Three studies which exploit the frame of a fixed camera angle to suggest space in different ways.
1 - Circle. The camera focuses on the corner of a field which Vito Acconci crosses several times at relatively regular intervals, trotting from left to right. The time it takes him to reappear on the left of the screen leaves a suggestio n and a sensation of the circle he is running around the camera. Through this fixed camera angle, the space imagined by the spectators to complete this sketchy circle provides them with an awareness of their own bodies in space.
2 - Jumps. In the shot, a piece of waste ground, with the edge of a wood in the background. The artist enters from the left of the frame, jumping, and then walks off on the same side. He then focuses attention - by the straight run-up th at he takes before jumping - on the horizontality and the space out of shot to the left of the camera.
3 - Push. Two people (one of whom is Vito Acconci), leaning against a wall, try to push each other outside the frame determined by the camera, without either of them leaving it entirely. What seems to be at stake is control of this frame in relation to the plane of the wall and interiorization of its width by the actors.
The artist offers us an elementary lexicon of camera shots: the space (Circle), the line (Jump), the plane (Push).
This film, the beginning of Vito Acconci's work with the cinema, is an exploration of a new space for action after leaving the space of the page.

Kamel Boukhechem