Boy research on Chris Burden and El-Anatsui

Christopher "Chris" Burden : performance of dangerous act. - (born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1946) is an American artist working in performance, - sculpture, and installation art. - B.A. in visual arts, physics and architecture at Pomona College and received his MFA at the   University of California, Irvine. - Married to multi-media artist Nancy Rubins.[2] He currently lives and works in Los Angeles, - he made a series of controversial performances in which the idea of personal danger as artistic expression.

His most well-known act :  Shoot, in which he was shot in his left arm by an assistant from a distance of 5 meters. Its performance art, relating to the vietnam war. A large crowd gathered and watched him get shot in person. The purpose was to show you what really happens when someone gets shot and how it happens all the time in vietnam, and then later it makes you think of the underlying question, why didn't i do something to stop the guy from shooting chris...

Doomed : lied down in the meseum under  the slanted sheet of glass near a  running wall clock. until someone will  interfear. 45 hours 10 min. museum  employee placed bucket of water nearby  and  smash the glass.  The purpose is to see how people react to  the situation, waiting whether anyone would  come to rescue him.




   


 Trans-Fixed :  Burden lay face up on a Volkswagen Beetle and had nails hammered into both  of his hands, being crucified on the car. At speeedway. With engine start for 2 mins.

Five Day Locker Piece (1971).
He spent 5 days locked in a two-foot by two-foot locker.

Immeidately above Burden was a 5-gallon supply of water, while the locker below him contained an empty 5-gallon jug. He remained crammed in this space for the entire 5 days without food.

Fire Roll, 1973. “I began the evening watching television, smoking and drinking beer. The other artists were preparing their pieces. People were filling the museum and my activity went almost unnoticed. After about an hour I got up and went around the room turning off all the lights. I had a pair of old pants which had been passed around by many of my friends. I placed the pants on the floor and saturated them in lighter fluid. I lit the pants on fire and extinguished the flames with my body. I turned on the lights and returned to watching television.”

I think the  purpose of this is to redlect that fire can happen at anytime but even something unfortunate had happened but we can still continue our daily life or return to our activity the same. Also to prove that by watching television, it doen’t attract any attention but the fire does.

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El Anatsui is a Ghanaian sculptor , in Nigeria. born 1944.  Born in Anyako, and trained at the College of Art, University of Science and Technology, in Kumasi, in central Ghana. He began teaching at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, in 1975, and has become affiliated with the Nsukka group. Even though his prefered media are clay and wood but many of his works are in metalic.

Mostly, his works are cloth-like sheet They are made up of something metalic but made to look like a cloth or a crumple fabric which metal and fabric have totally opposite physical property. I think that contrary of metalic and fabric is the fascination of the work that attract people to come and have a closer look or to “kissing the architect”.