Posted on 01/22/2005 9:57:24 AM PST by technomage
Two tenured art professors have resigned from the University of California, Los Angeles, because the school refused to suspend a graduate student who may have used a gun during a classroom performance art piece.
Chris Burden and Nancy Rubins, internationally known artists who taught at UCLA for more than two decades, filed their retirement papers Dec. 20.
"They feel this was sort of domestic terrorism. There should have been more outrage and a firmer response," said Sarah Watson, a director at a Beverly Hills gallery that represents the couple.
In the brief performance on Nov. 29, the student appeared to point a loaded handgun at his head and pull the trigger, a student and law enforcement officials told the Los Angeles Times.
The weapon didn't fire, but after the student left the room a noise that sounded like a gunshot was heard outside.
Police said no one was hurt and it wasn't known if the firearm was real. Prosecutors said there wasn't enough evidence for charges, said Jane Robison, a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office.
The student was allowed to continue his studies after the dean's office decided that suspension wasn't warranted.
Burden, 58, oversaw a program that includes performance, installation and video art, while Rubins, 52, taught sculpture.
Burden did performance art in the 1970s and his best-known performance featured an assistant shooting him in the arm with a .22-caliber rifle. That work was different because the audience never felt in jeopardy, while the UCLA performance inspired "genuine fear," Watson said.
[Chris Burden and Nancy Rubins, internationally known artists who taught at UCLA for more than two decades, filed their retirement papers Dec. 20.]
2 down. Several to go.
If they were burning a flag or defecating on a Bible, then that would have been just okeydokey.
Actually I agree with the artists. There are lines that shouldn't be crossed.
So funny. This is "domestic terrorism" but when Palestinians force Republicans and Jews off campus, it's just "free speech".
This was no "resignation", it was a ruse at taking an "early retirement". Which is exactly what these two did. Now they are going to relax, on high, at the expense of the taxpayer. Maybe even take up target shooting.
Hmmm . . . from a distance, I can't usually tell if a gun is loaded or not. Just more of your normal everyday irrational anti-gun hysteria.
our tax dollars at work.
I don't know what to say. I hate to be on the side of liberal art professors, but I know I would be pretty freaked out and disturbed if someone brought a gun into my classroom. On the other hand, contemporary "art" is so bizarre and un-artistic, that these profs really have no grounds to claim that using a gun wasn't "art" and was thus inappropriate.
Only that with the information provided, and occurring in LA, Kalifornia ... SOP.
Oh yeah ... Bye bye profs.
"What can you say? "
Indeed. A unique occurrence of two dog turds actually cleaning themselves off the carpet and throwing themselves in the rubbish. Who'd ever have guessed.
So like he left, but then like we heard a "boom" and like we were all like, "He killed himself?" Dude. That's some good art.
Question for the two professors:
If the student had used a real gun during the performance and used it to blow the head off of a George Bush effigy, would you have praised him and given him an "A"?
</world's smallest violin>
Actually I agree with the artists. There are lines that shouldn't be crossed.
Come on, we have seen similar stuff in plays. Think my high school play had a suicide episode. I will agree that it would help to know more about the context this was part of.
According to the modern standard of performance art, this student's skit is a masterpiece. Art is meant to move the heart - and this most certainly did, even if the audience didn't love what they were feeling.
240 to go!
All guns are loaded. To joke around with them like this is what should have sparked outrage.
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