New Media in Art, 104--114

This section mentioned Chris Burden, whom I have already heard about quite a lot during my time in school. He was a pretty extreme performance artist, and I find him really interesting and oddly inspiring. Even though I don't think I could ever pull off the kind of stuff he did, I still think that his willingness to push the limits of performance was incredible. He did some stuff that actually caused him physical harm, which is really intense, but he also made people think about the concepts of violence and pain. What do people think of those? How do they feel about it? Why do they feel that way? Why is is jarring to see someone rolling in glass when it's real, but not when it's faked for a movie or something? I think sometimes people get wrapped up in action movies and such, and we see movie violence on a regular basis, but seeing things like what Chris Burden did for performance was quite different and it really caught people's attention in a different way even if they didn't really like the pieces he did.