During the month of September of 2006 I made a trip to Los Angeles, California, in search of details, traces and consequences of the legendary performance Shoot carried out by Chris Burden in 1971.
The project started out with the simple aim of having a conversation or interview with Burden himself but, as it evolved, my attention strayed more and more towards the elements that were thrown up during the complicated process of trying to persuade the artist to agree. I finally reached a point at which, without losing sight of my initial objective, these elements that I had gathered from all my meetings with people connected to the story, the information I had compiled, my visits to places associated with the performance and the very journey I made as part of my quest became the ingredients for my work.
The project’s title is taken from the name of the company which now occupies the premises that housed the F-Space gallery all those years ago, and which is engaged in printing and selling balloons. (incluir que aqui es donde sucedió el performance hace años) After several attempts, I finally managed to persuade the company owner, Gray, to let me look around the premises and to grant me the time I needed to tell him what had happened there thirty-five years before. During our conversation, I saw that he had become most curious about it all, and I thought that from that day on the place would never again seem the same to him. I also realised that my own reading of Shoot had changed. The time I had spent travelling and all the elements I had found had become inextricably related to the video, the photos and the texts on the performance that I was familiar with.
The documentation from this experience consists of some photographs I took during my exploration at "National Balloon" and a selection of forty-four drawings of sites, memories, interpretations, conversations and people involved over the course of the project.
46 drawings,
pencil on paper, 21 x 29.7 cm
and slideshow of 13 images
Produced by Barcelona Producció