
I went to hear Vito Acconci lecture at
Mills last night with one primary question in my head: How exactly did a performance artist probably best known for 1972's
Seedbed, the piece in which he publicly masturbated under the floor of one of his gallery shows, decide to found a visionary architecture firm, Acconci Studio, which is still very much active today? But Acconci laid it out quite clearly over the course of his inspiring two-hour talk how he has always been interested in movement, whether the flow of words on the page in his early poetry or the motion of people in a room or building, and that it was
Seedbed that even gave him his first thoughts about architecture. His performance art emphasized his interest in site-specificity and his belief that there are no universals in art, ideas that he continued to expand upon in his installations in the '70s in which he attempted to construct "people-space". So from there it was really no great cognitive leap to architecture and the formation of Acconci Studio in the late '80s. Acconci quickly ran us through the many ways the firm grapples with ideas of motion and change, from their design for a new World Trade Center pierced by holes to an enclosed street in Indianapolis that at night illuminates passers-through with their own personalized swarm of LED lights. He wryly noted that in architecture and design theories about space can be more important than actual space when many projects do not get built, but happily the Studio's realized designs include the gorgeous wave-like elevated subway station at Coney Island and also the artificial island in Graz pictured here. I was struck when Acconci pointed out that architecture is one of the only art forms that recognizes time and assumes eventual revision, that we haven't found the materials yet that won't degrade or need to be replaced, which is something I think about a lot as a preservationist who also adores bleeding-edge design. I did feel a little sad when they ripped down the old de Young, but I also get a physical thrill every time I walk into the new Herzog and de Meuron building. It just makes me happy they have room to display that massive Gerhard Richter in the atrium now.