Documentation of Selected works assembles the documentation pertaining to eleven works performed by Chris Burden between 1971 and 1974, preceded by a brief introduction in which the artist warns spectators about what they're about to see: not performances, but the documentary material resulting from it; not the work produced by the artist in recent years, but a basic selection dictated by constraints, since not all of the artist's interventions were filmed. 

This rhetorical precaution, far from being anodyne, shows an artist who is aware of the limits of his medium of choice. When Chris Burden recalls the irreducible distance separating the performance from its documentation, he is reversing the very foundations of some of his performances, which create physical experiences from collective fantasies, and confront a representation with its most concrete reality. It is from this perspective that the performance Shoot has meaning, in which Chris Burden receives a rifle bullet in the arm: "No, it's not theatre. Theatre is watered down, if you see what I mean? […] Getting shot, that's for real." [1]

By specifying that these few minutes of video are not representative of the totality of his work, Chris Burden seems conscious of the fact that filming inevitably involves selecting, cutting a fragment of reality that will be showcased, and reciprocally, that will allow what has not been selected to be forgotten. But which reality should be chosen? In Chris Burden's work, the reality that is most suitable for filming, the most telegenic, it that of his shortest performances that present the most visual action: in short, the most violent performances. We will therefore not be surprised to find the famous performance Shoot among the eleven works selected, but also Through the Night Softly (a performance from 1973 in which Chris Burden crawls bare-chested through crushed glass, intended to recall the night sky) or Icarus (showing Chris Burden lying with two glass plates placed on his shoulders, which will later be covered in petrol and set alight). Through this selection of his most spectacular performances, Chris Burden upholds the image of a shocking artist that was to follow him his whole life. The rhetorical precautions placed at the start of the reels appear to be designed to counteract in advance this reductive approach to the artist's work: Chris Burden, "the artist who got shot".

The relationships that Chris Burden maintains with the media were to be deeply marked by this emphasis on his most spectacular performances. Documentation of Selected works also shows his pedagogical side, his concern for contextualizing the images presented. Although all of the works include a voiceover commentary, the artist provides more detail for the images of performances that are the least directly telegenic. This is namely the case for the performance Bed Piece, based on the inactivity of the artist – Chris Burden deciding to install a bed in an art gallery and to stay there throughout the exhibition period – as well as the performance Deadman, which, taking place at night, out of doors, is only documented by images that are very hard to make out.

Yet Chris Burden does not hesitate to play with his enduring image. The performance Back to You, shown in 1974, relies partly on the artist's diabolical reputation and the expectation that it arouses in the spectator. For this performance, Chris Burden is separated from the audience and solemnly asks for a volunteer from the crowd. The volunteer is not yet aware that he will have to press the tacks into the artist's body himself, and that his action will be simultaneously broadcast to the audience on a television set. The spectator, potentially also becoming an actor, torturer, or artist, is thus violently confronted with his initial status as a spectator, and with the potential reality of the images that are presented to him on a daily basis by the mass media. In 1973, this confrontation between the real and the televisual had already left the domain of the gallery to be displayed on the screens of hundreds of thousands of television viewers, when Chris Burden bought television advertising space for the work TV Ad, consisting of ten seconds of the performance Through the Night Softly. By showing TV Ad and Through the Night Softly as separate entities, Documentation of Selected Works only underlines what differentiates them: on the one hand the trace of a real past, that of the performance, and on the other, a video work. Whether or not the images are the same...  

Philippe Bettinelli

[1] “Chris Burden… Back to you”, interview with Liza Béar, Avalanche Newspapers, May 1974, p.12-13. Cited by Sophie Delpeux “Chris Burden. Habiter l’étrange zone grise”, Cahiers du MNAM, n°107, p.77-89.