In Shoot (Burden), how is the Analysis discussed?
Burden said that the performance came from the common folklore and televisual motif of getting shot in America, whether real or faked, without knowing how it actually felt. The performance was then to feel what he only experienced visually. Additionally, themes from the Vietnam War were frequent on American television news during the time of the performance.Burden displayed a high degree of control in the work's presentation. In the artist's self-published documentation of the work, the relics of the performance and its text are terse and leave the reader to infer the performance's narrative. Burden himself referred to the photographs as symbols.Commentators have also noted the role of non-intervention on the part of the performance's attendees, that in a bystander effect, no one contested the potentially deadly action.
Vietnam War bystander effect