Big Wrench

Chris Burden

1980, 15:12 min, color, sound

In this narrative performance for video, Burden tells the story of his relationship with a truck named "Big Job." To relate his autobiographical monologue, he sits deadpan before the camera with moving images of the truck behind him. Writes Burden, "During a six-month period, while the artist...

Documentation of Selected Works 1971-74

Chris Burden

1971-75, 34:38 min, color and b&w, sound

Chris Burden's provocative, often shocking conceptual performance pieces of the early 1970s retain their raw and confrontational force in these dramatic visual records, shot on Super-8, 16mm film, and half-inch video. Guided by the artist's candid, explanatory comments on both the works and the...

The Big Wheel

Chris Burden. In collaboration with Willoughby Sharp and Robert Burden. 

1980, 29:02 min, color, sound

During the 1980 exhibition of Burden's monumental kinetic sculpture The Big Wheel at Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, New York, Burden and Feldman were interviewed by art critic Willoughby Sharp. Burden articulates the process of creating The Big Wheel, a 6,000-pound, spinning cast-iron flywheel that is...

The TV Commercials 1973-1977

Chris Burden

1973-77/2000, 3:46 min, color, sound

The TV Commercials is a recent compilation of Burden's four legendary television interventions, which date from 1973 to 1977. For each of these conceptual projects, Burden purchased commercial time on broadcast television and aired his own subversive "ads." Included are TV Ad: Through the Night Softly; Poem for L.A.; Chris Burden Promo, and Full Financial Disclosure.

Willoughby Sharp Videoviews Chris Burden

Willoughby Sharp

1973-75, 27:45 min, b&w, sound

A videotaped interview ("videoview") of Chris Burden by Willoughby Sharp takes place by a swimming pool on a sunny California day. Burden talks about such subjects as his progression as a performance artist, what America thinks about life as art, and his relationship to his own body.