Last Wednesday evening at SCI-Arc's weekly visiting-artist forum, Burden described it like this: "I wanted to build a little skyscraper that a couple guys with a donkey could put up, and when the neighbor calls the building inspector, the guys can take it down again and build it somewhere else . . . then the neighbors might call back up again and say, 'Hey, wait, now it's up on the hill.'"
This scenario elicited evil giggles from most of the rumpled architecture students and professional downtown types at the lecture. But gasps rippled through the gathering when Burden later addressed the current high-end-museum building craze, asserting that a museum's buildings should function primarily to "keep the wind and rain off the art."
Burden was initially a sculptor and then a performance artist (he's most famous for Shoot, the 1971 performance in which a friend shot him in the arm). The artist's new pieces harness the unexplored possibilities of space. He's built a series of small-scale cantilever bridges from Erector Set toys, and sprawling, room-size urban landscapes from ephemeral junk. "The doing is the art," Burden said. He described his work in general as "performative," whether it's performance art alone or a veering off toward inhabitable space as an installation that lets others undergo the "doing." He pointed out that architecture is inherently experiential this way — obviously you are doing something when you're in it.
Interpreting Los Angeles County's building codes in his favor, Burden explained that Small Skyscraper is "quasi-legal" because in the county you may build small outbuildings (sheds or greenhouses) up to 35 feet high, as long as they do not exceed a 400-square-foot envelope. Burden came upon the loophole when he was designing a studio for his own property back in 1994. With the Small Skyscraper design he could build almost a whole house without a single building permit. For Manhattan architects Alan Koch and Linda Taalman, who recently curated the Houses X Artists exhibition series (the L.A. incarnation is up now at the MAK Center at the Schindler House), they saw in Burden's crafty scheme a potential project that melded their design interests with his arty experimentation. They contacted him to offer their "architectonic" services.
Burden already had the design and some rough drawings worked out, but, he says, "I wanted it to float, like a houseboat . . . and originally the design called for cement blocks and steel." Koch and Taalman knew they could make the tower superlight, movable and collapsible with the right materials. They convinced Burden to use aluminum tubing (the kind used in office furniture and cubicle construction) as the skyscraper's main building element. To Chris Burden's delight, Small Skyscraper is now able to pop up in almost any site — in the desert, on the beach, off a cliff, even hunkered down in Topanga Canyon (where it will end up in August).
Following the question-and-answer period at the SCI-Arc lecture, Burden called his collaborators "the nuts and bolts" of the project since they helped with materials and with composing the blueprints. But he confessed (thankfully not in front of too many architects), "I don't really like computer drawings." Then, the feisty artist, perhaps remembering that this all started with the typical suburban homeowner's desire to add on, said, "But it's my concept . . . and I didn't find the loophole, I made up the loophole."
—Wendy Gilmartin
We Have Our Issues
LOOKING BACK AT
25 YEARS OF L.A. WEEKLY
In the euphoria of this stunning victory, the White House may well opt to expand the permanent war economy and to replay the easy victory somewhere else. But there are restraints to moving in this direction . . . The politically sophisticated generals, who crafted the Gulf operation, having restored the reputation of the armed forces, are in no hurry to risk it again. They understand that other crises will not offer such promising terrain and that long, inconclusive wars are just as dangerous to the health of the military as they were before President Bush announced that he had exorcised the Vietnam Sydrome. But the most powerful restraint is the growing awareness of the limitation of financial resources and the weakening of the American economy as a result of neglect of domestic investment.
—Richard J. Barnet "Now What? The War and Its Aftermath," March 8, 1991
