After studying literature at Holly Cross College, Worcester, Massachusetts (B.A. in 1962), and then studying literature and poetry at the University of Iowa (M.F.A in 1964), he taught the theory of art in schools of the visual arts in New York, wrote short novels and stories which he published in magazines (Olympia Magazine, Paris) before devoting himself entirely to poetry. He founded and co-edited the review 0 to 9. he became interested in the aesthetic research of minimalism, and particularly the material properties of signs, abstract structures and the environment. He used words as objects rather than as signifiers and the page as a field of action: "I can consider my use of the page as a model space, a performance area in miniature or abstract form." [1] From 1969 onwards, the page became too small for him, no longer referring to anything but itself.

The context of conceptual art and the network of galleries enabled Vito Acconci to move from poetry to the visual arts. His preoccupations were now orientated towards "real space (for example, the physical space, the social space, the cultural space, the day-to-day, time) which he explored using various media:
- Photography: in Toe-Touch (1969), for example, he assessed the limits of his environment in relation to those of his body.
- Sound: with Slap (1969), he explored the soundscape by the propagation of waves and their return onto his body.
- Actions and performances : in the Following Pieces (1969), he experimented with the public space by following people in the street and studied the very process of following them. In Rubbing Piece (1970), he created an injury for himself and studied both the duration of the actual action and the duration of the post-performance. With Seed Bed (1971), he determined a space for contact, where the spectator makes the artist act while the artist responds to the spectator.
- Super 8 films and videos: from 1969 to 1971, in Body Works (notably Opening, 1969, Correction, 1970, Water Ways, 1971), he focuses the camera on the space of his body, often without the head, and it becomes the only field of exploration and action [2].

He called these performances designed for specific media Actions Activities.

In the same way that the words began to struggle with the page, the body moved away from the camera to struggle with the limits of the frame (the screen). Although Super 8 enabled Acconci to make implicit references to a private and essentially physical world, video, with the introduction of sound, offered new domains to explore with psychological, political and sociological connotations.

In 1973-74, with My Word, his last Super 8 film, and in 1976, with The Red Tapes, his last video [3], Acconci offered a commentary on his previous work, a declaration concerning his introspection and all the spaces explored previously. He underlined the limits - which had become unbearable - of the place which received him like those of the edge of the screen. The "page" had once again become too small. He definitively abandoned video for '"real space" and chose - like Dan Graham or Richard Serra at the same time - public areas. He produced essentially sculptures "in the widest sense" [4] of installations and environments. Language continued to play a role, but more directly. His environments took into account participation by the public. Acconci then turned his thinking to domestic architecture (Instant-House, 1980) and the arrangement of urban space. His projects (parks, playgrounds…) are based on a political conception of art in which the public space should "operate as a forum, a place for debate and discussion" [5].

Catherine Ouy

[1] Avalanche, New York, number 6, Autumn 1972)
<> Mario Diacono, "From the text-action to the body as text", Vito Acconci, New York, Out of London Press, 1975.
[3] Apart from a commissioned work, Election Tape, made in 1984 in response to Ronald Reagan's reelection.
[4] Rosalind Krauss, "Sculpture in Expended Field", The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myth, Cambridge, Mass., London, The MIT Press, 1985, p. 277-290.
[5] Vito Acconci, catalog of the 3rd Biennale of Contemporary Art in Lyon, 1995, p. 126.