Vito Acconci - Undertone 1972 (extract)

In this now infamous tape, exemplary of his early transgressive performance style, Acconci sits and relates a masturbatory fantasy about a girl rubbing his legs under the table. Carrying on a rambling dialogue that shifts back and forth between the camera/spectator and himself, Acconci sexualizes the implicit contract between performer and viewer - the viewer serving as a voyeur who makes the performance possible by watching and completing the scene, believing the fantasy.

• Category

  Film & Animation

[friendlier]

The sound of traffic that pervades many of his tapes adds another layer to the public/secret aspect of his work.

[TheMessianicManic]

I LOVE Vito and his crazy, creepy shit.

[ExperimentFilms Elfreda Okwesa]

I love 38s Experimental Film Productions

Experimental Filmmaker Elfreda Okwesa

[cullycucc]

I actually really liked this and got a lot out of it personally.

[Ethan Harrison]

“Abused as we abuse it at present, dramatic art is in no sense cathartic; it is merely a form of emotional masturbation. It is the rarest thing to find a player who has not had his character affected for the worse by the practice of his profession. Nobody can make a habit of self-exhibition, nobody can exploit his personality for the sake of exercising a kind of hypnotic power over others, and remain untouched by the process.”

[Stefan Bratt]

I've just got to say, as a video artist I dispair at the prospect that to succeed on my art course I have to use Acconci as a source of inspiration. I personally think that video art shall never progress if the educational system believes that recreating such performance constitutes a 1st yet experimental, modern, aesthetically based work is disregarded due to it's lack of "concept". I would suggest that the only "concept" present here is to degrade peoples perceptions of video art.

[Leanne Cunningham]

Art is what you want it to be. There doesn't necessarily have to be a meaning/theory behind it. It's about expression/self representation. That's what I've learnt anyway.

[MrMedium89]

If this is art, and if people think this shit is art, I think that humanity has lost all the beauty we had reached from the very beginning, passing through Duccio di Buoninsegna, Giacometti, Edvard Munch or Archipenko...

WTF... this sucks.

[dbomob]

SHUT UP BITCH

[ThePantsMerchant]

youtube.com/watch?v=8bHlJmQwuH­I&feature=g-all-s



[Pieter Verbeke]

its not really about art anymore. they are philosophers that think about weird stuff and make something of it. thats how i think about it. i dont really like it but thats what i see. first they painted for work, for the church and rich people. later art became more personal and more for yourself. and now its about society and how they see society or how they want to see it. its not art. its an idea that became an image/video/installation/...ot­herwise you cant show it to the people. :)