Vito Acconci

Explores some of the most innovative attempts by contemporary artists, filmmakers, architects etc to explore multiple Temporalities and to counter the uniform sense of time promoted by our technology-driven society.

A probing portrait of Chris Burden, an artist who took creative expression to the limits and risked his life in the name of art.

Documentary about the Mekons.

Chelsea on the Rocks celebrates the personalities and artistic voices that have emerged from New York’s legendary Chelsea Hotel. Once considered an untouchable, impenetrable tower for writers, artists, musicians and mavericks, it has been recently claimed as a boutique hotel venture for a management company that shows disregard for its formidable history. –Cannes Film Festival

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.

"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.

"Steven Holl: The Body in Space" explores the career of the innovative, highly renowned American architect. In this portrait Holl presents some of his most acclaimed works, including the Makuhari Housing Complex in Chiba, Japan and the Chapel of St. Ignatius in Seattle. Centered around the completion of Holl's Museum of Contemporary Art in Helsinki, the film observes his process and reasoning throughout the duration of the project

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.

The multiple means of making art after the end of illusionism led these artists to create performances, sculptures, earthworks, tableaux, furniture, shaped canvases, and more, using unusual materials. They explore the process of making forms and giving meanings to those forms. In this idea art, their focus is as often social and psychological as artistic. Some of their activities enlist engineering and construction techniques, others compose texts or scripts that are central to their art. Some cast the viewer in the role of a spectator, while the others demand active participation. The sources for their concepts and art works are equally diverse; the delicate proportions and balance of Early Renaissance painting, the exploration of the surface of the moon, the structure and inventions of vernacular architects, to name only a few.

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

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.

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.

"I walk in a circle around the camera: sometimes I'm on screen, sometimes I'm off, sometimes I change direction, leaving the screen on one side and coming back on the same side. Every five minutes or so, the location changes: my circle is continuous while the background shifts: bare walls—a corner with a window on one wall—outside, on a roof, with sky as the ground—outside, on a terrace, with other buildings and windows as the ground—inside, in a living room, bookcase and couch in the background. I'm silent; there's a voice-over, it's my voice: on screen, I'm talking about circling you, wrapping myself around you, as I did around 'her,' a person from my past: a kind of trap. When I go off screen, the talk shifts, becomes dreamier—fantasy talk, quasi-hypnotic—it's as if we're on a beach, we're covered by sand—it's as if we're in a field, we're rolling down a hill."

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."

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.

The back of Acconci's head is seen in tight close-up. He hums to himself, first lyrically, then aggressively, violently. Suddenly he wheels around to face the camera, his face filling the screen in extreme close-up, squinting at the viewer and speaking breathlessly. When finished, he turns and continues to hum, repeating this cycle again and again.

The back of Acconci's head is seen in tight close-up. He hums to himself, first lyrically, then aggressively, violently. Suddenly he wheels around to face the camera, his face filling the screen in extreme close-up, squinting at the viewer and speaking breathlessly. When finished, he turns and continues to hum, repeating this cycle again and again.

In this feature-length silent film, Acconci uses hand-written title cards to present an "interior monologue" about speaking, language, and silence. The written text alternates with images of Acconci, alone in the interior of an urban loft or on a rooftop, with the skyline of downtown New York as a backdrop.

In this feature-length silent film, Acconci uses hand-written title cards to present an "interior monologue" about speaking, language, and silence. The written text alternates with images of Acconci, alone in the interior of an urban loft or on a rooftop, with the skyline of downtown New York as a backdrop.

In this feature-length silent film, Acconci uses hand-written title cards to present an "interior monologue" about speaking, language, and silence. The written text alternates with images of Acconci, alone in the interior of an urban loft or on a rooftop, with the skyline of downtown New York as a backdrop.

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.

In Theme Song, Acconci uses video as close-up to establish a perversely intimate relation with the viewer, creating a personal space in which to talk directly to (and manipulate) the spectator. He is face to face with the viewer, his head close against the video screen, lying cozily on the floor. Acconci writes, "The scene is a living room — quiet, private night — the scene for a come-on — I can bring my legs around, wrapping myself around the viewer — I'm playing songs on a tape recorder — I follow the songs up, I'm building a relationship, I'm carrying it through." Smoking cigarettes, he begins a seductive monologue as he plays "theme songs" by the Doors, Bob Dylan, Van Morrison, Kris Kristofferson and others on a tape recorder. The songs are a starting point for his come-ons; the tenor of his monologues shifts with the lyrics. "Of course I can't see your face. I have no idea what your face looks like. You could be anybody out there, but there's gotta be somebody watching me.

Torn over the pressure to perform for his audience, Acconci fantasizes about "a dancing bear" who takes his place, performing in the spotlight, doing what others want, "what I always had to do."

"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

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."

"Visions of a Disappearance is a newly restored performance tape that was recorded in Naples, Italy, in 1973. Crouched in a corner, hemmed in by the video camera and a closed-circuit monitor showing him the scene as it is recorded, Acconci attempts to disappear. He tries to erase his image in the eyes of those watching, alternating between urgent appeals to imagined viewers (represented by the video camera) and pleas to his own image in the monitor." - Electronic Arts Intermix

"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

Super-8mm footage documenting the gallery set-up for Acconci's exhibition AIR-TIME at Sonnabend Gallery in 1973.

This early document is a videotaped interview ("videoview") of Vito Acconci by Willoughby Sharp during which they discuss Acconci's development as an artist. The intimate conversation addresses such concerns as Acconci's thoughts on the exhibition space, his transition from the page to the performance, and the role of video and photo documentation for performance art in general.

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.

A super-8mm work documenting Acconci's audio installation piece in the Sonnabend gallery in 1972 of the same name.

A super-8mm short by Vito Acconci

"In another exploration of nonverbal communication, the camera moves back and forth, each time catching one of Acconci's hands in an expressive gesture. The result is a kind of narrative or dialogue of gesture." - Electronic Arts Intermix

"In this exercise in nonverbal communication, Acconci explores facial expressions, and their psychological resonance, as a mode of performance narrative." - Electronic Arts Intermix

A super-8mm short from Vito Acconci

“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)

"In this now infamous tape, exemplary of his early transgressive performance style, Acconci sits and relates a masturbatory fantasy about a girl rubbing his legs under the table. Carrying on a rambling dialogue that shifts back and forth between the camera/spectator and himself, Acconci sexualizes the implicit contract between performer and viewer - the viewer serving as a voyeur who makes the performance possible by watching and completing the scene, believing the fantasy."

"In this now infamous tape, exemplary of his early transgressive performance style, Acconci sits and relates a masturbatory fantasy about a girl rubbing his legs under the table. Carrying on a rambling dialogue that shifts back and forth between the camera/spectator and himself, Acconci sexualizes the implicit contract between performer and viewer - the viewer serving as a voyeur who makes the performance possible by watching and completing the scene, believing the fantasy."

“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)

“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)

A documentation of a live performance at New York University, Pryings is a graphic exploration of the physical and psychological dynamics of male/female interaction, a study in control, violation and resistance. The camera focuses tightly on Kathy Dillon's face, as Acconci tries to pry open her closed eyes. Dillon resists, at times protecting her face or fighting to get away. Locked in a silent embrace, the couple's struggle is violent, passionate; Acconci's sadistic coercion is tinged with a sinister tenderness. The body is a vehicle for a literal enactment of the desire for and resistance against intimate contact.

A documentation of a live performance at New York University, Pryings is a graphic exploration of the physical and psychological dynamics of male/female interaction, a study in control, violation and resistance. The camera focuses tightly on Kathy Dillon's face, as Acconci tries to pry open her closed eyes. Dillon resists, at times protecting her face or fighting to get away. Locked in a silent embrace, the couple's struggle is violent, passionate; Acconci's sadistic coercion is tinged with a sinister tenderness. The body is a vehicle for a literal enactment of the desire for and resistance against intimate contact.

The final installment of the Conversions trilogy.

In Conversions II, the second in a trilogy of films interrogating the rigidity of gender binarism, the artist attempts to feminize his unquestionably male body by hiding his genitals between his legs. By casting his own masculinity into question, by performing its absence, Acconci problematizes the dictum that the male (or female) subject is a coherent being.

Contacts is one of a series of tapes in which Acconci creates a controlled performance situation to explore the limits of a private space. Applying intense mental concentration and intuition, he uses the body as a vehicle to explore perception and interactive communication. Acconci stands blindfolded, the static camera focused on his torso. A woman kneels before him, holding her hand over parts of his body, concentrating on her hand's location to convey its placement to him. Acconci tries to intuit her hand's location through body heat; she answers "yes" or "no" and moves it to another location. Acconci has written that "her hand is used as a kind of dousing rod — the ground responds."

A super-8mm document (blown up to 16mm) of Acconci's performance of the same name where he laid flat on his stomach blindfolded on a wood platform in the middle of an arts event at a Rhode Island university as students watched videos, listened to music, etc and he spun himself in circles until he reached exhaustion at which point he would point at a random student and wish them dead.

A super-8mm document (blown up to 16mm) of Acconci's performance of the same name in which he covered almost the entirety of the gallery space with a tarp (except about a two feet perimeter around the tarp where visitors could awkwardly make their way through) that was maybe two feet off the ground as he crawled underneath for six hours confronting himself.

Using extreme close-ups and amplified sound to force the viewer into the space of his body, he experiments with his mouth as a container for saliva, holding it in as long as possible, trying to catch it in his hands.

Acconci's face is seen in close-up. His eyes trace, in real time, the movement of the hands of an off-screen clock.

The screen is empty: the artist stands off-screen — he breathes in and out, his stomach moving into and out of the frame.

A documentation of one of Acconci's most notorious performances, Claim Excerpts is a highly confrontational work, an exercise in self-induced, heightened behavioral states, and an aggressive psychological exploration of the artist/viewer relationship. During the three-hour performance, Acconci sat in the basement of 93 Grand Street in New York, blindfolded, armed with metal pipes and a crowbar. His image was seen on a video monitor in the upstairs gallery space. Staking claim to his territory, he tries to hypnotize himself through language into an obsessive state of possessiveness.

A documentation of one of Acconci's most notorious performances, Claim Excerpts is a highly confrontational work, an exercise in self-induced, heightened behavioral states, and an aggressive psychological exploration of the artist/viewer relationship. During the three-hour performance, Acconci sat in the basement of 93 Grand Street in New York, blindfolded, armed with metal pipes and a crowbar. His image was seen on a video monitor in the upstairs gallery space. Staking claim to his territory, he tries to hypnotize himself through language into an obsessive state of possessiveness.

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.

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.

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.

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.

In these three exercises, Acconci plays with trans-gender illusions, manipulating and altering his own body parts to suggest sexual transformations.

In these three exercises, Acconci plays with trans-gender illusions, manipulating and altering his own body parts to suggest sexual transformations.

In Two Track, Acconci experiments with direct and peripheral perception of information in the context of communication and interaction. He sits with a man and a woman in front of a microphone. The man and woman each read a different text (a Mickey Spillane novel and a Raymond Chandler novel) simultaneously; Acconci repeats everything the man says. Occasionally an off-screen voice interrupts to question Acconci on what the woman has read, and he tries to answer.

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

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

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

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

Vito Acconci chokes himself with a white cloth multiple times, his face turns red.

In this performance based tape, Acconci uses his body to explore notions of opening and closure.

Acconci's body-based performances are often willfully provocative in their testing of physical limits and controlled actions. Here, as the camera frames Acconci's stomach in close up, he painstakingly pulls out each hair from the skin around his navel.

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

In the late 1960s, Vito Acconci abandoned poetry in order to work with the body and its relationship with space, although he did retain a commitment to language. Influenced by the concepts proposed by the Judson Dance Theater and the Structuralist experimental cinema in the Anthology Film Archives, Acconci shifted his interest towards performance, Super 8, video, sound and installation, executed within the gallery or museum space. Three Relationship Studies (Manipulations, Imitations, Shadow Play) brings together three conceptual exercises in which Acconci explores one of his main themes of interest: the body as space. In this particular case, he focused on the relationship of his body with the other, his manipulation of it, and the way the shadow cast by his body manages to dominate the space outside it.

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

"Acconci caresses his torso, then crushes cockroaches into his stomach and rubs them into his skin." - Electronic Arts Intermix

"Unavailable until recently, Corrections is Acconci's first single-channel video. Back to the camera, with only his head and bare shoulders visible, Acconci lights a match and brings it around to the nape of his neck. The lights dim as the flame nears his body hair, which briefly flares in the darkness, at which point Acconci shakes out the match. This action is repeated for the duration of the piece. Corrections introduces themes that typify Acconci's body-based performance work of the 1970's." - Electronic Arts Intermix

A five minute super-8mm short from Vito Acconci

A three and a half minute Super-8mm piece on concentration/contemplation by Vito Acconci.

"In Scene Steal, Acconci, fully clothed, tries to shield a nude woman from the camera. In Container, he wraps his nude body around a cat as if to totally enclose it." - Electronic Arts Intermix

"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

"A view of a brick wall: the artist enters and walks from one side to the other, back and forth, row after row." - Electronic Arts Intermix

"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

Three-part short film. In 'Blindfold Catching', a blindfolded Acconci reacts, flinching and lunging, as rubber balls are repeatedly thrown at him from off-screen. In 'Soap & Eyes', he tries to keep his eyes open after dousing his face with soapsuds, resulting in a tragicomic clown face. In 'Hand and Mouth', he repeatedly forces his fist into his mouth until he gags.

Three-part short film. In 'Blindfold Catching', a blindfolded Acconci reacts, flinching and lunging, as rubber balls are repeatedly thrown at him from off-screen. In 'Soap & Eyes', he tries to keep his eyes open after dousing his face with soapsuds, resulting in a tragicomic clown face. In 'Hand and Mouth', he repeatedly forces his fist into his mouth until he gags.

A woman kisses Acconci's body, covering him in red lipstick traces. Acconci then rubs his body against another man (Dennis Oppenheim), transferring the stains onto him.

Vito Acconci