BURDEN (Timothy Marrinan, Richard Dewey). 90 minutes. Opens Wednesday (March 15). See listing. Rating: NNN
Perhaps you’ve heard that Tilda Swinton curled up for a snooze in a glass display case at MoMA back in 2013. Her performance piece, The Maybe, was bite-sized compared to the one pioneering performance artist Chris Burden pulled off four decades earlier in Bed Piece. Swinton put in a couple of hours at a time Burden went 22 days.
Timothy Marrinan and Richard Dewey’s doc doesn’t bother pointing to all the subsequent artists who owe a debt to Burden, whose most notorious work included having a friend put a bullet through his arm (1971’s Shoot) or having himself crucified on a Volkswagen Beetle (1974’s Trans-fixed).
The filmmakers keep things simple and straightforward, focusing on Burden’s work and leaving it to you to see his relevance and influence today, from Jackass stunts to the nauseating “social experiments” by YouTubers like Coby Persin. (“Let’s pay two homeless people to arm wrestle.”)
Critics and friends recount debates about whether Burden was an artist or merely a provocateur. However, they shy away from his most disturbing behaviour, in particular his use of the women in his life in sadistic exhibitions. The respectful filmmakers fail to press matters, and their interview with Burden himself, filmed before his death in 2015, merely introduces the gentler soul he had become.
The doc’s most interesting when drawing a through line from Burden’s morally dubious, death-wish antics from the 70s to his later feats of engineering like Medusa’s Head, Metropolis II and Urban Light – eye-catching installations that look to the future with trepidation and awe.
The style and medium may seem like polar opposites, but it takes the same obsessive and boundless energy to do both.
I doubt Coby Persin will ever impress us this way.
