Documentation of Selected Works 1971 – 74

Chris Burden, Documentation of Selected Works 1971-74, 1971-1975, single-channel video, color and black and white, sound; 34:38 minutes, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase made possible by the Ford Motor Company, 2007.33.11, © 1975 Chris Burden. Courtesy Electronic Arts Intermix, NY

Artwork Details

Title: Documentation of Selected Works 1971 – 74
Artist: Chris Burden
Date: 1971-1975
Location: Not on view
Copyright: © 1975 Chris Burden. Courtesy Electronic Arts Intermix, NY
Credit Line: Museum purchase made possible by the Ford Motor Company
Mediums: film
video
Mediums Description: single-channel video, color and black and white, sound; 34:38 minutes
Classifications: Media Arts
Highlights: Time-Based Media
Object Number: 2007.33.11
Linked Open Data: https://edan.si.edu/saam/id/object/2007.33.11

Artwork Description

The relative domestic peace of the 1950s was shattered in the wake of the Watts Riots and the escalation of the Vietnam War, as national television broadcast protests, rage, wounded veterans, and body bags directly into American living rooms. Chris Burden’s radical “performance pieces” of the early 1970s were provocative and monstrously raw physical responses to the social and political moment. He placed himself in solitary confinement, lying down in traffic, encircling himself with fire, allowing himself to be shot, dragging himself across shards of glass, and attempting to breathe water. These actions were performed live, in front of spectator-participants, but they were also captured through still photographs, video, and film, the primary languages of mass media. Documentation of Selected Works 1971-74 compiles Burden’s deliberate struggles to repossess his own body in relation to exercises of power and self-determination.

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