A poet of the New York school in the early and mid- 1960s, Vito Acconci (1940) moved toward performance, sound, and video work by the end of the decade. Acconci changed direction in order to “define [his] body in space, find a ground for [him]self, an alternate ground for the page ground [he] had as a poet.” The Red Tapes is Acconci’s masterwork, a three-part epic that is one of his major works in video. Originally designed for video projection, the work is structured to merge video space - the close up - with filmic space - the landscape. Acconci maps a topography of the self within a cultural and social context, locating personal identity through history, cultural artifacts ,language and representation. Stating that the work moves “from Vito Acconci to a larger Americanism, between a psychological personal space and a cultural personal space,” he constructs a dense, poetic text in this search for self and America.

1976, 141’27”, video, b&w, sound, English spoken