As a kid I learned notions of art and notions of not having any money. Vito Acconci More Quotes by Vito Acconci More Quotes From Vito Acconci I always thought, I can't waste time, I have to do work. I also thought that I was slower than other people, that I had to concentrate more. I always thought, I'm not brilliant, I have to work. That was something I embedded in myself very early: I have to go home and write. But did I get any more work done than people like Frank O'Hara, who were always going to parties? Probably not. Vito Acconci party home writing In a time when everybody is talking about finding oneself, how do you find yourself? I wanted to do it as literally as possible. How do I prove that I'm concentrating on myself? I prove it by doing something physical. I can bite myself. I can burn the hair off my chest. The goal? Yes, I have a body. I have this thing that people call the self. Maybe I can change the self. Vito Acconci finding-yourself goal people Sustainability has become a religion in architecture - not that there's anything wrong with it - but I think it has to work both ways. Everyone thinks architecture has to be subservient to sustainability, but what if we thought in the other direction, like, what can sustainability do to make architecture more exciting? Vito Acconci what-if architecture thinking What connects architecture and music is that neither one is really an object. It's more like an ambience, a surrounding and a context. You can do other things while you're listening to music and of course, you can do other things while you're in the middle of architecture. The notion of multi-attention seems to me like it's the keynote to the beginning of the 21st century. Vito Acconci music-is architecture listening Yes, the fear of its blankness. At the same time, I kind of loved it. Mallarmé was trying to make the page a blank page. But if you're going to make the page a blank page, it's not just the absence of something, it has to become something else. It has to be material, it has to be this thing. I wanted to turn a page into a thing. Vito Acconci pages kind trying When a building is so complete within itself, I always think, "Why do I even have to go inside it?" I would love to do architecture that people can have a free hand in the making of it. We've done spaces where things are hinged and they can go out or in, but that's not freedom. That's supermarket freedom, or the notion that you can have anything you want as long as the supermarket carries it. We would love to do a space where you go inside and there's nothing there. You might have a seat and when you don't need it anymore you get up and it disappears. Vito Acconci long people thinking The kind of influence you want is a much deeper influence. It's like empowerment. Things are like this, but what if they were like that? What happens if you turn everything inside out? It's something that not just artists do. I think scientists do that, too. There's a theory: What if we pour water on it? That's also what a child does. If a child came in now, the child would ignore us, go under the table, and make a house. Vito Acconci artist children thinking Modernism was a big thing for me, coming from a father who was very interested in art, music and culture - and almost always Italian art, music and culture. One good thing about Italians is that culture is part of everyday life. But Modernism is a movement of the past. The idea of a Modernist building as a sculpture set on a pedestal of grass is a part of Modernism that I'm not so crazy about. Vito Acconci crazy father art Maybe I had to stop photographing so that I could learn to touch. Vito Acconci I came from the time of so-called New Criticism - the poem in itself, the writing in itself - but around that time I had come across a critic called Kenneth Burke, who wrote a book called A Rhetoric of Motives, and it seemed to talk about another way, and gradually I realized that other way was that the reader made a difference. Vito Acconci differences writing book It was very definitely architectural. I was using the words on the page as some kind of equivalent of a physical model. But I never thought at that point that I wanted to move toward architecture. I wanted to move toward real space. Sure, that's probably another way of saying, I want to move toward architecture. But I didn't define real space in terms of architecture, then. Vito Acconci space real moving I always thought of writing as public, I never thought of writing a diary. I had been struck by, jolted by things I had read, and I wanted to do the same to others. I don't think it ever was the notion of an autobiography; I skipped that phase totally, I think. Vito Acconci diaries writing thinking It's language as a kind of structural system. A diagram of a sentence, now that seems like a kind of architectural model. I don't know how to explain it, but it would be nice to try. Why, why this fascination? Vito Acconci fascination nice trying Writing was always a laborious thing for me. I never wrote fluently, I never wrote fluidly, there was something very awkward in my writing. But it seemed to me purposely awkward. It's almost as if I made the labor part of writing. Vito Acconci awkward made writing My first pieces, in an art context, were ways to get myself off the page and into real space. These photographic pieces were ways to, literally, throw myself into my environment. They were photographs not of an activity, but through an activity; the activity (once I planted a camera in the instrument of that activity - once I, simply, held a camera in my hands) could produce a picture. Vito Acconci real hands art Yeah, it's not that I wanted to do a painting, I wanted to do writing like that. What jolted me about Jasper Johns was how important it is to start with a convention, how important it is to start with what everybody knows and everybody takes for granted, whether it's a number, an alphabet letter, a set of alphabet letters, a target. Vito Acconci important writing numbers Rather than attend to a world considered as if it's out there, I have to start to attend to me. That led to some things that I never wanted it to lead to, person as a sort of psychological miasma. I started to get wrapped up in self, and then, for the first time, self did become an autobiographical self. Vito Acconci self world firsts I liked the idea of architectural games - you're always building and rebuilding. And I still thought of myself in opposition. I thought, If architects build a dream house, then I want to build a bad-dream house. My piece was called Bad Dream House. Vito Acconci building dream house Why was I in a basement saying, "I'm alone here," wielding a lead pipe and crowbars? It was like I was doing the Vietnam War. It was like I was being America. If I put a blindfold on, I can't see you as people, which seemed to be what the United States was doing. I mean, it was important for people in my generation, because I grew up in the '40s, at a time when America was supposedly the hero nation. America saved Europe. And, some years later, we realized, America is a criminal. Vito Acconci hero war mean Sometimes when you come from outside a discipline you pay attention to things that insiders take for granted. I admit that sometimes I feel hesitant in the midst of other architects. I can't help thinking that they know more than I do, but I also feel that maybe I can go in directions they learned you're not supposed to go in. Vito Acconci discipline attention thinking
