Vito Acconci Movies

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 the late 1960s, Vito Acconci abandoned poetry in order to work with the body and its relationship with space, although he did retain a commitment...

"In this exercise in nonverbal communication, Acconci explores facial expressions, and their psychological resonance, as a mode of performance...

A super-8mm short from Vito Acconci

Using extreme close-ups and amplified sound to force the viewer into the space of his body, he experiments with his mouth as a container for saliva,...

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

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...

"In one of his earliest films, Acconci performs a series of actions — running in a circle, jumping, pushing another man — in which the...

In Conversions II, the second in a trilogy of films interrogating the rigidity of gender binarism, the artist attempts to feminize his unquestionably...

A super-8mm document (blown up to 16mm) of Acconci's performance of the same name where he laid flat on his stomach blindfolded on a wood platform in...

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

In these three exercises, Acconci plays with trans-gender illusions, manipulating and altering his own body parts to suggest sexual transformations.

In this powerful "meta-document," Acconci sits in the dark with his back to a screen, onto which are projected slides of his past works, in...

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