Recording Studio from Air Time

Vito Acconci

Recording Studio from Air Time, 1973

Artwork text

Recording Studio From Air Time is a personal confessional in which video is both a mirror and a mediating device. A documentation of a 1973 performance at Sonnabend Gallery, this is one of Acconci's most psychologically intense exercise in the inversion of the public and the private. Alone in an "isolation chamber" in the gallery every day for two weeks, Acconci sat with the camera focused at his reflection in a mirror. To the gallery public, his image was seen on a video monitor, while his voice was heard through audio speakers. Isolated in his confessional, Acconci begins a stream-of-consciousness monologue about his five-year relationship with a woman, recounting explicit details of their life together and his most intimate feelings towards her. "I'm talking to you so that I can see myself the way you see me," he states. "I'm acting something out for them." Becoming increasingly disdainful and cruel, he ultimately decides to end the relationship. In Air Time, video is a vehicle for both an extremly intimate introspection, and for the transmission of this self-examination into the public sphere. (Electronic Arts Intermixed, New York)