Vito Acconci. Mark C. Taylor in conversation January 2001, New YorkMark C. Taylor Vito Acconci Mark C. Taylor Vito Acconci Mark C. Taylor Vito Acconci Everything begins with the name or, more precisely, with naming. Vito. Tell me the story of your name, Vito. Twas named after my grandfather, who was dying at the time. But he didn't die; and anyway, his name was Carmine. For some reason they called him Vito. So my name was based on habit, convention, not history. Asa child Thated my Italian background; I wanted to be an American, Later at high school dances, for example ~T hated introducing myself it was as ifno one could hear me, I had to spell things out:'No, not Peter~ V-I-I-O.’ couldn't present myselfin talk [had to write You bave always been fascinated by the play of language. If one listens carefully it is possible 1o hear multiple echoes in your name: Vito, vita, vino, perbaps even veritas, Does your name figure in your work? Vito's the name ofa pet, puppet, a child. My name breeds familiarity, even for ~ maybe especially for — those who have contempt for my work. It might have been my name that allowed me to do performances ~ I could live up to my name, I could play the fool, I could bea clown. I could throw myself into your hands or at your mercy, My name fits my early worlg together, they give people theillusion that they've had a relationship with me. My fear now is that that relationship makes architecture impossible: my person sticks out, and the space recedes into the background. But, thankfully the silliness of my name is a safeguard against self-importance and over-scriousness. Kierkegaard swas ome of the first fa identify the impartance of irony as a form of life as well as an aesthetic phenomenon. He alnoays drew asharp distinction between irony and humour. While irony is the boundary betaseen the aesthetic and etbical forms of life, humour is the form of conscicusness that mast closely approximates religious awareness. Much so-called postmodern art involves an irony bordering on cynicism, Your work s often quite humorous but is not precisely ironic. How do you understand the difference betsseen irony and humour and how does this difference inform your art? Irony is know-it-all; I prefer slapstick. Irony is laughing at something, or someone, from above; I want laughs from within — laughing at oneself, and laughing witb 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 tragic view, the protagonist travels along a pathway, a channel, towards a goal; call that goal transcendence, or God. Nothing gets in the way of that trajectory; the viewer's attention is singleminded, the viewer is numbed by the relentlessness of that trajectory. In the comic view, there's the same protagonist, the same pathway, the same goal. Now, halfway along the pathway, the protagonist slips on a banana peel: suddenly the goal doesn't seem so important anymore ~ the protagonist's mind is on other things, and so is the viewer’ What humour does is allow a second thought, @ reconsideration. Humour questions judgement —it riddles holes into theMark G. Taylor Vito Acconci Mark C. Taylor Vito Acconci Mark ©. Taylor idea of a Last Judgement —while irony judges. Humour leaves a mess — who cleans up afterward? who cares? - while irony is pointed and clean. Humour is carnival ~it’s enjoyment from making a fool out of oneself; irony is enjoyment from making a fool out of others. You began your artistic career as a poet. As you knovuy philosophers from the Greeks to the moderns have privileged poetry by placing it at the top of every hierarchy of the arts. White you stopped writing poems many years ago, itis clear that poctry has alecays influenced your work. Is poetry till directly or indirectly important for ‘your work? Td put poetry at the bottom ofa hierarchy of the arts— not because it’ lesser, but because it’s the base, the undercurrent, the sub-structure of the arts. But, as a base, it’s only a beginning, Poetry has nothing to do with concentration, of language, or distillation of language; poetry is an attempt to get through Tanguage and artive ata state of pre-language —it’s a cry, a gasp, a screech. Poetry is thinking - or maybe it’s only feeling — in opposites; poetry is Nuidity between opposites. Then, lates, poetry throws the voice into spaces, events; poetry grows up to become a novel, oz movie, or music, or architecture, But: once a poet always a poet— on at least, once a language-user always alanguage-user. I don’t know how to think — more exactly, I don't know how to know'I'm thinking ~ except by language. I start a project by naming the conditions and playing with words, punning on those names. Or I start a project by subject-verb-object: I parse a space, I use sentence-structure to plot possible movements through thar space. In much of your work you shift the focus from the creator of the work of art to what ance bad been the viewer. In this way, you draw the 'wiewsr’ into the work of art dy staging a performance in which he or she can, or sometimes must, participate. From this point of view, the work of art becomes u process rather than an abject ‘This approach differs significantly from the modernist notion of the autotelic or self-referential work of art. What are the artistic and political implications of this understanding of the work of art? ‘Once a viewers in the middle of things, art becomes architecture. The artistic implication is that, ultimately, art isn't necessary anymore as a field, a profession; art is no longer a noun, it becomes a verb. Artis an activity that you do while having some other career —you do art as a mathematician, as a physicist, as a biologist. Artis nothing but a general attitude of thickening the plot. Once a viewer is a participant, there’ no receiver, no contemplator ~ hence, no viewer. The political implication is that the former viewer becomes an agent, a decision-maker; you're on yout way to becoming a political activist, whether or not you choose to take that road to its destination. At the Lime you and some otber artists were exploring the complexities of the relationship between artwork and ‘viewer’, philosophers and critics in the US anid Europe were rethinking literary texts by opening Beir purported clesure in 9Vito Acconci Mark ©. Taylor Vito Acconci Mark C. Taylor sways that allowed readers to become, in effect co-producers. Did these trends in literary criticism influence your understanding of the work of art at this time? Yes; but I had been prepared beforehand. In college, in the late 1950s and early 1960s ~ this was the time of ‘New Criticism’, with its emphasis on the poem-in-itself— a Jesuit priest, Thomas Grace, introduced me to the opposite, theorists like Kenneth Burke (1897-1993) and Walter Ong (1912~). Lloved Burke's titles: The Grammar of Motives (2945), The Rhetoric of Motives (1950); loved the notion of writing as intention, of writing as will. Rhetoric assumes an audience, demands an audience; I was re-learning the arts as strategic interaction. 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 itself and into the body of the listener. Later, late 1960s and 1970s, I read the usual suspects.’ The ones that stick with me—because I couldn't put my finger on just what it was they said — are ‘Maurice Blanchot, and Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari when they wrote together. This is writing that demands immersion; it was being inside the mind of a schizophrenic. In making the ‘viewer’ a participant in the work of art, you often create situations that invalve or imply a certain danger. What lessons does such danger teach? Insome early 19708 pieces, I learned that commitment to an idea, to an abstraction, can be frightening. I could be so concentrated on applying stress to the body that I ignored the ravages that stress was making on my body; I could talk myself into a hypnosis where I probably could have killed somebody. And, gradually, I learned respect for the viewer. Yes, maybe the insertion of real-world everyday fear is a whiffof fresh air into the hothouse of an isolationistart system, But, at the same time, danger only confirms and enhances the victimization of the viewer. Museum-goers are automatically victimized: they're in a building with no windows, as if ina prison ~ they're ordered ‘Do Not Touch’. The artis for the eyes only, and they're in a position of constant desire, hence constant frustration. So, danger to the viewer is unfair; it rakes advantage of somebody who's already down, Later, in some of my installations from the late 19708, where viewers could release u projectile and thereby endanger either themselves or others, Tlearned that I was cheating, 1 was depending on, resorting to, the safety mechanism of gallery/museum; I must have known it couldn't happen here, this was a gallery, this wasu’t real ~I was only making a metaphor, and I thought Thated metaphor. ‘The question of the frame figuresin much of your work. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that much of your work puts the frame into question, You often seem to want to step beyond the frame — perhaps even to erase the frame, But can the frame be erased? Can there be art without framing?Vito Acconci Mark C. Taylor Vito Acconci Mark. Tayler Vito Acconci When I was doing art, when I did installations in the mid 1970s, I depended on the frame of the gallery. I tried to treat that frame as a material condition: if'a gallery had an overhang in the middle, then a person had to be under that overhang, so that the overhang could threaten, like a guillotine. Ifa gallery had columns, then the columns had to be tied together, the columns could be used to supporta slingshot, as with VD Lives/ TV Must Die (1978). But all I did was become an interior decorator for the gallery; 1 was camouflaging the gallery's function as a tore. That was the real frame for art: the gallery asa store. No, there can't be art without framing, Artis a simulated category that exists only for the purpose of selling, and self- satisfaction, and self importance ~ because art isa belief system that huddles together, as if in a Masque of Red Death, artists and dealers and art writers and collectors. Because art is desperate it needs to separate itself from all other things that are non-art, It can’t survive without a frame, or a pedestal, ora vitrine, or wall, or a floor, ora room, or a label, or a plaque. Architecture is different; architecture survives by breaking the frame — or, more precisely, by melting the frame. Architecture persists when clothing clapses into furniture, and furniture elapses into house, and house elapses into city, and city elapses into landscape ... ‘Many critics note an important shift from your early performance and conceptual swork to your recent architectural project. What is the relationship betzoeen these teuo parts of your aeusore? Already with Seedbed (1972) T was part of the floor; a viewer who entered that room stepped into my power field they came into my house. But it had happened before thatsin the first works like Following Piece (969), Twas walking through the city, I was feeling out the terrain, I was using the street as if it were my everyday life-space. Then, as soon as I rubbed my arm (Rubbing Pizce,1969),s soon as I bit myself (Thademarks, 1970), 1 turned my body into a place, I made a home for myself. That might have been the beginning of architecture but, in order to proveit, [had to let someone else in, The things, all this might be true because the work took the direction it did; if it had gone in a different direction, then that early work, that same early work, wouldn't have been architecture. In your early work, you swere preoccupied with the compleze processes through which subjects are constructed and deconstructed. Your work at this time was influenced by and in conversation with the contemporary debates surrounding seructural linguistics. Your transition from poctry to performance art might be understood as an effort to put into practice theories developed by structural anthropologists and psychoanalysts. Are your early perfarmance pieces an alternative version of concrete poetry? I thought my first pieces were doing the opposite: I tied myself into a system that already existed in the world; | became the passive receiver of otherMark ©. Taylor Vito Acconci Mark ©. Taylor Vito Acconci Mark C. Taylor Vito Acconci Mark ©. Taylor activity. The pieces took me off my writer's desk and out onto the street, But the pooms were already performances: the page was afield over which I as writer, and then you as reader, travelled. So the first pieces, conversely, made me travel through a city the way I had travelled across a page. And then the motion changed: instead of attending to a world considezed as if it was out there, Ieame back home, I separated myselfinto subject and object, ‘Toncentrated on‘me.'T treated my body like the page [had been writing on [inscribed my body —with bite marks, with lipstick (Applications, 1970), with wall paint (Run-Off 1970) ~the way I had tried t0 inscribe the page ‘with material objects, the way T had tried to turn words into material objects that could be inscribed on the page. What role does transgression play in your art? Iv not for me to say. Only another person can apply a teria like that to my stuff: I might hope for something, I might will something, might try out something, and I might keep trying, like a little engine, But only an outsider can verify it. From the earliest expressions of aestheticism, art has been associated with an temporality that seeks to express or embody a certain ideal or perfection. For you, iis important for art to be imperfect. Why? Because I never wanted art, and now I don't want architecture, to present itself as universal. Because ‘universal’ is a mask; it means only thar it’s suppasted by the dominant culture ofa time. I want an architecture that’s changeable, that can be added to and taken away from. Maybe it means something at this particular time —it will have to change when the time changes. In your architectural work, you are fascinated by marginal, residlual and interstitial spaces, What makes these sites so powerful? Iesnota choice. Because I'm not officially an architect, most of the projects Acconci Studio is asked to do are not ‘real architecture’ but ‘public art’: projects around or between buildings that are already designed. We're invited because of per cent laws ~r per cent ofthe cost ofa public building has tobe spent on art; in other words, we're asked to do something that’s worth per cent of the architecture, But Id like to believe that, if we could choose, weld choose some of those spaces anyway. Ifyou're designing something in the interstices, in the cracks, then you can build a space that bulges out of those cracks, you can build a blob that spills out over and through the official buildings. Several af your recent projects involve garbage: A City that Rides the Garbage Dump (1999) and Garbage City (Project for Hirlya Garbage Dump, Tel Aviv) (1999). What is the artistic importance of garbage or, more generally, waste? Might there be an inextricable relationship between modernism and waste? Is modern art parasitic upon garbage?Vito Acconci Mark C. Taylor Vito Acconci ‘Mark C. Taylor Vito Acconci Mark C. Taylor Vito Acconci Mark G. Taylor Vito Acconci It's these outlands, these throwaways, these wastelands, that provide the last opportunity for model cities, theoretical cities, future cities. In the city proper, you can't have a master plan anymore, and that’ all for the good: a master plan prevents a city from growing on its own, from the bottom up. Or maybe you can still have a master plan, but it wouldn't be allowed to take over an entire region, it could appear only here and there, like growths, ike sprouts ~or it might wind through existent places, ike tentacles. It’s only in the outlands, then — only on a garbage dump, say that you have the luxury to inventa city, test out a city, and rehearse a city. eis well known that you listen to music when you work. The writer Edmond Jabes once told me that he went into the desert to listen to silence speak, Would ‘jour work change if you listened to silence? In On the Waterfront (2954), when Eva Marie Saint says she goes to school in Tarrytown, and Tarrytown is in the country, Marlon Brando responds: ‘dont like the country, the crickets make me nervous.’ I need to be in a city— even if don't use that city, IImnow other people ate using it—in order to design city spaces. If] listened to silence ~ I would have to be alone, Tues ~ the places I designed would be all white. I would be making a 2001- world, where the past is eradicated and the future begins from a blank slate, the future is abstract —I couldn't be making a Blade Runner-world, where the future is built on top of the past, where the future is a parasite. F'm affaid that, if listened to silence, I would probably become a writer again; | could write places, but I couldn't design them. Looking back over your work during the pasl forty years, are you more impressed by the continuities or discontinuities? What I have to reconcile myself with is that the career itself the logic of one phase leading to another, the reconsiderations that force a change from phase to phase, the exhaustions of a method, the back-tracks, the summings-up, the jumps, the false starts — the career itself is more ‘impressive’ than individual pieces, individual projects. So T've provided only an example, a model, a warning, not an experience. What do you most fear? Number: dying. Number a: dying slowly, without being able to work. If you bad to write your own epitaph, what would it say? ‘There's a legal term fora problem in public space: something that might draw people to an area say, across train tracks ~ where they might be caused harm. Tt called a ‘public nuisance’. I wouldn't mind being called that, for my life's work, But there won't be any epitaph.