Samson

Samson (1985) consists of a 100 ton jack connected to a gear box and a turnstile. The jack pushes two large timbers against the walls of the gallery. Each visitor to the exhibition must pass through the turnstile and each input on the turnstile ever so slightly expands the jack, and ultimately, if enough people visit the exhibition, Samson could, theoretically, destroy the building. Chris Burden is a central figure of a generation of antiauthoritarian artists who in the late 1960s and early 1970s saw museums as institutions representing “the establishment.” In this respect, Land Art, Conceptual Art and Performance Art emerged as alternative propositions aligned in spirit to social movements such as the equal rights movement and antiwar student rebellions that challenged the status quo. The institutional critique in Samson is brutal and subtle simultaneously: by forcing spectators to pass through the turnstile in order to satisfy their curiosity, Burden assigns t hem equal culpability in the potential destruction of the gallery space.