Open Book consists of a close up of Vito Acconci's mouth which he paradoxically keeps wide open while he speaks. The articulation and communication functions of the spoken word are thus contradicted. His monologue, which invites the spectator to enter into a relationship with the picture and the artist, is almost incomprehensible. This video therefore pushes speech into the background, focusing instead on the mouth as an incongruous representation of openness towards others and as a place or a book.
Concentrated on this image rich with meaning, the spectator first sees the lips and teeth and then a close-up of the tongue as a muscle moving around in its cave-like lair. The space of speech is manifested by the oral cavity and by the open sounds projected forward by the breath.
The duration of the film and fatigue due to the constraint lead the artist to relativize the rules which he fixed. His voice becomes hoarse and his mouth dries up. Vito Acconci swallows to gather his strength. He asks to be excused for closing his mouth, as if closing it meant breaking the relationship with other people. Finally, he articulates more clearly and his words become more comprehensible. In particular, he says: "You can go inside", "It's not a trap" .

The mouth is an opening through which food, sound and breath pass. In Two Takes, Vito Acconci defined it as a place for ingurgitating and taking possession, in Open Book, he presents it on the scale of the whole screen and transfigures it into a place of fantastic welcome, waiting for the other. It is a threshold and then a place of communication and relations, exhibited and framed by the uncrossable limit of the television screen.
Vito Acconci's aesthetic is not formal art or conceptual art in the strict sense, although they are contemporary to it. It is conceived in a relationship with the flesh and the body, thus contrasting with the immateriality of video and the decontextualization of its reading in the spectator's place.

Thérèse Beyler