{"id":1236,"date":"2015-10-19T22:15:19","date_gmt":"2015-10-19T22:15:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/courses.candelalearning.com\/zelixart102\/?post_type=chapter&p=1236"},"modified":"2015-12-16T16:33:52","modified_gmt":"2015-12-16T16:33:52","slug":"vito-acconci","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/atd-herkimer-arthistory2\/chapter\/vito-acconci\/","title":{"raw":"Vito Acconci","rendered":"Vito Acconci"},"content":{"raw":"Conceived by performance and conceptual artist Vito Acconci, Following Piece<\/i><\/a> was an activity that took place everyday on the streets of New York, between October 3rd and 25th, 1969. It was part of other performance and conceptual events sponsored by the Architectural League of New York that occurred during those three weeks. The terms of the exhibition \u201cStreet Works IV\u201d were to do a piece, sometime during the month, that used a street in New York City. So Acconci decided to follow people around the streets and document his following of them. But why would he do this? Why would Acconci follow random people around New York?\r\n\r\nAcconci\u2019s work is typical of performance and conceptual art made during this period in the way that he uses his body as the object of his art in order to explore some specific idea. In essence,\u00a0Following Piece<\/i> was concerned with the language of our bodies, not so much in a private manner, but in a deeply public manner. By selecting a passer-by at random until they entered a private space, Acconci submitted his own movements to the movements of others, showing how our bodies are themselves always subject to external forces that we may or may not be able to control. In his notes that the artist kept during the performance, Acconci wrote:\r\n
Following Piece, potentially, could use all the time allotted and all the space available: I might be following people, all day long, everyday, through all the streets in New York City. In actuality, following episodes ranged from two or three minutes when someone got into a car and I couldn\u2019t grab a taxi, I couldn\u2019t follow \u2013 to seven or eight hours \u2013 when a person went to a restaurant, a movie.<\/blockquote>\r\nIn terms of the art work, rather than being just another object that we look at in the gallery, Following Piece was part of the revolution that took place in the art world in the late 1960s that tried to bring art out of the gallery and into the street in order to explore real issues such as space, time, and the human body. Many artists, such as Acconci, used their bodies as their chosen medium. Look at some of Acconci\u2019s notes of the period which he wrote before, during and after the event:\r\n