Chris Burden s Free Physics<br >Kristine Stiles<br >"Barring radical new anti-proliferation steps， a terrorist nuclear strike will occur somewhere in the<br >world in the next ten years: Harvard professor Graham Allison asserts and offers a standing bet of<br >51 -to-49 odds on his data. Statistics like these would intrigue Chris Burden. Burden s retort to this<br >wager would， no doubt， come from the same scientific turn of mind that enabled him to visualize the<br >numerical abstractions underpinning his installation "The Reason for the Neutron Bomb: 1979，2 and<br >from a similar critical irony that produced "Warning， Relax or You Will Be Nuked AgainF 1980.<br >Burden is a skeptic who is sensitive to political circumstance.3 But his many objects and installations<br >on the militarized international situation and other social issues must be differentiated from "political"<br >art， which is too close to what he identifies as "dogma and propaganda" and too far from "free<br >physics: Given Burden s background in science， I interpret "free physics" to signal a manner of<br >working that translates data from the interaction of matter and energy in nature and culture into visual<br >models. Burden s art， then， may best be described as an analytic visual process， grounded in a quality<br >of conscience that includes principles of reason， ethics， and morality， absent the blinding constraints<br >of ideology<br >Burden s aesthetics reflect Minimalism， a style that in its pared down form is sympathetic to the<br >investigatory methods of science. "1 always thought of myself as a minimalist， both in how I conceived<br >of the works being Spartan and to the point~ Burden observes， "and in the way I presented the work<br >both in written form and photographic forms~ "747" is a good example of this minimalist aesthetic and<br >his practice of "free physics~ The text for the action and the photograph of Burden aiming a gun at a<br >747 in the sky is terse: "At about 8 a.m. at a beach near the Los Angeles International Airport， I fired<br >several shots with a pistol at a Boeing 747~ However distilled， Burden s action took place within a<br >complex political situation that included ten international hijackings and terrorist acts on airplanes<br >between 1968 and January 5， 1973， the date he performed "747~ and， prophetically， some ten similar<br >events on airplanes that followed between February 1973 and September 11，2001 ." However<br >conscious of the increase in aeronautic terrorism at the time， Burden s motivation was subtler than a<br ><br >