

he states that he does not want people to feel “under pressure” to commit suicide, but I would

prefer not to be in agony if I was seriously ill, a view I share with nearly 80 per cent of the UK

(Brown refuses to back law allowing assisted suicides, 2008, p. 11).

There are similarities between Shoot and the idea of assisted suicide. Burden may

have been secretly willing his own death on and his friend holding the rifle would have

assisted him to it. But Burden never actually expressed a wish to die; it is more likely that

Burden was trying to be death defying, explained by his usage of an audience in order to

witness the performance. Burden was not terminally ill, either.

If Shoot does not display so much the characteristics associated with assisted

suicide, it may display more characteristics associated with indirect self-destructive behaviour,

or ISDB. The traits of ISDB are described as:

“Stress-seeking behaviour with its negative and positive potentialities also seems to

play an important role in indirect self-destructive behaviour, especially when the search for

excitement and the degree of risk-taking begins to exceed the boundaries for safety, survival

and self-preservation. Stress-seeking in relation to ISDB may well have special significance,

for risk taking in its positive qualities has played a prominent role in the development of man

in the form of mastering fear – provoking situations, facilitating resolutions of developmental

conflict, and fostering the drive for exploration and ambitious achievement.” (Farberow, 1980,

p. 17)

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“Stress seeking behaviour” is precisely what much of Burden’s performances of the early

1970’s involved, so it may seem that Burden may have been suicidal on some unconscious

level. Other quotes from the same book that correlate with Burden’s actions include “the

behaviour of indirectly self-destructive people contains no message to others, except,

perhaps, the message inferred from the evident self-involvement or the pronounced lack of

sensitivity and regard for others” (Farberow, 1980, p. 24). This could explain Burden’s brief

and indifferent descriptions about his work, and his avoidance about what kind of art it was

when in interview with Regis Philbin.

This ‘suicidal’ behaviour though should not be seen as nihilistic and void of any

meaning. As discussed in the previous chapter, art had exploded with the emotions of the

artist, and Burden is no exception. At a time when Burden was suffering from emotional

turmoil, his indirect self-destructive behaviour, and his art, could have been helping him; ISDB

“seems to be psychologically helpful for a person’s well-being, since the behaviours are

coping mechanisms over short periods of time” (Farberow, 1980. p. 29). This part may prove

to be true, as Burden gave up these suicidal performances in the mid 1970’s in favour of more

sculptural projects, many involving children’s building materials.

I am not saying that Burden definitely had ISDB, I am not a psychologist, but all of

these performances, Shoot seeming like the most definite to induce death, must of connected

some way with each other. But I believe Burden was more concerned with the idea of defying

death, like heroes in Western movie.

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CHAPTER 3:

Good Guns/Bad Guns – The American

tradition of shooting.

19
Chris Burden's Shoot and the response to it does raise questions about what the gun means

within American culture. It would seem as a foreigner looking in that the American's have an

obsession with an amendment written over two-hundred years ago stating that in the

American constitution "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state,

the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed" (Carver, 2001, para. 5).

The continued upheld belief of this amendment seems ludicrous as it is attributed to a time

when Americans fed off the land and needed protection from the likes of Native Indians and

highway robbers.

In Don B. Kates 1990 article Gun Control: A Realistic Assessment (Kates, 1990, para.

1), he states that "As early as 1976 it was estimated that more had been written on the

subject of 'gun control' than on all other crime-related topics combined" in America, this

coming from a country of which had just come out of the height of its gun homicides in the

1960's, and has only recently in the past ten years gone down to its lowest levels since

(Kopel, 2000, para. 1). In terms of statistics, in 1973 an average of 9.4 people where killed in

homicide per 100,000 of the population, roughly 20,000 (ibid.) and in 1975 the amount of

murders had surpassed 21,000 (Bromhead, 1996, p. 122).

Burden's idea that guns and being shot where "as American as apple pie" may now

start to sound less like a journalists ideal sound bite and more like the perfect axiom for the

situation, especially when considered the politics of gun control got serious in and around the

time that Burden performed Shoot.

On the one hand, you have the people that view guns as the "symbols of virility

associated with the building of the nation" (ibid.), whom others may see as "barbaric and/or

deranged... intellectually retarded, educationally backward and morally obtuse" (Kates, 1990,

para. 24), and to which the Daisy Rifles Christmas advert (fig. 6) would be aimed towards,

and on the other hand you have the people who say the protest "more guns, more gun

violence" (Kopel, 2000) and who helped pushed through such laws as the Brady Handgun

Violence Prevention Act, instigating a "national instant criminal background check system"

(The Brady Handgun Control Act, n.d.), and whom some may consider to spread "phony

fears" (Kopel, 2000, para. 8) of just how bad the gun crime situation is. I don’t believe

20
personally that there are “phony fears” about guns. To me, as long as you possess a gun, you

are a risk to other people. However, I do come from a society with relatively low gun crime,

and all the guns I see are mainly on television or in films. I don’t live with guns the way I

imagine many American’s to.

fig. 6 Christmas ad from Daisy rifles (www.creativepro.com)

It is these opposing view points that allow this whole idea of America's 'gun culture' to

be so interesting; in a country that declares itself the 'leader of the free world', why is it then

that many American's still feel the need to carry a gun for protection, and why is it that

countries like New Zealand, which have relaxed gun laws, still have less gun related deaths

on average than America (Kates, 1990, para. 10)).

21
 At the time of which Burden made Shoot, he would have been witnessing American

soldiers torching villages in Vietnam (fig. 7) and the National Guard shooting at peaceful

protestors in Kent State University (fig. 8), as well as watching the death toll of American's

killing each other rise along side with the suicide rate, as well as the pro/anti gun rallies. It

would be hard for him, I imagine, not to be affected by all of this; as Robert Storr says in a

collection of essays on Chris Burden, "Such symbolic acts of self-jeopardy and terrorism

literalized the violence latent in the American psyche of the 1960s and 1970s" (Hoffman et al,

2007, pg 42).

Through looking at the different viewpoints the American population has on guns, it

becomes easier to see why people may have had a problem and disagreed with Burden

performing Shoot. I believe that people may have seen it as encouraging self-harm and

glamorising gun violence (in making being shot an art form), and others may have seen it as

giving people that own guns a bad name, people who see guns only "for shooting birds and

animals and for protection against predatory human beings" (Bromhead, 1996, p. 123). I don’t

believe that Shoot has encouraged or glamorised gun violence, but it does encourage the

question as to why the gun is so important in American culture.

22
fig. 7 Viet Cong dead after an attack on the perimeter of Tan Son Nhut Air Base

(http://voxpublica.no)

Indeed, to the American people, the idea that this man decided to get himself shot

may prove to be more complicated and confusing than just whether it was illegal or not, or

whether you are pro or anti guns, there is this idea of gun fantasies, or the “myth of being

shot” as Burden calls it (Searle, 1993, p. 20). This may relate back to America’s Frontier past

where shooting was a rite of passage and cowboys had shoot-outs (though they may never

really have happened), and to which has led many people to believe that it is the gun that

indeed made America (Gun Politics in the United States, n.d.). It is a romantic view, led on by

the rise of lavish spaghetti westerns (fig. 9) and war movies produced by Hollywood where

the hero would shoot round after round off a revolver until the villain was dead (this is also

seen in more contemporary films such as The Matrix).

fig. 8 National Guardsmen attacking Kent State University (www.the232.blogspot.com)

In the book Chris Burden, Beyond the Limits by Peter Noever, he states that:

“The controversy surrounding Shoot was fuelled by the fantasies and fears triggered

by shooting and gunshot wounds. Films like Full Metal Jacket or Bullets Over Broadway

indicate an enduring interest in the folkloric tradition of westerns, war and gangster movies.

With the escalation of the Vietnam War, the subject matter penetrated the minds of the

23
American public no longer as fiction but as fact in the shape of body bags, invalids and

veterans of Vietnam. This exerted a significant influence on the daring of Burden’s

experimental piece [Shoot].” (Chris Burden – Shoot, n.d.)

fig. 9 The Good, The Bad and The Ugly movie poster (www.packrat-rattoyz.com)

This is the confusing aspect that I suspect outraged many Americans. Chris Burden

presents a situation where he criticises the atrocities that guns cause by revelling in the

“fantasies” that many Americans have about them. These moral conflicts manifest themselves

in the fact that Burden organised for someone to shoot him, which is now often

misunderstood to be that Burden shot himself. Not really adding to the situation is the brief

statement Burden left to explain the piece:

“At 7:45p.m. I was shot in the left arm by a friend. The bullet was a copper jacket 22

long rifle. My friend was standing about fifteen feet from me.” (Ward, 2001, p. 115)

24
This text, more like a quick note of what happened, leads the imagination to wonder what

Burden’s actual point was. The specific nature of the time, distance, gun and what arm was

shot leads to maybe an obsessive personality trait, but more likely just in keeping with the

way many Conceptual artists recorded their work. The description of the gun makes him

sound like a ‘gun nut’ relishing in the details of the weapon and how much damage it could

cause. A 22 long rifle (fig. 10) however is mainly used for shooting small animals (.22 Long

Rifle, n.d.), so maybe some Americans may realise that it was not a ‘serious’ gun, and may

lack Burden some credit for that (though it obviously still could do some damage). The fact

that he was also standing fifteen feet away strikes most fiercely in my mind with images of

men being lined up and shot by militia (Goya’s famous The Third of May, 1808 springs to

mind), relating maybe to the Kent State shootings and Vietnam in a contextual setting. The

fact that Burden was shot “by a friend” only confuses this more; what kind of friend would line

you up and shoot you? Burden remarked that you have to get “somebody who’s sympathetic

to do this in the first place” (Searle, 1993, p. 20)

These conflicting notions of what the gun represents is what I feel makes the piece so

immediately disturbing. You do not know how you are meant to feel about it. It is a curious

mixture concerning the horrific aspect of being shot with the glory of being shot. You are not

meant to enjoy any of this like you would enjoy watching a western. You are unclear as to

why he has been shot; just it doesn’t look very nice, “gory” as Burden describes it (Searle,

1993, p. 18). This is what I feel made people act so shocked towards it, and made others

strangely curious about it, and actually enter the grey area.

25
fig. 10 22. calibre rifle (www.packrat-rattoyz.com)

CHAPTER 4:

“Generic” Violence – “Shoot” in

relation to television violence

and actual violence.

26
The problem with Shoot is that it has been consumed by a secondary audience, that being,

anyone who wasn’t there when Burden’s friend shot him, and so anyone that watched the film

afterwards and read it either in a book or magazine.

The problem is the fact that we as secondary viewers do not then have the luxury of

an unbiased view of it. We are surrounded by the opinions of others and the relationships we

build in our heads that connect this piece with what we have already seen, in what Burden

calls “tradition” (Searle, 1993, p. 20). This can mean that all preconceived notions of violence

are then fed into the piece, which can include local mythologies and contextual or current

events. For example, when I first saw the piece, I was reminded of the shootings that have

been happening across England during the past few years; not the Vietnam War that has

been quoted so much in relation to Shoot. This may be due to the fact that I am British, this

was what currently in the news, and I had only heard of Burden very briefly in an nondescript

article about something I can’t remember (of which had just made note of the fact he shot

himself, and nothing more). I, like a majority of people, had no preconceived ideas of who

Chris Burden was and what he was about, but I did know that to have yourself shot was a

pretty violent, and a pretty stupid, thing to do.

To suggest that Burden had attempted this piece after watching one too many

cowboy films is a ridiculous hypothesis; it has been proven too many times that people do not

become violent by watching violence off a television screen, and it is mainly extraneous

circumstances that lead someone to violence. In Stephen Brody’s 1977 report entitled Screen

Violence and Film Censorship – A Review of Research, he states that

“…around the age of six or seven a number of changes take place in the way a child

sees the world and reacts to it. He becomes able to realise that films are not a continuation of

reality, that the people in them are only actors and the events portrayed are quite independent

of his own experiences.” (Brody, 1977, p. 130)

27
If it is true that watching violence does not necessarily lead you to commit violence, it may be

possible that the repeated watching of violence can change your ideas of what violence

should be like. In the same book, Brody muses that

“If repetitive and stereotyped depictions of violent and aggressive acts are socially

dangerous, the representation by the media of life as sensationalised, trivial and vulgar can

scarcely be less detrimental to moral health.” (Brody, 1977, p. 145)

I believe this to be true, and I believe that it has become worse. One needs only to watch a

modern day horror film to see how much filmmaker’s have upped the anti in depicting the

amount of gore they can show and seeing how much stress they can put their audience

under. This may be due to the fact that so much of our time nowadays is spent watching TV;

in America, the average person would watch 4 hours of TV a day, and it is estimated that by

the time an American is 18, they would of seen 200,000 violent acts on television (see

Television & Health, n.d.). It may be true then, that if a filmmaker wants to really shock their

audience, they have to out do real life.

Consideration also needs to be taken that through all this television watching, we are

repeatedly being shown the atrocities of the past, both fact and fiction. I myself have seen

countless times this year the bombs that went off in the trenches of World War One, the

planes that crashed into the World Trade Centre and the horrific assassination of Benazir

Bhutto, the leader of the Pakistani People’s Party (fig. 11 and 12), paralleled with the likes of

Channel 4’s zombie come Big Brother drama Dead Set (2008) and Jean Luc Goddard’s 1959

film A Bout de Souffle, where the protagonist shoots a police man and then is shot himself in

a rather dramatic and non-bloody finale (fig. 13).

Frazer Ward, speaking in relation to Burden’s Shoot in his article Gray Zone:

Watching Shoot, points out how watching an amalgamation of different types of violence

leads to all the violence becoming one in the mind of the viewer (specifically, the American

viewer):

28
 “…it was a history without sequence, a swirl of westerns and science fiction war and

noir and news, such that six-guns, lasers, and napalm might come to share a generic quality.

And [Burden’s] “everyone” might come to share that, too.” (Ward, 2001, p. 121)

It is in the face of this “generic” violence that, when faced with the fact you are actually

watching someone get shot for real, that you then start to question your perceptions of

violence.

Burden has made a big deal of how different being shot is to watching it on the

television, saying that it “felt like a truck hit my arm at 80m.p.h.” (Plagens, 1973, p. 3), and

states the importance of the audience in the piece and his relationship towards them in

wanting to “energize the situation” (Carr, 1993, p. 17). Indeed, Burden’s relationship with his

audience is what defines some of his work, from Five Day Locker Piece (1971) where people

started talking their problems out to him while he kept silent, to Shadow (1976), in which he

played up to peoples preconception of what an avant-garde artist should behave like (he

played it aloof and proceeded to film everyone).

But it is Burden’s role as the passive artist that puts the spectator in control in letting

them decide, in some cases at least, as to whether he lives or die. This happened in Prelude

to 220, or 110 (1971), where the audience could have decided to electrocute him by spilling a

nearby bucket of water with 110-volt lines in them as Burden lay bolted to the floor. It also

happened in one of Burden’s most extreme performances, Velvet Water (1974), in which a

theatre full of students watched on live closed-circuit television Burden attempt to “breath”

water (Chris Burden, 1976, para. 31), despite the fact that Burden was performing the piece a

few meters away from them all. In either of these pieces, the audience could of killed Burden

or saved him from drowning. In both cases the audience just watched, waiting to see what

Burden would do next.

Shoot is one of the best pieces in realising the huge responsibility of the audience in

Burden’s work. It may never of occurred to some people that a member of the small

congregation watching Shoot, most of whom Burden’s acquaintances, could have put a stop

to the piece for fear of his life. As Ward puts it, a “prurient fascination, an anti-moralistic, anti-

authoritarian historical milieu, even the brevity of the work, prevented any such intervention”

29
(Ward, 2001, p. 117). In short, more people would rather the risk of Burden dying then losing

out on the sight of an artist have himself shot. However, we do not know that this is true; as

Burden himself has said “I’d convinced the people around me so much that no one even

brought a first-aid kit” (Searle, 1993, p. 19).

fig. 11 Benazir Bhutto before she was assassinated (http://graphics8nytimes.com)

30
fig. 12 The explosion that killed Benazir Bhutto (http://graphics8nytimes.com)

In Ward’s Gray Zone article however, in reference to the secondary audience, he

refers to the grey zone, the gaping mystery that makes Shoot so puzzling and interesting, as

the secondary audiences paralytic acquiescence, “defined by the suspension of judgement

and choice” (Ward, 2001, p. 130). To him, the violence of Shoot comes not in the

comparisons to the Vietnam War or ‘shoot-them-up’ films, or even in trying to understand

what it is like to be shot, but in the fact that we as viewers cannot understand or control what

we are looking at. We cannot stop it happening because we cannot understand what it is

about. There is a grey zone here of responsibility; should the primary audience have

intervened and stopped Burden? Should the secondary audience have even censored the

piece?

31
fig. 13 1959 film poster for the French release of A Bout de Souffle (www.dailyinfo.co.uk)

I agree to a point that we as viewers are dumbstruck for a moment as we can’t quite

understand why someone would want to have themselves shot, but it certainly doesn’t stop

people from reacting to it, as seen in the newspaper and magazine articles, the “crank call

from Tennessee” (Searle, 1993, p. 21) and people on the internet referring to him as one of

the “Asshole Pop Icons” (Real Guns Killing Real Artists, n.d.). I certainly don’t believe in

censoring art, but the blurring of reality (by being shot with an actual bullet) and what the

public perceive art to be (an idealised world within itself) does indeed need far more time for

contemplation than the eight seconds of film Burden provides us with.

From what I’ve come to understand, Shoot is all about challenging what you perceive

the violence to be. As in much of life, our understanding of how society works comes from

observing, and much of our learning through observation comes from watching what we see

on screen, either through television or through film. For example, not many people know what

it would be like to be in a car accident, as many people have not been in one or have seen

32
one, but many feel they know what it would seem like after viewing them through the media.

The same is with being shot; many films see people being shot and they die instantly, like in

First Blood (1982, Kotcheff), and other deaths are seen as slow and painful, like in Reservoir

Dogs (1992, Tarantino), where Mr Orange is in agony after being shot in the stomach (fig.

14).

fig. 14 Scene from Reservoir Dogs in which Mr Orange has just been shot in the abdomen

(http://moxie.moldova.org)

My view, then, towards the conflicting nature of Shoot is that we are watching what

seems to be made-up violence in real life. Burden has informed himself with American

"traditions" and with what violence should look like (even the photo of the marksman and

Burden getting ready to be shot looks straight out of a film), and we as an audience in our

own imagination get ready to see Burden fly off his heels and land on his back, or take it like a

man and just ignore it. Instead, he gets shot and walks off quickly, cupping his hand tightly

around his arm, with a look of pure agony and shock, and that’s when we realise he has

actually got shot with a real bullet. The photo of him afterwards, with his arm being bandaged,

glaring at the camera and looking almost child-like (he was only 25), looks more like the

police documentation of a crime (fig. 15).

For many people, you never get the chance to see someone being shot for real. You

either see made-up TV violence, or a censored version on the news, either before or after the

incidence. The disturbing aspect of Shoot is when you realise he has actually been shot.

33
fig. 15 Chris Burden after being shot (http://departments.risd.edu)

CONCLUSION:

Is “Shoot” Violent?

34
35
fig. 16 Julian Hoeber, Untitled, 2008 (www.blumandpoe.com)

Shooting is violent, but letting someone shoot you may not be seen as that. Some question

that to be truly shocking you have to take what ever you are doing out of context; "The abrupt

revelation of context as an inadequate guarantor of proceedings: that is what is really

shocking" (Lecture; ‘Violence to Endurance: Extreme Curating’, 2008). Some may see the

idea of someone being shot "for his art" as shocking, but art always has, and probably always

will do, having shocking and violent acts involved in it. Shooting is nothing new in the art

world. Andre Breton stated in the Second Surrealist Manifesto (1930):

"The simplest Surrealist act consists of dashing down into the street, pistol in hand,

and firing blindly, as fast as you can pull the trigger, into the crowd. Anyone who, at least once

in his life, has not dreamed of thus putting an end to the petty system of debasement and

36
cretinization in effect has a well-defined place in the crowd, with his belly at barrel level."

(Seaver and Lane, 1969, p. 125)

In 1961, Nikki de Saint Phalle started shooting her paintings with the same gun as what

Burden used, and, more recently, Julian Hoeber (fig. 16) has created a set of sculptural self-

portraits that where shot before being bronzed, in which he used a 9mm pistol, a sawed-off

pistol-grip shotgun and a .22 calibre rifle (Taft, 2008, p. 123). The gun in art has mostly

always been used for shocking ends.

I believe Chris Burden knew what he was doing when he asked someone to shoot

him, and he explained a lot when he said to Regis Philbin "I'm gonna be a big deal someday"

to the question "What kind of art is this?". Even though it took a couple of years before he

became know to the wider public, he still became known through the most sensationalist

means. I do not think Burden performed all of these artworks in order to become famous,

there would have been simpler ways, but I think it would be naive to think a thought didn't go

through his head that went 'maybe this'll get my name out there".

Some of Burden's pieces do indeed display a sense of narcissism and blatant want of

art, and maybe, public fame, if maybe hidden under the guise of irony. Take for example one

of Burden's television advertisements, Chris Burden Promo (1976), which read 'Leonardo da

Vinci... Michelangelo... Rembrandt... Vincent van Gogh... Pablo Picasso... Chris Burden...

Paid for by Chris Burden - Artist'. The advert in turn becomes quite funny in the almost futile

attempt to pair himself off with these famous names, as Burden says; "The first five names

were chosen from the results of a nationwide survey which showed them to be the most well

known artists to the general public" (Hoffman et al, 2007, p. 171). In displaying the piece in

the form of an advertisement, it could be seen as Burden trying to communicate with the

general public through the publics own “language”. It is a narcissistic thing to do, to try and

place yourself within the greats, but narcissism aware of its own delirium.

37
Nowadays, Chris Burden is more of a sculptural and architectural artist (he couldn't go on

forever setting himself alight or electrocuting himself), with plans of How To Shrink L.A.

(1999), and the art world has moved on and accepted new pieces to be shocked by. One only

has to look at the past twenty years to see how displaying an unmade bed (My Bed, Tracey

Emin, 1999) or eating foetuses (Eating People, Zhu Yu, 2000) is now considered shocking. I

still believe however that if an artist nowadays were to redo shoot, it would still be

controversial, but would run the risk of being 'unoriginal'. Take the recent case of Joseph

Deutch, a student at UCLA (university of California, Los Angeles), where he led a class of

students to believe he shot himself after a game of Russian roulette went wrong. Chris

Burden and his wife Nancy Rubin's had taught at the UCLA and had decided to quit over the

universities discussion not to suspend Deutch over his "domestic terrorism" (The ‘shot’ heard

‘round UCLA, 2005). Even though Deutch claimed not to use a real weapon (he had brought

a .357 Magnum and carved a replica out of wood), it is still enough for him to always be

compared to Burden now.

The problem with guns is that, unfortunately, they are all too common in the US, the

UK and the rest of the world. We all know the connotations that they carry and the mythology

that follows them. Burden's look into how we feel about guns through exploring its "traditions"

is a good way of holding a mirror up to society and questioning what we even know about

violence. Slavoj Žižek displays well in his book Violence what we really know;

"We are thus all caught in a kind of ethical illusion, parallel to perceptual illusions. The

ultimate cause of these illusions is that, although our power of abstract reasoning has

developed immensely, our emotional-ethical responses remain conditioned by age-old

instinctual relations of sympathy, to suffering and pain that is witnessed directly. This is why

shooting someone point-blank is for most of us much more repulsive than pressing a button

that will kill a thousand people we cannot see." (Žižek, 2008, p. 36)

Simulation, as defined by the post-modern philosopher Jean Baudrillard, is what I feel Shoot

is about. Chris Burden’s talk of the American “tradition” of being shot (Searle. 1993, p. 20) is

what Baudrillard calls the “hyperreal”;

38
 “… the America that surrounds it [Disneyland] are no longer real, but belong to the

hyperreal order and to the order of simulation. It is no longer a question of a false

representation of reality (ideology) but of concealing the fact that the real is no longer real,

and thus the saving of the reality principle.” (Baudrillard, 2008, p. 13)

Simulations, and its resultant simulacra, are used to describe the world of copies that we now

live in. The real is copied in a simulation; simulacra are objects copied in that simulation.

What Baudrillard laments is the death of the real through what could be called ‘over

simulation’; we are so deep inside the simulated reality that we do not know what the real

reality is anymore, creating a hyperreal world.

I believe Burden’s American “tradition” is a simulated reality of what America wants to

affirm of itself, and what many American’s think America is actually like, concluding that guns

are “a permanent ingredient of the nation's style and culture” (Gun Politics in the United

States, n.d.).

As I discussed in chapter three, the myth of guns is what has prevailed in America,

helped along by their representations in television and films. Through a bombardment of arms

related images, American’s now believe they need guns; that even if they don’t own a gun

themselves, the symbol of the gun is powerful enough to make you believe that the gun is

intrinsically American. “Myth, chased from the real by the violence of history, finds refuge in

cinema” (Baudrillard, 2008, p. 43).

Burden, in exploring the simulated myth of being shot, actually gets someone to shoot

him, just to see what it was like. Burden, it turns out, actually wants to see what its like being

shot in a television-esque way. As Burden has never mentioned seeing people actually shot

in real life, I have to presume that Burden’s experience of gun violence is through seeing it on

TV or in cinema. So, even though Burden says that TV shooting is “fake” (Searle, 1993, p.

20), it is the only shooting he knows, and so must of expected his being shot to be similar. But

being shot is not like in the movies, “Actually being shot is quite different”, said Burden (ibid.).

Burden had believed the simulation that America and its relationship to its guns presents, and

in return was given a nasty little bullet wound and some trouble from the police.

39
 Burden being shot in this way presents an emptiness in the American myth; that

behind the heroics of being shot are just actual wounds, injuries and death. The violence of

Shoot comes not in the fact that Burden has been shot, but that the myth of being shot has

been shattered. We want Shoot’s violence to be like that of TV’s, but instead there is real

blood and the realisation that there was no myth in the first place.

fig. 17 Zhu Yu, Eating People, 2000 (http://urbanlegends.about.com)

40
ILLUSTRATIONS
Fig. 1: www.nhuhuy.com

Fig. 2: http:arcotheme.chez-alice.fr

Fig. 3: www.photographie.com

Fig. 4: www.tate.org

Fig. 5: http://jalopnik.com

Fig. 6: www.creativepro.com

Fig. 7: http://voxpublica.no

Fig. 8: www.the232.blogspot.com

Fig. 9: www.packrat-rattoyz.com

Fig. 10: http://graphics8.nytimes.com

Fig. 11: http://graphics8.nytimes.com

Fig. 12: www.dailyinfo.co.uk

Fig. 14: http://moxie.moldova.org

Fig. 15: http://departments.risd.edu

Fig. 16: www.blumandpoe.com

Fig. 17: http://urbanlegends.about.com

Front cover adapted from a photo taken from www.artinfo.com. Below is the full picture.

41
BIBLIOGRAPHY
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WEBOLOGY

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assisted_suicide

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_Politics_in_the_United_States

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violence-to-endurance-extreme-curating-at-the-ica-495/

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http://ishotchrisburden.blogspot.com

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http//news.bbc.co.uk

43
- Kates, Don B.; 1990, “Gun Control: A Realistic Assessment”, November 2008,

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VIDEOGRAPHY

- July 2008; www.ubu.com; Burden, Chris; “Documentation of Selected Works 1971-74”;

1971-75; 34:38 min, colour and black and white, sound.

44