Over the years, Acconci moved easily between formats. Early on he made single channel videotapes for exhibition on a monitor. The distributor Castelli-Sonnabend Tapes and Films rented out the tapes and sold Acconci's titles in unlimited editions at inexpensive prices. Art schools and museums scooped up the bargains and launched new media programs. The popularity of video and installation put Acconci on the road. He crisscrossed America and often headed over to Europe to lecture and exhibit his latest experiments. At the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in Halifax and at Art/Tapes/22 in Florence, the shows doubled as video shoots. He had in hand a camera, recording and playback deck, assistants and studio space – everything needed for making a video. Many new works came out of his travels. The American Gift was commissioned by the CAPC in Bordeaux France for a show in 1976. Acconci reckoned the invitation to a show in Europe was influenced by art-business. For an artist rooted in the idealism of the '60s, the intrusion of business into art was disturbing: “At the time, a lot of American artists who had never shown in America were traveling around Europe, showing in Europe first. So, with that situation it was clear – if, I'm being shown in Europe, it's absurd to pretend that I'm in this neutral position of – 'I am an artist doing a show.' I thought it was, rather, 'I am doing this show specifically because I'm an American artist. I'm doing this show because I'm a representative of American art. I'm doing this show as a representative of American art business.' So, it seemed to me, I have two solutions. Either, if I don't like that situation, I shouldn't do anything, or – if I still want to go on doing something, that a situation should, in some way, start to have something to do with the pieces. So, The American Gift is a piece that started to bring in that notion of American separate- from-Europe, American as a kind of – undercurrent of Europe… for me that piece started to shape the idea of doing a piece for a particular cultural space.” The gift, as Acconci describes it, is a black box with a blue glow around the top sent by an American agent (artist) to European receivers (audience). To take delivery of this American largess, European receivers enter an enclosed space with about a dozen chairs arrayed around a box with a blue glow around the top. And they listen. Acconci speaks, he commands, his imposing voice comes from several speakers. He teaches America. The year is 1976, the celebration is the American bicentennial. After only two hundred years, America has pulled ahead of Europe “who taught America all she knows.” Acconci's present to Europe includes drills in the language of domination, an argot common to all languages. He speaks and a chorus of feminine voices, the Europeans, echoes his words in French. ”You learn the language,” Acconci orders. They seem eager to learn but the translation is askew. A third voice intrudes in this language lab. It is a pastiche of sounds clipped from Voice of America, the radio broadcasts that gifted America to the world during the years of the Cold War. Unlike Acconci's clear strong message, the official communiqués are disjointed and confusing. The European chorus cannot fathom Acconci's America of Disunited States. The American language that the chorus strives to learns ultimately trails off to a nonsensical patter, “lo-lo-do-lo, do-so-mo-so.”

Barbara London