Quotes by Vito Acconci

Vito Acconci

[My early performance work] started by being the activity of a person, any person, like any other – but once that person became photographed it became a specialized person, the object of a personality cult.

Cult

Performances

Personality

Any time you do something, you make decisions about time and space. I wanted those decisions to be out of my hands. I could be dragged, carried along by another person, I could be a receiver. I could be the agent of the overall scheme, but I didn’t want to be the agent of the particular action. I could make the ultimate decision that my space is going to change now, but I don’t know where it’s going to go.

Decision

Hands

Space

Even though I always claimed that I didn’t want to write about something – once I wasn’t writing fiction, anyway; I think for me the change from fiction to poetry was that in fiction I was writing about something, in poetry I was writing something.

Fiction

Thinking

Writing

I always thought of writing as public, I never thought of writing a diary. I had been struck by, jolted by things I had read, and I wanted to do the same to others. I don’t think it ever was the notion of an autobiography; I skipped that phase totally, I think.

Diaries

Thinking

Writing

I like intersections. They’re the nature of New York, and there’s always the possibility that when you’re at one you can meet someone new. Have I ever met anyone new at an intersection? No, but I like the idea of it. I like cities because if you’re stopping on the corner to wait for a light to change, there’s the possibility that you and somebody else can talk. And if you and that somebody else start to talk, then you can start to argue, and if you start to argue, you might start a revolution.

Arguing

Revolution

Waiting

I like Richard Serra sculptures too but I wish they had a goddamn hot dog stand inside.

Dog

Hot

Wish

I wanted to be involved with the making of some kind of parallel world. I thought, there’s no reason to go to different parts of our world, because you can write them. You can stay home, stay in a little room, and imagine all these worlds. And I wanted to do that. Why did I want to do that, I’m not sure if I can tell.

Home

Our World

Writing

I was always fascinated by diagramming a sentence. Because that is going into a space, going into a world of language.

Language

Space

World

I was starting to recognize a corner I was driving myself into: that all writing could do was refer to things that had already been written. I’m making the margin, but the margin of a book that already exists. I was having this exhilaration at, but at the same time horror of this recognition that I’d driven myself into the world of only books. This is a world of the previously written, and maybe I don’t have to add to it, maybe all I can do is measure it.

Book

Exhilaration

Writing

I wish we could make buildings that could constantly explode and come back in different ways. The idea of a changing environment suggests that if your environment changes all the time, then maybe your ideas will change all the time.

Different

Environment

Wish

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Architecture

Arguing

Art

Artist

Attention

Awkward

Book

Bullets

Children

Cult

Decision

Diaries

Different

Discipline

Dog

Environment

Exhilaration

Fascination

Fiction

Frustration

Hands

Hero

Holes

Home

Hot

Important

Language

Listening

Made

Mean

Moving

Music Is

Nice

Noise

Numbers

Our World

Performances

Personality

Real

Revolution

School

Sound

Space

Thinking

Trying

Typewriters

Waiting

War

What If

Wish

The Future Blueprint

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Quotes by Vito Acconci

Vito Acconci

[My early performance work] started by being the activity of a person, any person, like any other – but once that person became photographed it became a specialized person, the object of a personality cult.

Even though I always claimed that I didn’t want to write about something – once I wasn’t writing fiction, anyway; I think for me the change from fiction to poetry was that in fiction I was writing about something, in poetry I was writing something.

I always thought of writing as public, I never thought of writing a diary. I had been struck by, jolted by things I had read, and I wanted to do the same to others. I don’t think it ever was the notion of an autobiography; I skipped that phase totally, I think.

I like Richard Serra sculptures too but I wish they had a goddamn hot dog stand inside.

I was always fascinated by diagramming a sentence. Because that is going into a space, going into a world of language.

I wish we could make buildings that could constantly explode and come back in different ways. The idea of a changing environment suggests that if your environment changes all the time, then maybe your ideas will change all the time.

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Topics by Vito Acconci

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The Future Blueprint

The Home Therapist: Anti Anxiety

The Autobiography

The Behaviour Diary

The Dating Diary

The Relationship Therapist

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