SHOOT

first of all, how is this legal? The museum is an institution like the government and i am somewhat astonished that the museum allowed it to happen. When thinking about how no one stopped it, not the artist, not the shooter, and not the audience, one realizes why did not the people who work at or manage the museum stop it?

The article discusses how this art piece is critical of the vietnam war and how chris is somewhat a martyr but i feel like this is much different. It is shocking and masochistic but at the same time i don't think it expresses the strife of war but rather the intensity of art. It says in the article that he did not beliece that it was the same thing as war because he was shot at by a friend and not a foe, but at the same time he felt like he experienced somethign similar. My first question is, if it is similar to war then how can one be shot so non-chalantly and acceptingly? My other question is that many of the people who went to vietnam and experienced being shot at were forced to go, and Burden's artowrk "shoot" is entirely voluntarily.

Lastly, this artwork is described by Burden as being both public and private. It was public in the sense that people witnessed it, but it was private because it was such a small group of people who observed. My question is if he did this entirely privately, just him and the shooter, how would it affect the artwork, and likewise, if he did it entirely public in front of hundreds of people, how would that affect the artwork. Though it is hard to believe that nobody intervened during this situation, i feel like if their hundreds of people riots and protest could break out, and if done in private the artwork would be nearly meaningless because it would lose its believability. No matter what though, i think the artwork is incredibly astonishing and i am happy that someone had the guts to entertain an idea so shocking and profound.