“Vietnam had a lot to do with Shoot. It was about the difference between how people reacted to soldiers being shot in Vietnam and how they reacted to fictional people being shot on commercial TV. There were guys my age getting shot up in Vietnam, you know? But then in nearly every single household, there were images of people being shot in TV dramas. The images are probably in the billions, right? It’s just amazing. So, what does it mean not to avoid being shot, that is, by staying home or avoiding the war, but to face it head on? I was trying to question what it means to face that dragon.” (78)
“The physicality of Shoot was very real. The piece exists as a photographic image, but it exists as a mental image in people’s imaginations too, even for those who didn’t necessarily see the piece: ‘Did you hear about the artist who shot himself?’” (76)
-from an interview with Chris Burden in Broken Screen: Expanding the Images, Breaking the Narrative by Doug Aitken.
What’s funny is that video is evidence that something happened. If you don’t believe it, just watch the video. “The camera never lies.” Video evidence will hold up in court in a way that nothing else can. Videos are more reliable than eyewitness accounts. They’re objective, impartial, they’re the best proof we have available.
So Chris Burden, a video artist, has someone shoot him in the arm at close range. Oddly, there’s no video evidence of this event. There’s sound, and there are pictures of Chris Burden with a bandage on his arm. Did this even really happen? Did it even really need to happen? Chris Burden doesn’t seem to think so.
High Tech Folk Art 