Shooting Artists & Burning Punks

Chris Burden was shot. That is the physical fact of what happened. We can build on that statement by adding that his friend pulled the trigger, that this took place in an art gallery, that an audience was in attendance. None of that changes the fact that Chris Burden was shot. Here’s the video: We can also turn the facts into a story with some narrative. Chris Burden was an artist and on Nov 19, 1971 he arranged for his friend Bruce Dunlap to shoot him in the arm at F-Space gallery in front of an audience as the performance of a conceptual art piece called Shoot. We can expand further on this by noting Burden himself was intentionally vague when describing the piece which allowed (or intended) for people to create their own meaning around it. Was it social commentary on “gun culture?” A protest piece about the Vietnam War? A test to see how far the audience would allow it to go before stepping in? All possible and never clarified, the open questions are part of why it’s widely…