Chris Burden's work is often misunderstood, pigeon-holed as attention-seeking works of shock and danger. At first glance, this is what his most iconic works seem to be - How can Shoot, in which he is shot in the arm, be concerned with anything other than blatant shock value, art to the extreme? Even such works of this scale, though, have a subtly. Burden is interested in interaction, control over the self and the situation and how the masculine complex and our human faculties in general can be unpacked through performance. Shoot, for example, is a scene of violence, yet relies on so much more to convey what the artist is saying. Burden has to trust the marksman to hit his arm, and vice versa has to be trusted not to move. The audience have to trust both performers in this way. So, the act becomes less about violence and more about ethics and interaction - trust in human relationships, power, conscience and submission. The fact that the piece was filmed off campus with a select audience and little publicity shows a deliberate avoidance of sensationalism, drama and offence, which can often draw attention away from the intellectual dialogue of a performance. Chris Burden seeks truth through means of perception and sense. For example, in White Light/White Heat he spent 22 days lying on a platform that concealed himself from the audience, giving them the option to believe or not believe he was there, to sense his presence or accept the failure of their eyes to see what hey were told was there and walk away. Again, we come back to ideas of trust, conscience and the power of the artist. Burden becomes a character in the balance of power in social engagement and weakness in the role of others, proving his practice to be much more than simply masochistic. Two elements of White Light/White Heat have particular relevance to my own creative process - references to popular culture within titles or the subject matter of the piece itself (in this case a Velvet Underground song of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62ckXALWn1M) can give the work a depth and relatability beyond the confines of the artists original intentions, if used considerately. Also, ideas of solitude and isolation (in terms of the individual artist and in broader human experience) are explored in the piece, interestingly utilized to the extreme of the artist no longer being visible. There are a number of devices Burden makes use of which make his work so effective. Firstly, he puts himself at eye level (intellectually) with an audience, giving priority to emotional, moral and spiritual human experience with symbolic references (to religious, historical and literary matters) becoming a secondary function of the work. He also solves the dilemma of exhibiting physical manifestations of his ideas without compromising the nature of ephemeral work in the form of 'relics' - objects used within the performances which, alongside written descriptions of the event, symbolise the ideas conveyed. Lastly, as discussed, he uses striking and sometimes violent imagery not to offend but as a tool within a wider conversation causing his work to be just as much about fragility, survival and light as it is about violence, death and darkness.