Vito Acconci

Vito Acconci was born in the Bronx, New York, 1940. He lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

Vito Acconci's work began as fiction and poetry, which treated the page itself as a self-enclosed space for writer and reader to travel through. His first work in an art context, in the late 60's and early 70's, used performance, film and video as instruments of self-analysis and person -to- person relationships. In the mid-70's, his audio and video installations turned exhibition -spaces into community meeting places. In the early 80's, participatory sculpture made performative spaces for viewers, whose activity resulted in the construction and deconstruction of houses. In the mid-80's, the work became architecture, landscape architecture and furniture design: at the end of the 80's he started Acconci studio, a group of architects who design projects for public spaces-streets and plazas, gardens and parks, building lobbies and transportation centers.

Cry Baby! (Installation, The Clocktower, New York; November, 1977)
    The given space is at the top of an office building, downtown New York, thirteen stories up: the space consists of three floors-a winding staircase leading up to the top floor, the clock tower itself, a room whose walls are clock- faces.
    A line of cable, then, is drawn through the space, closing and opening the space: the line ties the space together, weighs it down, drops a kind of plumb-line through the space.
    The line starts on the first floor (Thirteenth floor of the building), at a door leading outside to the balcony: the line is hooked on to the door, keeping the door fixed shut-from there the line is pulled directly across to the other side of the room, where it hooks onto a window, keeping the window open-the line is then pulled off to the side and diagonally down to the foot of the winding staircase, where it is drawn through the stairs and railing up to the second floor-here the line stretches from the staircase to a door at the opposite end of the room, holding this door shut before it is pulled back to the stairway and up the stairs-at the top floor now, the line is pulled up through a ladder in the middle of the room, then drawn down to a window-at the end of the line is a weight, a steel ball, that appears at the window held open by the line at the first floor (The ball has been the first thing seen by the viewer apon entering the space, before climbing the stairs up).

Three columns for America, 1976
Three vertical black panels flare out as they rise up the wall to different heights. Hung onto the bottom of the panels is a small wooden table, its two legs fixed to a strip of wooden floor, with three stools attached. The table and stools are cut down to children's size; the floor and table and stools are built in forced perspective: the floor and table narrow in, the table and stools slope down, as they approach the wall.
    Above the table the black panels loom overhead, like high rise buildings. Chalked onto the panels-rubbed into the black board surface, and rubbed out-are parallel white lines, like lines on a loose leaf page. Hooked onto the table- top are three head-phones, one in front of each stool: they provide the missing text for the empty lines on the blackboards.
    There's a voice in each ear. On the left audio channel, in the middle of long, steady breathing, as in a marathon, the voice comes from inside, in a whisper: 'You're on the move now, buster…It's rising up in front of you, baby…You can read the writing on the wall, kid…' On the right channel, in the middle of the click-clack of a teletype machine, the voice comes from outside; it's a radio voice, tinny, reporting news or announcinga horse-race: 'Flash! And they're off: Vice-President lives up to his name when…Flash! And they're off: Governor's thighs quiver shamelessly as… Flash! And they're off: general cries out for more until…Now and then, an echo takes over on the right channel : 'Calling: Captain America calling: come in: Over: Come in: Over…' On the left channel, a hypnotized voice responds; 'Yes…Yes…I can hear you…Yes…No…Yes…I'm coming…I'm coming."

Decoy for Birds and People
1979
The windows are used as supports for see-saws, made up of aluminum ladders. Each see-saw is half inside the room and half outside. One see-saw is connected to the other by cable: when one see-saw is up the next is down.
Bird cages hang from the cable and move as the see-saws are moved. Audio-speakers, inside the cages, substitute for birds: a mechanical bird song, the sound of a cuckoo clock, skips from cage to cage, inside and outside. Sometimes the cuckoo slows down, like a dying bird, sometimes it speeds up, like a bird that tries to fly free. A buzzer, as if in a laboratory experiment, cuts the cuckoo short; sometimes, the sped-up cuckoo culminates in the ringing of a bell-it's won the prize, it's escaped.

The Gangster Sister from Chicago visits New York (A family piece) (Installation Sonnabend Gallery, New York, ) October, 1977)
The piece was done first in Chicago, as a part of a group show. The initial motivation. For physical construction, was: do a piece whose elements could be used, automatically, to give it its own individual space, to separate it from whatever was around it.
    The piece consists of free-standing walls, parallel to an existent wall and about two feet apart from one another. The walls are painted red, white and blue. The length of each wall is the same but the walls are staggered, no end directly behind another; the size of the walls is determined by the existent space-there should be enough room for a viewer to enter from either side (these are walls, not a corridor). In the New York version, there are four free-standing walls; the side of each wall is painted a different color (the emphasis is on 'surface' not 'solid'- this is a maze to wind ones' way through); a section of the existent gallery wall is marked off and painted like the free-standing walls in front of it. The piece here has a room of its own: it's installed at the end of a large rectangular space; from the entrance the piece is grasped immediately as an image-red, white and blue-walls of America. The walls are, in effect, 'wailing walls': there's a quadrophonic audiotape, a speaker inside each wall - my voice gives a cry that drifts from one wall to the next, in between walls, while the other walls, overlapping the cry, keep 'muttering'- sex sound answer the search, present a motto-the voice searches for home, grasps at relationships, confuses person, loses self.

Under-history lesson, Rooms, P.S.1, Long Island City, New York, 1976
    The boiler room of and old schoolhouse, converted into an alternative art space. You go down a stairway into the boiler room. In the front of the boiler, and separating the boiler from the viewers entry, is a pit about two feet deep, like an empty swimming pool.
Black wood planks are laid down over the length of the pit. Six black wood stools are placed in front of each plank. The existent electric cords, from the ceiling, are lowered so that two bare light-bulbs fit in between the planks, in-between the stools, on either side of the pit, nearly touching the ground. These are the tables and stools of a school room, at the base of the school. This is a school room at your feet; you can step down into it; you can fall down into it. From under the tables comes a sound, like the traces of a learning exercise. From one corner, in the front, my voice announces a subject: 'Lesson Number 1: Let's be suckers…' From the opposite corners, at the back, my voice reiterates: 'Ready: Let's be suckers…' From both corners, my voice talks with itself and becomes the multiple voices of students, repeating the lesson: 'All right: We-are-suck-ers…Re-peat: We are suck-ers…Again: Mm-mm-mm-mm…'