Acconci V_press Play

5/13/2018 Acconci V_press Play

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V ito A c co nc i lVlark C . Taylor

il1 cOil'Versa/' lr;'nJ anuary :2001, New York


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Mark C. T aylor E ver ything begins w ith the name o r, m o re pr ecisely, w ith namin g. V ito. T ell m et he s to r y of yo ur n am e, V ito .

Vito Acconci I was named after my grandfather, who was dying at the time. But he didn'tdie; and anyway, his name was Carmine. For some reason they called himVito. So my name was based on habit, convention, not history. As a childI hated my Italian background; 1wanted to be an American. Later - at highschool dances, for example - I hated introducing myself it was as ifno onecould hear me, I had to spell things out: 'No, not Peter- V-I-T-O.'I couldn'tpresent myself in talk; I had to write.

Mark C. T aylor Y ou h ave a lw ays beenfa scin ated b y the pla y o f language. Ifone l is ten s care fu l lyit is p os sib le to h ea r mu ltip le e ch oe sin y ou r n ame : V ito , vita, vino, p er hap s e ve nveritas, D oes y our n am ejigu re in your w ork ?

Vito Acconci Vito's the name of a pet, a puppet, a child. My name breeds familiarity, evenfor - maybe especially for - those who have contempt for my work. It mighthave been my name that allowed me to do performances - I could live up tomy name, I could play the fooL I could be a down. I could throw myself intoyour hands or atyotir mercy. My name fits my early work; together, they givepeople the illusion that they've had a relationship with me. My fear now isthat that relationship makes archirecrure impossible: my person sticks out,and the space recedes into the background. But, thankfully, the silliness ofmy name is a safeguard against self-importance and.over-seriousness.

Mark C. T aylo r K ier keg aa rd w as om o f th e fi rs t t o id en ti fy the impor.tance if ir on y a s a fo rm o f lifea s s oe lla s a n a esth etic p he nome no n. H e a lw a ys d re w a sh ar p d istin ctio n b etw ee nir on y a nd h um ou r. W h ile ir on y is th e b ou nd ar y b etw ee n th e a esth etic a nd e th ic alforms of l ife , h umour is th efo rm o f consc iousness tha t mos t c lo selyapprox imatesr el ig io us awa re ne ss . Mu ch s o- ca lle d p os tmo de rn a r t in vo lv es an ir on y b or de rin go n c yn ic ism . Yo ur wo rk is o fte n q uite h umo ro us b ut is no t p reci se l y i ron ic . Howdo you un dersta nd th e differ ence b etw een iro ny a nd hu mour a nd how do es t hisd iff er en ce in fo rm y ou r a r t?

Vito Acconci Irony is know-it-all; I prefer slapstick. Irony is laughing at something, orsomeone, from above; I want laughs from within -laughing at oneself, andlaughing with someone. My models are Buster Keaton, the Marx Brothers.Let's say there are two views of life, the tragic and the comic. In the tragicview, the protagonist travels along a pathway, a channel, towards a goal;call that goal transcendence, or God. Nothing gets in the way of thattrajectory; the viewer's attention is singleminded, the viewer is numbedby the relentlessness of that trajectory. In the comic view, there's the sameprotagonist, the same pathway, the same goal. Now, halfway along thepathway, the protagonist slips on a banana peel: suddenly the goal doesn'tseem so important anymore - the protagonist's mind is on other things,and so is the viewer's. What humour does is allow a second thought, areconsideration. Humour questions judgement - it riddles holes into the8


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idea of a Last}udgement - while irony judges. Humour leaves amess - whocleans up afterward? who cares? - while irony is pointed and clean. Humour iscarnival- it's enjoyment from making a fool out of oneself; irony is enjoymentfrom making a fool out of others.

Mark C . T aylor Y ou beg an you r a rtistic ca reer a s a p oet. A s yo u k now , p hiloso phers from th e G reek sto the m oderns have privileged poetry by p lacing it a t the top o f e ve ry h i era rchy o fth e a rts. W hile you stop ped w ritin g po em s m any yea rs a go, it is clea r tha t po etryh as a lw a ys in flu en ced yo ur w or k. Is p oe tr y still d ir ec tly o r in dir ec tly im po rta nt Jo ryou r w ork?

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Vito Acconci I'~gut .?et:ry,at the bottom of a hierarchy of the arts - not b~caus~ i


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wa ys th at a llo w ed r ea de rs to b ec om e, in effect, c o- pr od uc er s.D i d th es e tr en ds inl ite r a ry c r it ic ism in fl uen ce your unde rs tand ing of th e w o rk of a rt a t th is tim e?

Vito Acconci Yes; but I had been prepared beforehand. In college, in the late 1950Sandearly 1960s - this was the time of'New Criticism', with its emphasis onthe poem-in-itself - aJesuit priest, Thomas Grace, introduced me to theopposite, theorists like Kenneth Burke (I89rI993) and Walter Ong (1912- ) .I loved Burke's titles: T he G ra mm ar of M otives (1945) , The Rheto r ic of Motives(1950);1loved the notion of writing as intention, of writing as will. Rhetoricassumes an audience, demands an audience; I was re-learning the arts as..s::ategic int~&tion..And it was not by Jacques Derrida but by Ong that}]I was taught the difference between writing and orality: orality meant a .community of talkers and listeners - orality took the 'thing' out of itselfand into the body of the listener.

Later, late 1960s and 1970s, I read the usual suspects. The ones that stickith me - because I couldn't put my finger on just what it was they said - areMaurice Blanchot, and Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari when they wrote

together. This is writing that demands immersion; it was being inside themind of a schizophrenic.

Mark C . T aylor In m aking the 'view er' a pa rticipant in the w ork of ar t, y o u o ft en c r ea te s i tu a ti on sth at in vo lv e o r im p ly a c er ta in d an ge r. W h a t le ss on s d oe s su ch d an ge r te ac h?

Vito Acconci In some early I970S pieces, I learned that commitment to an idea, to anabstraction, can be frightening. I could be so concentrated on applyingstress to the body that I ignored the ravages that stress was making onmy body; I could talk myself into a hypnosis where I probably could havekilled somebody. And, gradually, I learned respect for the viewer. Yes,maybe the insertion of real-world everyday fear is a whiff of fresh air intothe hothouse of an isolationist art system. But, at the same time, dangeronly confums and enhances the victimization of the viewer. Museum-goersare automatically victimized: they're ina building with no windows, as ifin a prison - they're ordered 'Do Not Touch'. The art is for the eyes only,and they're in a position of constant desire, hence constant frustration. So,danger to the viewer is unfair; it takes advantage of somebody who's alreadydown. Later, in some of my installations from the late 19705,where viewerscould release a projectile and thereby endanger either themselves or others,I learned that I was cheating. I was depending on, resorting to, the safetymechanism of gallery/museum; I must have known it couldn't happen here,this was a gallery, this wasn't real- I was only making a metaphor, and Ithought I hated metaphor.

Marl : C. T aylo r T he q uestio n oj th efr am e fig ur es in m uc h of your w ork . Perha ps it w ould be m orea ccu ra te to sa y tha t m uc h o Jyo ur w or k p uts th efr am e in to q uestio n. Y ou oftenseem to w ant to step beyond thefra me - perha ps even to era se t hefra me. But ca nth efr am e b e e ra se d? C a n th er e b e a rt w ith ou t fr am in g?

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Vito Acconci When I was doing art, when I did installations inthe mid 1970s, I dependedon the frame of the gallery. Iried to treat that frame as a material condition:if a gallery had an overhang in the middle, then a person had to be under thatoverhang, so that the overhang could threaten, Likea guillotine. If a gallery hadcolumns, then the columns had to be tied together, the columns could be usedto support a slingshot, as with VD Lives/TV M ust D ie (1978). But allIid wasbecome an interior decorator for the gallery; Iwas camouflaging the gallery'sfunction as a store. That was the real frame for art: the gallery as a store.

No, ther~ can't be art without framin .Ar ! is.J;.~!illllated category thatexists~~X f9.U.-b,q2U[_pose~~.,.llWg, an.d.~elf-sati.sfaction, and sel(- -iillp;rtance --:,~~us~e>att~is ..ahclieSsJem,. that"h,ugdles to,g~th~nas i f . w .J ' a K i r a " s q u e _ o f Red eam, ani~~-fl I !.dg~al~_(,n s I llrt,,-wr~ters and . ~9ll~,~tft~9~~.R~r:~Je;.-_it-D~:>~d~.JQ_~,Pw.t~ i t'f: ,~2!!l all o~er ~gs th~~are non-art. It can't survive witbout ~ frame, or a pedestal, or a vitrine, or

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activity. The pieces took me off my writer's desk and out onto the street. But~'-.;;t ~ the poems were already performances: the page was a field over which I as_; , '~ ."i (f' J writer, and then you as reader, travelled. So the first pieces, conversely, made_._) ~ . ~ me travel through a city the wayIad travelled across a page. And then . . . :::,J t )' s : . . " the motion changed: instead of attending to aworld considered as if it was

'W " 'k out there, I came back home. I separated myself into subject and object," J . . : . . . T concentrated on 'me.' I treated my body like the page I had been writing

t 'r ' . . on; I inscribed my body - with bite marks, with lipstick (Appl ications, 1970),f < . ; ' with wall paint (Run-Off , I970) - the way I had tried to inscribe the page~~~'.,G ~ with material objects, the way 1had tried to tumwords into material objects

that could be inscribed on the page.M ark C Taylor W hat ro le does transgression p lay in your mi?Vito Acconci It's not for me to say.Only another person can apply a term like that to my

stuff. I might hope for something, I might will something, I might try outsomething, and I might keep trying, like a little engine. But only an outsidercan verify it.

Mark C . Ta ylor From the ea rliest expressions o f a estheticism , a rt ha s been a ssocia ted w ith a natemporality tha t seeks to express or em body a cer ta in idea l or p erfection . For you ,

U v . , . . . v \. lA 1! it is im portan t for a r t to be im per fect. W hy?~~~se I never wanted at!, a~d now_Loon't ~ant architecture to present itselfas univer~arlleca~se 'u""niversal's a mask; it means only that it's supported_ . . . . . . . . . . . . . - .~ . . -- - - . . ._by the dominant c U l t u r e of a time. I want In ar4i_te~~~e that's changeable,tli~tc~b~,a ~ - d ~ _ d ~ _,:n~tak~~ away from.Maybe it mea~nssomething at this_particular time - it will have to cha_Qg~W_MIl.tb~timechang~~_

. In your a rch itectura l w ork, you a refa scina ted by m argina l, residua l andin ter stitia l sp ace s. W h at m a ke s th es e site s s o po wer fu l?

Vito Acconci It's not a choice. Because I'm not officially an architect, most of the projectsAceonci Studio is asked to do are not 'real architecture' but 'public art':projects around or between buildings that are already designed. We're invitedbecause of Iper cent laws - Iper cent of the cost of a public building hasto be spent on art, in other words, we're asked to do something that's worthIper cent of the architecture. But I'd like to believe that, if we could choose,we'd choose some of those spaces anyway. Ifyou're designing somethingin the interstices, in the cracks, then you can build a space that bulges outof those cracks, you can build a blob that spills out over and through theofficial buildings.

Mark C. T aylo r S evera l o f yo ur r ece nt p ro je cts in vo lv e g ar ba ge: A City that Rides the GarbageDump (I999) and Garbage City (Project for Hiriya Garbage Dump, TelAviv) (I999). Wha t is th e a rtistic im po rta nce o fg ar ba ge o r, m ore g enera lly ,w aste? M ight there be an inextr icab le re la tionsbip betw een m odernism andw aste? Is m odern a rt pa ra sitic upon ga rba ge?

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Vito Acconci It's these outlands, these throwaways, these wastelands, that provide the lastopportunity for model cities, theoretical cities, future cities. In the city proper,you can't have a master plan anymore, and that's all for the good: a masterplan prevents a city from growing on its own, from the bottom up. Or maybeyou can still have a master plan, but itwouldn't be allowed to take over anentire region, it could appear only here and there, like growths, like sprouts- or it might wind through existent places, like tentacles. It's only in theoutlands, then - only on a garbage d U 1 I l P , say - that you have the luxuryto invent a city, test out a city, and rehearse a city.

Mark C . T aylor It is w ell know n tha t you listen to m usic w 'hen y ou w ork. T he w riter E dm ondJa bes once told m e tha t he w ent in to the desert to 'listen to silence speak'. Wou ldyou r w or k cha nge if you l is te ned t o s il en ce?

Vito Acconci [In On th e Wa te rfr on t (1954), when Eva Marie S , a i J . ? , t says she goes to schoolin Tarrytown, and Tarrytown is in the country, Ma rlon B rand e responds:1 don't like the country, the crickets make me nervous."] need to bein acity - even if!don't use that city,Inow other people ant using it-n orderto design city spaces..If11istened to silence - I would h a v e to b e alone,I guess - the places I designed would be allwhite ..I would'be making a 2001-world, where the past is eradicated and the future begins froma blank slate,the future is abstract - I couldn't be making a E / i J d e Runner-world, wherethe future is built on top of the past, where the future is a parasite. I'm afraidthat, ifI listened to silence" I would probably become tiwriter again; I couldwrite places, but I couldn't design them.

Ma rk C T aylor L ook ing ba ck overyo ur wOr k dur -ing th e p:a stforty y e a T S , a re y ou m ore impressedby the con tinu it ie s o r d iscon tinu it ie s?

Vito Acconci What I have to reconcile myself with is that the career itself - the lof9.cof onephase leading to another, the reconsiderations that force a change from phaseto phase, the exhaustions of a method, the back-tracks, the sumrnings-up, thejumps, the false starts - the career itself ismore 'impressive' than individualpieces, individual projects. So I've provided only an example, a model, awarning, not an experience.

Mark C. T aylor W ha t do you m ostfea r?Vito Acconci Number I: dying. Number 2: dying slowly, without being able towork..

Mark C. Taylor Ifyou ha d to w rite your ow n epita ph, w ha t w ould it say?Vito Acconci There's a legal term for a problem inpublic space, something that might draw

people to an area - say,across train tra ck s - where they might be-caused harm.It's called a 'public nuisance'. I wouldn't mind beingcaIled that, for my life'swork. But there won't be any epitaph,

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