Transgressions of Vito Acconci

Grasp 1969

There is a fascinating interview with Vito Acconci, New York poet, conceptual artist and architect on designboom. The interviewer describes Acconci as the ‘godfather‘ of transgression.

While this strikes me as art/designspeak that tries to rescuscitate the tatty corpse of the avant garde with a good pinch of sexualised sensationalism thrown in for good measure and extra ratings, Acconci’s own words are very inspiring.

In particular, I feel inspired by the way he describes the evolution of his work, and his fluid movement from writing to performance to architecture and design:

“can you describe an evolution in your work from your first projects to the present day?
there is a line but it has been through so many forms.
as a writer I became very conscious of the space on a page,
I started to get obsessed with questions such as
- what makes you move from left margin to right margin?
- from top of the page to bottom of the page?
in other words, I saw the page as a field over which I as
a writer could move and you as the viewer could move too.
I then figured that if I was so concerned with space why
was I limiting myself to a piece of paper when there is a
floor or a street to work with.
so things then went to an art context.
I started off the process by thinking how do I move in real space
and what makes me move.
I began by using my own person. I realized that I had to focus
on myself – it became ‘I’ and ‘me’…
but there are other people in the world.
so later I focused on how do I concentrate on him/her,
or how do I concentrate on you while you concentrate on me?
I think that it all began with that notion of movement.
in that you move through the page, you move within yourself,
you move within a space and back and fourth.
gradually it becomes clear that you /the people are in a space.
the question then is how to react to a space.
the great thing about architecture and design is that people
are aware of it even if they think that they aren’t.
everyone has passed through a doorway,
sometimes you may not even notice the doorway but sometimes
you might, be it because the doorway is a little to narrow or a little
to low. it’s great that we get to experience these things everyday. “

Perhaps this neatness of being able to see how one thing led to the next is something that comes with the perfection of hindsight, of looking backwards to find the unifying thread of moving through space?

I really do relate strongly to this description though, because too often I feel that we are expected to be just one thing: only an artist, or a banker, or a dancer, or that we have to undergo radical retraining to be something different when maybe it is more important to just go and do that thing. Perhaps that is the most radical transgression.

For a feast of acconci studio design, visit www.acconci.com although be warned the flash design is a bit odd.