respect for the viewer

Interview - Mark C. Taylor in correspondence with Vito Acconci.

Taylor: In making the 'viewer' a participant in the work of art, you often create situations that invovle or imply a certain danger. What lessons does such danger teach?

Acconci: In some early 1970s pieces, I learned that commitment to an idea, to an abstraction, can be frightening. i could be so concerntrated on applying stress to the body that I ignored the ravages that stress was making on my body; I could talk myself into a hypnosis where I probably could have killed somebody. And, gradually, I learned respect for the viewer. Yes, maybe the insertion of real-world everyday fear is a whiff of fresh air into the hothouse of an isolationist art system. But, at the same time, danger only confirms and enhances the victimization of the viewer. Museum-goers are automatically victimized: they're in a building with no windows, as if in a prison - they're ordered 'Do Not Touch'. The art is for the eyes only, and they're in a position of constant desire, hence constant frustration. So, danger to the viewer is unfair; it takes advantages of somebody who's already down. Later, in some of my installations from the late 1970s, where viewers could release a projectile and thereby endanger either themselves or others, I learned that I was cheating. I was depending on, resorting to, the safety mechanism of gallery/museum; I must have known it couldn't happen here, this was a gallery, this wasn't real - I was only making a metaphor, and I thought I hated metaphor.