There was a man here,
but he’s disappeared as you look.
There was a dog here, but he’s vanished, as you watch.
There was a street here.
It’s not here,
you keep looking.
There was a notice–
there’s one now–
of bouncing away.
There is information
about the vanishing point of a street.
One.
I had invited Vito and Maria
on the occasion of MoMA PS1 turning forty.
And I thought, who is an artist
who really galvanizes the artistic energy and innovation
and groundbreaking nature of going into the city
and dealing very early on
with new media and new approaches.
So who would that artist be,
who is like groundbreaking, experimental and is challenging
like this institution is and still is forty years later?
Vito, do you recognize the street?
– I do, I mean but it’s different now. – Yeah.
Forty or fifty years later.
I hope we’re going to open.
And I hope we’re going to open with a project all of us want to do.
What can our crew most effectively do today
so we’re moving forward?
– Finishing this. – Yeah. Great.
Yeah, we’re still far away from being finished, great.
I still don’t understand why some things were white on black
and some things weren’t.
From where we’re standing
why?
Why wouldn’t somebody call you?
He was very hesitant to do the show,
because Vito does not like to go back to his past.
I was adamant that we had to incorporate architecture, design
to say, look, this is what Vito is doing now.
Everything is very calculated
because Vito and I are both very meticulous.
I wanted to make some kind of statement
that comes from me. So “Where We Are Now,”
whereas, “Where Are We Now,” is too flimsy.
We can trick it, because then in the parentheses is
“Who Are We Anyway?”
This whole text is thirty six pages.
There’s no way we’re going to fit thirty six pages.
– Not at all. – So I think we just fit,
– what fits in that space basically. – Exactly.
It’s hard for me not to say something else.
I would like to get it done by Friday.
Yeah, yeah. No, we need to start writing tomorrow
if we’ve got any chance of getting it done.
He’s very particular about the spaces in between paragraphs
and the width of some columns being wider and some being thinner.
One, two, three, four, five.
You think you’ll get it done in time?
He’s going to come by Sunday.
I guess we’ll see what happens at that point.
But we have until one o’clock tonight.
It is the day in as much as we...
It’s a moment of truth
and we will see if the show actually opens.
We have worked for three-and-a-half months
in the exhibition space
and all of a sudden we have constructed something.
So architecture has been realized and produced.
I’m about to press the send button on the invite.
– Shall I really do that? – Yes.
– Good. Vito? – Yes.
I sent it to three-and-a-half thousand people
who are showing up here on Sunday. We have to do that. Now it’s out.
– Is that really true? – Yes.
Three-and-a-half.
We better have something.
“Seedbed,” for me, was such a historical piece.
It really grounded you, no pun intended,
but it grounded you as an artist in everybody’s eyes.
You changed the art world.
Maybe I made a mistake in grounding myself with that.
A big mistake was everything came from one point.
I really screwed up the piece.
You screwed up the piece, still you made art history.
–Are you a perfectionist, Vito?
I try to be, but I fail.
I really felt like I had nothing to do with art.
Art to me was,
kind of fakery.
I despised calling what I did art. I thought of them as activities.
I think many of his early instruction pieces
and early investigations
are literally a premonition and anticipation of social media.
Of documenting every single moment of your life.
But then you see Vito more than forty years earlier
creating a selfie or a self portrait.
I think Vito Acconci very often is about seducing the camera
and that is what Snapchat or Instagram or YouTube very often are.
From seeing Vito, you kind of get the sense
wait a second, I can be alone in my bedroom
and film myself doing whatever I want to do.
You need me!
I think Vito made it more comfortable
and he made it not a big deal in a sense.
I only know there’s got to be somebody.
There’s got to be somebody watching me,
somebody who wants to come in close to me.
I hope that people will be able to experience Vito
from the past and into the future.
I think he is sort of... I don’t want to say shell shocked,
but maybe that’s the right word.
He has sort of a PTSD of 1968 to 1973.
The people have kept him in a prison.
He feels like he hasn’t been able to expand
into what he wants to be right now.
I can’t imagine what it would be like to always be associated with that
when actually you’ve moved on from that a little bit
and you’re interested in doing something else perhaps.
So that’s why maybe this has been quite an interesting
or difficult process for him because he is trying to somehow
put that back into something that is relevant maybe for him now.
It always bothers me though that,
I don’t think as many people think of me as doing architecture.
And that kind of saddens me.
I wonder with you Vito, if you ever in the evenings sit down
and are a little proud
of all the amazing achievements you’ve made.
I’m always trying to do something new.
I always hoped that I never do something
that is a second attempt at a project that I’ve already done.
And I would think if this doesn’t mean anything,
I wouldn’t do it.
I think you’re too hard on yourself.
I don’t know.
I’d rather be hard on myself.
I have made my point. I make it again.
It. Now you get the point.
– It’s beautiful. – Wow!
– I think it’s really amazing. – Oh my God.
Yeah, it fills the walls. It’s so nice.
Thank you so much.
– Are you happy? – Yes.
– I’m mighty proud. – Really?
Because it’s I, who should be proud of you.
I think if you look at the poetry and you look at the reading,
the focus is very much more on not stopping than on detail.
And by declaring certain details to be worked out,
it’s guaranteed that the process goes on.
I think that’s very important.
The process for Vito is like a Möbius strip.
Something that’s continuous, and that keeps on going.
It’s never ending. That’s Vito.
It’s almost like he wants to make it better last time he did it.
It didn’t exist before in this sort of way,
so I think he’s being quite particular about it
and wanting to translate what he did before.
But when you’re making something, it can change.
When it’s finished and it’s made,
then it is what it is.
Something changing means it’s alive.
I am here.
Again.
Three days and three nights.
And then we got, until last night we got there.
So it will take two more days and that will take three more nights.
It’s beautiful, right?
I looked up at it, and then it was down,
when I looked there,
every which way
until I had asked, “What?”
After it disappeared,
it did.
Vito, Maria, your show is incredible!
Aren’t you very happy?
He loves it.
– Don’t you love it? – Yes.
It makes me feel hopeful that the way the show ends
with this diving board, but doesn’t really.
This is a diving off point for the future.
That’s an interesting point to learn about Vito –
how much of Vito’s work is a self-portrait.
I think the exhibition is a portrait of Vito Acconci 1976,
and it’s a portrait of Vito Acconci, 2016, forty years later.
It’s a double portrait.
I congratulate all three of you!
– That monitor should be down. – Yes, I saw that.
You are right. I saw that too, you are right.
I appreciate that a whole new audience
is getting to know Vito.
He is getting the attention that he has always deserved.
Big toast to Vito and Maria.
Do you have any positive feedback?
Well it’s hard to tell now
because they had to really change things
and the way they wanted to change things
was to have black print on white paper.
And I think that was kind of a mistake.
Was there anything you liked about the show?
The things I liked were...
I think where we tried to do some things too fast.
And when you’re trying to do something too fast,
there’s always a kind of problem and they just ran out of time.
Right, so that’s something you didn’t like.
But what about, is there anything that you did like?
Say one positive thing. Say it.
– Well no... I mean... – Shhhh
– I already said that... – No you didn’t.
I kind of can’t because I can’t see it.
I am here as I go by.
Again.
He’s constantly growing.
He’s constantly changing.
Because nothing is ever good enough for Vito.
I don’t know what I’m going to do next.
Ideally I’d like to do a project that goes on forever.