Vito Acconci

Known for his radical experiments in performance, video, and installation, Vito Acconci began his career as a poet. A preoccupation with space—specifically, how words are contained within the page—led in 1969 to early forays in the visual arts, which he described as “ways to get myself off the page and into real space.” Setting up situations based on actions such as jumping, following people, or rubbing his own body, Acconci recorded his activities through text, photographs, and audio- or videotape.

On October 12, 1969, midway through his three-week action Following Piece, in which he followed strangers throughout New York to challenge the boundaries of private and public space, Acconci traveled a hundred miles north to Saugerties. There, in the bucolic Hudson River valley that had inspired artists since the nineteenth century, he enacted Hands Down/Side by Side. Holding a Kodak Instamatic at one hip with little regard for framing or orientation, he snapped a photo of his surroundings before switching the camera to the opposite hip for a second shot. Far from the carefully composed landscape views associated with this place, Acconci’s photographs captured off-handed impressions “not of an activity, but through an activity.” Acconci pasted the two photographs on each end of a board, flanking a spliced image of his midsection that locates the origin of the other photographs. In this layout, the artist defines the limits of his body in space, allowing it to expand “into land” as he sketches out his schematic description.