Vito Acconci

For Seven Easy Pieces Marina Abramovic reenacted five seminal performance works by her peers, dating from the 1960's and 70's, and two of her own, interpreting them as one would a musical score. The project confronted the fact that little documentation exists from this critical early period and one often has to rely upon testimony from witnesses or photographs that show only portions of any given performance. The seven works were performed for seven hours each, over the course of seven consecutive days, November 9 –15, 2005 at the Guggenheim Museum, in New York City. Seven Easy Pieces examines the possibilities of representing and preserving an art form that is, by nature, ephemeral.

Inspired in form by American police TV shows and soap operas, The Golden Boat is a madcap, surreal dash through the streets of New York city, telling the mysterious and often hilarious story of an aged street-person named Austin, a comically compulsive assassin, as he joins up with a young rock critic and philosophy student named Israel Williams. In the course of their adventures, Austin pursues his object of desire - a Mexican soap opera star - and along the way engages a host of TV characters and bit players, whose repartee range from gangsterish insults to the question of God's existence.

A three-part video epic in which avant-garde artist Vito Acconci explores the relationship between the self and national mythology. Through multiple vignettes, Acconci brings together a collage of music, photographs, diorama, experimental theater and his own profile, to tell a semi-autobiographical narrative that, in turn, becomes a critique of the alienated quality of American mythology.

"Super-8 camera held out before him as shield and surrogate, Acconci pushes through a landscape of dense reeds and overgrowth. Break-Through records this search for a pause or clearing in what, for the viewer, amounts to an abstracted and scarcely differentiated visual field." - Electronic Arts Intermix

In Face of the Earth, Acconci's face becomes a metaphorical theater for a narrative drama of the mythic American landscape. Eyes closed, his face filling the screen in extreme close-up, the camera looking up from his chin, he inhabits a dreamlike, intensely theatrical space. Alternately humming and whispering, Acconci begins an oddly poetic, hypnotic monologue, a stream-of-consciousness fantasy of a gunfighter in the American West. "As if I were riding in from over the mountains... Where did I come from?" His fingers run over the landscape of his face in the rhythm of a galloping horse, or caress it as the narrative tension builds. With language as a catalyst, he conducts a riveting examination of his own identity through American cultural mythologies.

An epic meditation on psychoanalysis, the Baader-Meinhof, feminism, and pre-revolutionary Russia.

This early performance tape is an example of what Acconci has termed his "quasi-ESP exercises," in which he explores mental concentration and intuition as a means of non-visual and non-verbal perception, interaction and communication. Blindfolded and wearing earplugs, Acconci and another man attempt to intuit and imitate each other's movements and bearing, though they can neither hear nor see.

Poet and artist Vito Acconci points his finger towards the camera and his own reflection in an offscreen video monitor.

“In this legendary sculpture/performance Acconci lay beneath a ramp built in the Sonnabend Gallery. Over the course of three weeks, he masturbated eight hours a day while murmuring things like, "You're pushing your cunt down on my mouth" or "You're ramming your cock down into my ass." Not only does the architectural intervention presage much of his subsequent work, but all of Acconci's fixations converge in this, the spiritual sphincter of his art. In Seedbed Acconci is the producer and the receiver of the work's pleasure. He is simultaneously public and private, making marks yet leaving little behind, and demonstrating ultra-awareness of his viewer while being in a semi-trance state.” – Jerry Saltz (via: http://www.ubu.com/film/acconci_seedbed.html)

"You’re Going to Die!" is a children’s story exploring one simple idea ad nauseum bonum. This video treatment by Dennis Palazzolo adapts prose by Timothy Furstnau using original footage and clips lifted from famous movies, and features the close-mic’d muttering voiceover of artist Vito Acconci.

Acconci imitates the sounds of war, gunfire and explosion; he thrusts his face, stomach or penis onto the screen. His childlike battle sounds are interrupted with monologues in which he defines himself as an American, with ironic references to cultural cliches and stereotypes. "Yeah, I'm an American. I can't help it... I'm not trying to parody America now. I'm not trying to parody myself. I really do like Coca Cola. I'm not acting, this is really the truth. I really do like it..." He asserts his cultural identity only to reject it: "No, I have an Italian name, my father's Italian. I'm not really American at all, I have a tradition, I have a culture." Vulgar and outrageous, Acconci plays out the nightmare of the American Dream. He waves his penis at the camera, raging, "The savage American is here! I'm everyone's clown, I'm everyone's fool."

Acconci lies naked on a gurney-like table, rocking back and forth as a tape-loop of his voice describes his anxieties about exposing his body and his artwork. Writes the artist: "My voice functions as a scenario that keeps me confined to the bed: once I've exposed my fears and shames publicly, then I might be able to face them in private."

Face-Off is an ironic collusion of private and public, of exposure and masking, a tense ritual wherein Acconci divulges and then censors his self-revelations. Acconci turns on a reel-to-reel audiotape recorder and bends down to the speaker to listen to it, his face barely visible in the frame. The audio is a recording of his own voice addressing himself and the viewer, recounting intimate details about his life. However, whenever the material becomes too personal, he tries to drown out his voice and prevent the viewer from hearing, yelling: "No, no, no, don't tell this, don't reveal this...." Reacting to his recorded voice, he becomes increasingly agitated as the tape proceeds.

Acconci's open mouth is framed by the camera in an extreme close-up, bringing the viewer uncomfortably close. A desperate sense of strained urgency comes across as Acconci gasps, "I'll accept you, I won't shut down, I won't shut you out.... I'm open to you, I'm open to everything.... This is not a trap, we can go inside, yes, come inside...." Acconci continues to plead in this way for the length of the tape, his mouth held unnaturally wide open. The pathological psychology of such enforced openness betrays a desperate struggle to accept and be accepted by others. The sustained image of Acconci's open mouth also evidences a sinister, vaguely threatening streak that is more or less evident in much of Acconci's work.

The artist, covered in flour, tries to blow the flour off his skin.

"Recording Studio From Air Time is a personal confessional in which video is both a mirror and a mediating device. Alone in an "isolation chamber" in the gallery every day for two weeks, Acconci sat with the camera focused at his reflection in a mirror. To the gallery public, his image was seen on a video monitor, while his voice was heard through audio speakers. Isolated in his confessional, Acconci begins a stream-of-consciousness monologue about his five-year relationship with a woman, recounting explicit details of their life together and his most intimate feelings towards her. "I'm talking to you so that I can see myself the way you see me," he states. "I'm acting something out for them." Becoming increasingly disdainful and cruel, he ultimately decides to end the relationship. In Air Time, video is a vehicle for both an extremely intimate introspection, and for the transmission of this self-examination into the public sphere." - EAI

A ten minute super-8mm work from 1970 by Vito Acconci.

"In one of his earliest films, Acconci performs a series of actions — running in a circle, jumping, pushing another man — in which the physical limits of the action refer to the boundaries of the film frame itself." - Electronic Arts Intermix

Acconci oftens performs controlled actions as if he had entered into a contractual agreement to test his physical limitations. In Grass/Mouth, Acconci ingests grass until he chokes; in Hair/Mouth, he fills his mouth with the hair from a woman's head.

"A long narrow corridor, leading to the camera—at one side, a window—sun streams in, splotches of light and dark, the corridor shimmers. I'm at the far end—walking back and forth, humming, biding my time. Then I talk to the viewer—rather, to a specific viewer: 'So you're finally there—I've waited for you—you had to be there first.' I walk around the camera, still humming, talking now and then, but waiting till I'm close before I come down hard. I'm close up—only my lips on screen—too close, blurred: 'You want to hear about her—her hair is blonde, your hair could never be like hers—she has her own life, I'm interested in what she's thinking, we could never have had a relationship like this.' I back off, leave 'you' hanging, go back to the other end—but I come back, I don't leave 'you' alone." - Vito Acconci

"Acconci spars with his close-up image in a mirror. He then breaks the mirror, destroying his image." - Electronic Arts Intermix

A super-8mm short from Vito Acconci

The two-channel piece Remote Control is an exercise in manipulation and control between artist and subject, male and female. On separate channels, the viewer sees Acconci and Kathy Dillon sitting alone in wooden boxes in different rooms, each facing a static camera. Although they can only see and hear each other on separate monitors, they attempt to interact and respond to one another directly, as if their communication were unmediated. Through language and gesture, Acconci tries to manipulate Dillon's actions from his box, as though by remote control.

Documentation of an evening of three simultaneous performances (Terry Fox, Dennis Oppenheim, Vito Acconci), in January 1971. In each alcove a light bulb hangs from the ceiling above a canvas that covers the ground. In Acconci's alcove, a clock is hung on the back wall; staring at the second hand, the artist repeats its movement around the light bulb.1971, 2:47 min, color, silent, Super 8mm film on video