Latest Vito Acconci Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• The kind of influence you want is a much deeper influence. It's like empowerment. Things are like this, but what if they were like that? What happens if you turn everything inside out? It's something that not just artists do. I think scientists do that, too. There's a theory: What if we pour water on it? That's also what a child does. If a child came in now, the child would ignore us, go under the table, and make a house.

  Vito Acconci

  Children, Thinking, Artist

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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

  Vito Acconci

  Dog, Wish, Hot

• I liked the idea of architectural games - you're always building and rebuilding. And I still thought of myself in opposition. I thought, If architects build a dream house, then I want to build a bad-dream house. My piece was called Bad Dream House.

  Vito Acconci

  Dream, House, Building

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• What I never wanted in art - and why I probably didn't belong in art - was that I never wanted viewers. I think the basic condition of art is the viewer: The viewer is here, the art is there. So the viewer is in a position of desire and frustration. There were those Do Not Touch signs in a museum that are saying that the art is more expensive than the people. But I wanted users and a habitat. I don't know if I would have used those words then, but I wanted inhabitants, participants. I wanted an interaction.

  Vito Acconci

  Art, Frustration, Thinking

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• I didn't want to admit that I was a performer. A performer meant spotlights - a performer had connotations of theater. I would have preferred agent to performer.

  Vito Acconci

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• In a time when everybody is talking about finding oneself, how do you find yourself? I wanted to do it as literally as possible. How do I prove that I'm concentrating on myself? I prove it by doing something physical. I can bite myself. I can burn the hair off my chest. The goal? Yes, I have a body. I have this thing that people call the self. Maybe I can change the self.

  Vito Acconci

  People, Goal, Finding Yourself

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• Why was I in a basement saying, "I'm alone here," wielding a lead pipe and crowbars? It was like I was doing the Vietnam War. It was like I was being America. If I put a blindfold on, I can't see you as people, which seemed to be what the United States was doing. I mean, it was important for people in my generation, because I grew up in the '40s, at a time when America was supposedly the hero nation. America saved Europe. And, some years later, we realized, America is a criminal.

  Vito Acconci

  War, Hero, Mean

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• Maybe I can pull at my breast in a kind of futile attempt to develop a woman's breast. It's not that simple to become a woman. But I think what was important, when I think back on that work, is something like The Little Engine That Could. It's me saying, I think I can, I think I can. Though I'm doing something I obviously can't, it's the process toward it that is important. The will toward it, the effort . . . My work was about getting to a place that you couldn't get to.

  Vito Acconci

  Simple, Thinking, Effort

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• The great thing about the Guggenheim is that you can see art in the fastest way if you want to. Which isn't bad. It's almost like Frank Lloyd Wright didn't know something called the Internet was going to exist, so he made it so you can go down as fast as possible.

  Vito Acconci

  Art, Internet, Great Things

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• I always thought, I can't waste time, I have to do work. I also thought that I was slower than other people, that I had to concentrate more. I always thought, I'm not brilliant, I have to work. That was something I embedded in myself very early: I have to go home and write. But did I get any more work done than people like Frank O'Hara, who were always going to parties? Probably not.

  Vito Acconci

  Party, Home, Writing

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• It was an incredible way to grow up, because words that you're taught - these definite things - you realize they sort of beautifully fall apart; that words are tenuous. In the middle of a large word, there's a small word that possibly contradicts the larger word. So I grew up where, on the one hand, the only thing I would ever think of doing was something in writing, music, or art, and on the other hand, I could've reacted strongly against it because it would've been a way to rebel.

  Vito Acconci

  Art, Growing Up, Fall

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• As a kid I learned notions of art and notions of not having any money.

  Vito Acconci

  Art, Kids

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• Public space can be a lot better with some private space to contradict it and vice versa. It keeps the system alive. If the system is just one thing, then it's closed and it eventually dies.

  Vito Acconci

  Source: www.revelinnewyork.com

• 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.

  Vito Acconci

  Waiting, Revolution, Arguing

  Source: www.revelinnewyork.com

• When a building is so complete within itself, I always think, "Why do I even have to go inside it?" I would love to do architecture that people can have a free hand in the making of it. We've done spaces where things are hinged and they can go out or in, but that's not freedom. That's supermarket freedom, or the notion that you can have anything you want as long as the supermarket carries it. We would love to do a space where you go inside and there's nothing there. You might have a seat and when you don't need it anymore you get up and it disappears.

  Vito Acconci

  Thinking, Long, People

  Source: www.revelinnewyork.com

• What connects architecture and music is that neither one is really an object. It's more like an ambience, a surrounding and a context. You can do other things while you're listening to music and of course, you can do other things while you're in the middle of architecture. The notion of multi-attention seems to me like it's the keynote to the beginning of the 21st century.

  Vito Acconci

  Listening, Architecture, Music Is

  Source: www.revelinnewyork.com

• 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.

  Vito Acconci

  Wish, Different, Environment

  Source: www.revelinnewyork.com

• Architecture is inherently a totalitarian activity. One thing we hate about it is that when you design a space, you're probably designing people's behavior in that space. I don't know if we know how to change that, but our goal is to make spaces for people rather than people being subservient to spaces.

  Vito Acconci

  Hate, People, Goal

  Source: www.revelinnewyork.com

• Sustainability has become a religion in architecture - not that there's anything wrong with it - but I think it has to work both ways. Everyone thinks architecture has to be subservient to sustainability, but what if we thought in the other direction, like, what can sustainability do to make architecture more exciting?

  Vito Acconci

  Thinking, What If, Architecture

  Source: www.revelinnewyork.com

• Sometimes when you come from outside a discipline you pay attention to things that insiders take for granted. I admit that sometimes I feel hesitant in the midst of other architects. I can't help thinking that they know more than I do, but I also feel that maybe I can go in directions they learned you're not supposed to go in.

  Vito Acconci

  Thinking, Discipline, Attention

  Source: www.revelinnewyork.com

• Modernism was a big thing for me, coming from a father who was very interested in art, music and culture - and almost always Italian art, music and culture. One good thing about Italians is that culture is part of everyday life. But Modernism is a movement of the past. The idea of a Modernist building as a sculpture set on a pedestal of grass is a part of Modernism that I'm not so crazy about.

  Vito Acconci

  Art, Father, Crazy

  Source: www.revelinnewyork.com

• Rather than attend to a world considered as if it's out there, I have to start to attend to me. That led to some things that I never wanted it to lead to, person as a sort of psychological miasma. I started to get wrapped up in self, and then, for the first time, self did become an autobiographical self.

  Vito Acconci

  Self, World, Firsts

  Interview with Shelley Jackson, believermag.com. January 1, 2007.

• I'm using my own person in pieces, but I'm trying to turn my person into a nonperson in the sense of a person without will, without volition. I'm subjecting myself to a scheme.

  Vito Acconci

  Trying, Pieces, Volition

  Interview with Shelley Jackson, believermag.com. January 1, 2007.

• 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.

  Vito Acconci

  Hands, Space, Decision

  Interview with Shelley Jackson, believermag.com. January 1, 2007.

• I can pick out people in this city to follow. I can be in a show at the Museum of Modern Art, my space in the Museum of Modern Art is my mailbox, my mail is delivered there. Whenever I want mail, I have to go through this city to get my mail.

  Vito Acconci

  Art, Museums, Cities

  Interview with Shelley Jackson, believermag.com. January 1, 2007.