For this last of three blog posts I decided to attend Metrograph’s screening of the recently released documentary about Chris Burden simply titled Burden. I was a little disappointed to discover that the format of the documentary was fairly traditional but nonetheless, as a collection of Burden’s filmed performance art pieces it still is as awe-inspiring and disturbing as most experimental films I could’ve viewed instead. What was particularly interesting to me about the documentary, besides the fact that it allowed me to see more of Burden’s pieces beyond the three we watched together in class, was that it essentially lifted the veil, or the camera if you will, and allowed for a contextualization of both the man and his work. For example, in class we watched the piece in which he had someone shoot him with a shotgun from just a few feet away; which needless to say was impressive and thought provoking on its own. But the documentary shined a light on the fact that it was a friend of his who he had tasked with shooting him and that the piece had actually gone wrong as this friend has, despite numerous rehearsals, moved a bit to the left as he pulled the trigger resulting in a more serious injury than the one intended. This sparked so many questions in me as to the possible deterioration of the two men’s relationship following the incident but most of all about whether the very presence of the camera, which I assume wasn’t there during rehearsals, had affected the shooter’s judgement and decision on shooting day (pun intended). If it was just him and his friend Burden in the room unobserved would he perhaps have been more careful and less likely to injure him more than was intended? Did the presence of a camera make him, as a figure in the art world, less concerned with the well-being of his friend in favor of posterity and the power of the final product? Equally fascinating was the insight into Burden’s personal life at the time of his most daring pieces. It was during those years that he was, off camera and out of the studio, living a rather normal and domesticated life. I’m not quite sure what conclusion to make from that but for someone who, despite his recording of his pieces, sees himself as a performance artist rather than a filmmaker it does make sense that non-domesticated or tumultuous years would not lend themselves to risky or disturbing pieces as the live being lived at this time is already that. I found that to be quite a powerful piece of food for thought on what motivates us to do what we do. Interjected between footage of his pieces were short interviews of Burden on the farm that he lived on in his later years and up until his death in 2015. He described himself as having changed and no longer being interested in the kind of performance art pieces which he did during his youth and I couldn’t help but to think that all of it had taken a toll on him and that he perhaps had ventured a bit too far into the possibilities of reality and the limits of mortality to the point of, for lack of a better word, scaring himself straight. It reminded me of talking to people who had lived through the 60’s and greatly experienced with psychedelics but now, rather disappointingly, dismiss these adventures as youthful antics.