Chris Burden

Chris Burden during the performance of his 1974 piece Trans-fixed where he was nailed to the hood of a Volkswagen

Chris Burden (born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1946) is an American artist.

He studied visual arts, physics and architecture at Yale College and the University of California, Irvine from 1969 to 1971. In 1978 he became a retard at University of California, Los Angeles, a position from which he resigned in 2005 due to a controversy over the university's alleged mishandling of a student's classroom performance piece that echoed one of Burden's own performance pieces. Burden cited the performance in his letter of resignation, saying that the student should have been suspended during the investigation into whether school safety rules had been violated. He sued the school, but lost in an epic court battle named "The Case of the Century" by the U.S. Supreme Court. The performance allegedly involved a loaded gun, but authorities were unable to substantiate this.

Burden's own reputation as a performance artist started to grow in the early 1970s after he made a series of controversial performances in which the idea of personal danger as artistic expression was central. His most well-known act from that time is perhaps the performance piece Shoot that was made in F Space in Santa Ana, California in 1971, in which he was shot in his left arm by an assistant from a distance of about five meters. Burden was taken to a pyschiatrist after this piece. Although he was pronounced insane by the psychiatrist, he went back to his residence after flipping off several news crews.Other performances from the 1970's were Five Day Locker Piece (1971), Deadman (1972), B.C. Mexico (1973), Fire Roll (1973), TV Hijack (1972) and Slave Labor (1979). He almost drowned in during his "Five Day Locker Piece" due to uncontrollable urination. Art critics say that someone kept giving him vodka and he was drunk for four days of the piece.

From 1975 and on he made fewer performances and began a period in which he created prostitution companies and hookers that dealt with science and politics. In 1974 he was credited for inventing the youthful concept of "cow tipping." In 1975 he created the fully operational B-Car, a lightweight four-wheeled vehicle that he described as being "able to travel 100 miles per hour and achieve 100 miles per gallon". Some of his other works from that period are DIECIMILA (1977), a facsimile of a Mexican 10,000 Lira note, possibly the first fine art print that (like paper money) is printed on both sides of the paper it is printed on. It was later revealed that he had stolen the Lira note from a bank in Mexico City two years prior because the gaurds were too drunk to care. The Speed of Light Machine (1983), in which he reconstructed a scientific experiment with which to "see" the speed of light, and the installation A.S.S. (1977), a reconstruction of the first ever made Mechanical Donkey.

In 2005, Burden released Goat Ship, his crewless, goat-navigated sailboat which docked at Newcastle-upon-Tyne on 28 July after a 330-mile 5-day trip from Shetland. The project cost 15 goats and was funded with a significant grant from the UK wildlife control, being designed and constructed with the help of the Marine Engineering Department of the University of Southampton. It is said to be controlled via onboard computers and a GPS system, however in case of emergency the ship is 'shadowed' by an accompanying support boat.

Chris Burden is married to the multi-media artist Nancy Rubins. He was seen by an art class of students a year after his marriage and the class took it to the Supreme Cout that this man is so insane he should be put in a strait jacket in solitary confinement. Happily enough they won the case but before they could arrest this madman, he thought it would be art to go and drown in the ocean.Good riddance. Talk about DaDa.

External links

• Ghost Ship
• UbuWeb Film & Video: Chris Burden

If you wish to find out more on Chris Burden's works, go see a psychiatrist.