Vito Acconci Movies

Acconci's open mouth is framed by the camera in an extreme close-up, bringing the viewer uncomfortably close. A desperate sense of strained urgency...

"I walk in a circle around the camera: sometimes I'm on screen, sometimes I'm off, sometimes I change direction, leaving the screen on one side and...

In Face of the Earth, Acconci's face becomes a metaphorical theater for a narrative drama of the mythic American landscape. Eyes closed, his face...

Contacts is one of a series of tapes in which Acconci creates a controlled performance situation to explore the limits of a private space. Applying...

The screen is empty: the artist stands off-screen — he breathes in and out, his stomach moving into and out of the frame.

Super-8mm footage documenting the gallery set-up for Acconci's exhibition AIR-TIME at Sonnabend Gallery in 1973.

Torn over the pressure to perform for his audience, Acconci fantasizes about "a dancing bear" who takes his place, performing in the spotlight, doing...

"In this now infamous tape, exemplary of his early transgressive performance style, Acconci sits and relates a masturbatory fantasy about a girl...

This early performance tape is an example of what Acconci has termed his "quasi-ESP exercises," in which he explores mental concentration and...

In 'Looking Around Piece', the performer stands before a fixed camera, which records his eye and head movements as he follows a moving object outside...

"Recording Studio From Air Time is a personal confessional in which video is both a mirror and a mediating device. Alone in an "isolation chamber" in...

"Visions of a Disappearance is a newly restored performance tape that was recorded in Naples, Italy, in 1973. Crouched in a corner, hemmed in by the...

A three and a half minute Super-8mm piece on concentration/contemplation by Vito Acconci.

Three-part short film. In 'Blindfold Catching', a blindfolded Acconci reacts, flinching and lunging, as rubber balls are repeatedly thrown at him...

"You’re Going to Die!" is a children’s story exploring one simple idea ad nauseum bonum. This video treatment by Dennis Palazzolo adapts...

Face-Off is an ironic collusion of private and public, of exposure and masking, a tense ritual wherein Acconci divulges and then censors his...

A super-8mm work documenting Acconci's audio installation piece in the Sonnabend gallery in 1972 of the same name.

"A long narrow corridor, leading to the camera—at one side, a window—sun streams in, splotches of light and dark, the corridor shimmers....

Vito Acconci

In this performance based tape, Acconci uses his body to explore notions of opening and closure.