A Short Responce to Sol Lewitt's Paragraphs

I wasn’t even sure if it had happened to me? A trick of memory, maybe, but while I was thinking of “conceptual art” last week I started remembering about a guy a friend of mine had told me about several years ago. I couldn’t even remember his name, but the image was clear as day, as if it had happened to me. I was sure the visuals I had in my head were connected to me, in memory, by the outrageous idea of watching TV late one night in a half asleep state and then suddenly, between commercials, comes this man in his under ware, bound with his hands behind his back, slithering on his belly, for several seconds, through broken glass! The idea still brings a smile to my face; if not making me break silence altogether. I immediately looked it up on youtube, “man crawling through glass”, no hits. Then over to the Google, adding conceptual art, I got some hits and it became apparent that Chris Burden was my man. I found an article by Roger Ebert, which had, among many other pieces Chris Burden had done, the video in question linked; the full unedited 45 second version, followed by about 2 minutes of commercials in which the actual 10 second piece was sandwiched and Chris talks over. The piece is pretty brutal. Especially watching the full version; 45 seconds to soak up the full absurdity of it all; naked man slithering on the floor. Ok, pretty weird. but it almost reminded me a scene from the movie “Freaks”, it’s TV right? Then comes that stuff he’s slithering through, glass? and, oh, he’s bound as well and grunting. It surly takes a turn towards the disturbing. At the end of it all though, it can be dismissed as Chris Burden’s willing participation to make this video. And besides people walk through fire and sit on beds of nails and shove swords down their throats for entertainment, there’s nothing new of the grotesque as a kind of theatre. But it gets to the heart, I think, of what Sol Lewitt was “striking out” with, that this art form is about ideas and those ideas need to be carried out. There’s no way Chris knows my reaction and it doesn’t matter. Ideas have power. They live with us and inform us and can give shape to things; other ideas- like Sol was saying. I didn't live it. And then I remembered, I had seen a version of the clip before; the two minute one with the 10 second spot. That was plenty enough to get the idea across; less than 5 seconds of a man in his condition and I remembered it; the idea of disruption; that for what ever reason an image as disturbing as that can completely disrupt the passive flow of information that is television; despite, then being completely reabsorbed, like it never really happened. Except for some us, sometimes I suppose, who hold on to it as the face of brutality, making us smile during commercials, the image of Chris Burden, slithering in Black and White through his broken glass.

http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2009/10/the_agony_of_the_body_artist.html