Ghost Ship, 2005
thirty-foot handmade sixern sailboat, computers and software, hydraulics, Global Positioning System, auto rudder, rigging; Mast: 360 in (914.4 cm); Overall: 72 x 102 x 360 in (182.9 x 259 x 914.4 cm)
Courtesy the artist and Gagosian Gallery
© The Locus+ Archive

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Ghost Ship (2005) is probably one of my favorite artworks by the late American artist CHRIS BURDEN. The project involved the construction of a crewless, self-navigating sailing boat that the artist guided remotely by a computer, on a 400-mile journey from off the coast of Scotland down to Newcastle during the Tall Ships race in July 2005.

The project consisted also to develop its own specifically designed website used to show and archive the projects development; during the sailing itself photographic footage and to the progress reports.

You have to tack and you are trying to get to a point but to tack to get there you have to integrate the different elements like wind speed, and wind angle. It’s theoretically possible I believe, I don’t know of anyone who has done it yet. I know there is a little contest of model sailboats in England that was approaching that but I never really followed up on that. The Ghost Ship was semi autonomous, in other words you couldn’t really put in latitude and longitude and there were British Maritime laws and we had to be on a mother ship, basically it was a giant radio controlled sail boat. You still couldn’t dial in the latitude and longitude but it was a step in the right direction. They were both about the same theme. I believe it’s possible and it will probably happen someday because it makes sense. Why wouldn’t you want a freighter with only one or two crew members on board? Why wouldn’t you use the wind to sail across the ocean? – CHRIS BURDEN in conversation with GARY WISEMAN, November 2011

Ghost Ship (2015) offered a popular science point of entry into understanding the complexities of universal technologies.  And as with much of CHRIS BURDEN’s work this body of work cannot be reproduced and exists only in a certain place and time, recorded only through carefully selected video and photographic documentation.

In a certain kind of sense I am trying to push a limit. I did about 70 performances and I thought of myself as a sculptor too. That is how I got into performances. I think the first time, after graduate school, that I didn’t do a performance was the B-Car. That was a change in my career because I was supposed to go to Europe and do two performances, but then came up with this idea of building a car that I could build myself, that would be revolutionary, and showing the car in one space and then driving it to the second venue in Paris, where I had a show, would constitute the “performance”. That’s how I got there. Yeah, I think there is a question about where the limits are and the B-Car was tiny, I could pick it up. I could hold it over my head. – CHRIS BURDEN in conversation with GARY WISEMAN, November 2011

After its maiden and only voyage, Ghost Ship (2005) hung on the façade of the New Museum as part of the Façade Sculpture Program from September 2013 to January 2015.

Please note that an exhibition of recent sculptures by CHRIS BURDEN opened at Gagosian Le Bourget on May 2 and will remain on view till September 19, 2015.

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