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Claim Excerpts

Vito Acconci

1971 01:00:20 United StatesEnglishB&WMono4:31/2" open reel video
Tags:
Documentation, Performance, Video History

Description

"In this record of a live performance, Acconci gives physical manifestation to the subterranean regions of the artist’s mind and will, revealing the effort he must make as an artist to simultaneously convince himself and his audience. Perhaps no other piece from the early 1970s more thoroughly spells out the psychologized drama engendered by performance-based video.... Blindfolded, seated in a basement at the end of a long flight of stairs, armed with metal pipes and a crowbar, threatening to swing at anyone who tried to come near, Acconci simultaneously invited and prohibited every visitor to the 93 Grand Street loft to descend into the world of the unconscious."

—Kathy O’Dell, "Performance, Video, and Trouble in the Home," in Illuminating Video: An Essential Guide to Video Art, eds. Doug Hall and Sally Jo Fifer (New York: Aperture Books, 1991)

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