In See Through Vito Acconci boxes with his image in front of a mirror. We can only see the bust and the reflection of the artist. The movement of his arms has limited amplitude. In the first moments, the punches are contained, then they hit the mirror and break it. The length of the film is that of the rise in tension or anger of the ego fighting with itself. As opposed to what we can see in many works by Vito Acconci, the space of the action is not the body, but the restrained space between the individual and their reflection, in the externalization of conflict.

This topic was addressed previously in Shadow Box (October 1970), a performance in which the artist hits both his shadow and the wall of the gallery, seeking to highlight all the results of his action: noise, movement in space, as well as physical qualities of the occasional boxer. See Through excludes sound, on the one hand, the reckoning of the space of the action through a closeup shot, on the other, and limits the perception of the body that is restricted to the bust. The film is not so much the trace of a performance as a selection of essential signs in the creation of meaning, according to Vito Acconci. If the mirror plays an important role in 'postmodern' art, as a conceptual tool that displaces reality in a critical manner, and as an object that breaks with modernist thought and practices, Vito Acconci does not use it in that sense. Here, the mirror is a material taken from the thick of individuality, a reference to the myth of Narcissus and to psychology, a space of transfer of the ego.

In the work of Acconci, the video or the Super 8 film are spaces for the display of human processes. Their staging invites the spectator to think, based on the artist's instructions, about themselves and their experiences.

Thérèse Beyler

Translated by Mia Stern, 2021