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Centers

Vito Acconci

1971 00:22:43 United StatesEnglishB&WMono4:31/2" open reel video
Tags:
Performance, Video History

Description

"Pointing at my own image on the video monitor: my attempt is to keep my finger constantly in the center of the screen — I keep narrowing my focus into my finger. The result [the TV image] turns the activity around: a pointing away from myself, at an outside viewer."

— Vito Acconci, "Body as Place-Moving in on Myself, Performing Myself," Avalanche 6 (Fall 1972)

"By its very mise-en-scène, Centers typifies the structural characteristics of the video medium. For Centers was made by Acconci’s using the video monitor as a mirror. As we look at the artist sighting along his outstretched arm and forefinger toward the center of the screen we are watching, what we see is a sustained tautology: a line of sight that begins at Acconci’s plane of vision and ends at the eyes of his projected double."

— Rosalind Krauss, "Video: The Aesthetics of Narcissism," October 1 (Spring 1976)

This title was in the original Castelli-Sonnabend video art collection.

About Vito Acconci

A poet of the New York school in the early- and mid-1960s, Vito Acconci moved toward performance, sound, and video work by the end of the decade. Acconci changed direction in order to "define [his] body in space, find a ground for [him]self, an alternate ground for the page ground [he] had as a poet." Acconci’s early performances—including Claim (1971) and Seedbed (1972)—were extremely controversial, transgressing assumed boundaries between public and private space, and between audience and performer. Positioning his own body as the simultaneous subject and object of the work, Acconci’s early video tapes took advantage of the medium’s self-reflexive potential in mediating his own and the viewer’s attention. Consistently exploring the dynamics of intimacy, trust, and power, the focus of Acconci’s projects gradually moved from his physical body (Conversions, 1971) toward the psychology of interpersonal transactions (Pryings, 1971), and later, to the cultural and political implications of the performative space he set up for the camera (The Red Tapes, 1976). Since the late '70s, Acconci has designed architectural and installation works for public spaces.

Also see:

Vito Acconci: An Interview

Vito Acconci–Conversations