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Centers

1971
Part of a set, view all set records
(American, 1940–2017)
America
Video, b&w, sound; 22:28 minutes
Louis D. Kacalieff, M.D. Fund 2020.265
© Vito Acconci
Location: 224B Video
Copyright
This artwork is known to be under copyright.

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In Vito Acconci’s Centers, the artist faces the camera, attempting to keep his finger pointed at the exact center of the screen. This performative test of endurance is also a conceptual exploration of the video screen as novel framing device.

Description

In Centers, Vito Acconci faces the camera head-on, attempting to keep his finger directed at the exact center of the screen, which displays his own image. In pointing at himself, the artist also points at the viewer, creating a tension between the two. Of the film, Acconci wrote, “The result (the TV image) turns the activity around: a pointing away from myself, at an outside viewer—I end up widening my focus onto passing viewers (I’m looking straight out by looking straight in).” Acconci started his career in the 1960s as a poet. By the end of the decade, he was a leading figure in the fields of performance, sound, and video art.
Black-and-white video still showing the head of a man with light skin tone centered in the frame, his right arm extended so his blurry hand, pointer finger extended towards the center of the frame, covers his facial features. Only the edges of his eyebrows and forehead show over his hand, and he has shoulder-length, straight, dark hair.

Centers

1971

Vito Acconci

(American, 1940–2017)
America

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