Feedback: Vito Acconci and the Space of His Public

In November 1976, twenty years before the interview cited above, Vito Acconci completed Where We Are Now (Who Are We Anyway?), the installation to which he here refers. In this work, Acconci transformed the Sonnabend Gallery, New York into a space of assembly that likewise offered the implicit if illusory possibility of escape from social responsibility.(2) The installation was comprised of, and chiefly oriented around, a forty-foot-long communal table that stretched from an inner staircase through an open window, traversing the gallery and effectively punctuating its walls. In its extension through the space of the gallery, the table created a kind of diving board (or gangplank) into the world and onto the street below. Presiding over this architectural installation was a ticking clock, chiming as Acconci's auditory accompaniment flooded the space, calling an ersatz meeting to order:

Everybody!

We are the people. We have the people. We make the people.... And then you say left and then you say right and then you say behind and then you say ahead and then you say save and then you say destroy and then you say revolt and then you say revise and then you say....

(Clock tick)

Now that we should...

And what do you think, Bruce?

Now that we want to...

And what do you think, Dianne?

Now that we wouldn't do anything else...

And what do you think, Michael?

Now that we can't help it...

And what do you think, Ruth?

Now that we're back to normal...

And what do you think, Phil?(3)

And then there was the intermittently voiced refrain: "Now that we know we failed..."

Perhaps from the vantage of our present moment, the politics at work in this installation seem patent, if not altogether gratuitous, as an ensemble of voices repetitively articulates a text about the failure of democracy and the stakes of collective action (futile action, which in this art-world context is ultimately nullified and rendered parodic). Nevertheless, I think that Acconci's exploration of an explicit contiguity between art and praxis and language and architecture is worth revisiting.

When situated within the context of his early poetry, performance, and video works, Where We Are Now (Who Are We Anyway?) poses important questions about the proleptic trajectory Acconci's career is assumed...