Vito Acconci (1940 - )
Related: contemporary art - installation art - intermedia
Project for a new World Trade Center, New York, 2002. Photomontage - Acconci Studio
Proposal for a new World Trade Center, resembles a giant blue Swiss cheese. Acconci called it "a building riddled with holes: A building pre-shot, pre-blown out, pre-exploded...from the original site, the building is extruded to a height of 110 stories, the unnecessary office footage, the extra volume, is blown away..."
Biography
Vito Hannibal Acconci (born January 24, 1940) is a New York-based architect, public landscape designer, and installation artist.
Acconci began his career as a poet, editing Nine to Zero with Bernadette Mayer in the late 1960s. Acconci transformed himself into a performance and video artist in the late 1960s and early 1970s, using his own body as a subject for photography, film, video, and performance. His performance and video work was marked heavily by confrontation and Situationism. In the mid 1970s, Acconci expanded his metier into the world of audio/visual installations.
One noted installation/performance piece from this period is Seedbed (January 1972). In Seedbed Acconci lay hidden underneath a gallery-wide ramp installed at the Sonnabend Gallery, masturbating while vocalizing into a loudspeaker his fantasies about the visitors walking above him on the ramp. One motivation behind Seedbed was to involve the public in the work's production by creating a situation of reciprocal interchange between artist and viewer.
During the 1980s he invited viewers to create artwork by activating machinery that erected shelters and signs. He also turned to the creation of furniture and to prototypes of houses and gardens in the late 1980s.
More recently, the artist has worked with the Architecture Association and focused on architecture and landscape design that integrates public and private space. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vito_Acconci [Mar 2005]
Following piece (1969) - Vito Acconci
Following piece (1969) - Vito Acconci
Fotografie | © Vito Acconci
image sourced here.
Following Piece is one of Vito Acconci's early works. The underlying idea was to select a person from the passers-by who were by chance walking by and to follow the person until he or she disappeared into a private place where Acconci could not enter. The act of following could last a few minutes, if the person then got into a car, or four or five hours, if the person went to a cinema or restaurant. Acconci carried out this performance everyday for a month. And he typed up an account of each 'pursuit', sending it each time to a different member of the art community. --http://hosting.zkm.de/ctrlspace/d/texts/01?print-friendly=true [Mar 2005]
see also: art - stalking - body - performance - conceptual - 1969
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