Artist Chris Burden was good at keeping secrets. For example, it came as a shock to most people that, when he passed away on May 10, he had been battling cancer. Another longer-standing secret was the identity of the participant in Burden’s 1971 performance piece “Shoot,” where a person only identified as Bruce (in the narration of a video of the performance) shot Burden in the left arm with a .22 gauge rifle.
Now director Eric Kutner reveals the secret identity of the shooter in a New York Times Op-Doc “‘Shot in the Name of Art’,” a short documentary on Bruce Dunlap, the friend and fellow art student (at the time) who agreed to participate in “Shoot” but whose life took a much different road after college.