Air Time, 1973
Scattered through the exhibition-space are seven "stations": each consists of a white box with a white stool beside it – inside each box is an audiotape loop, the box is a radio station – the sound skips from box to box, winding through the space.
Each "radio program" is in my voice, addressed to viewers: I'm telling them stories – it's snowing, you're in the mountains, you're on a deserted pier, the waves are beating against the shore, I'm transporting you out of here so I can be atone with her…
Off to the side of the exhibition-space, there's a blinking red light over the door to a small closet. In the middle of the exhibition-space, there's a TV monitor placed overhead on the edge of a free-standing wall. Three times a day, I'm inside the closet for a "recording session"; viewers can see me and hear me outside, on the TV monitor.
I'm facing a mirror: not to see myself, exactly, but to see myself the way "you" have seen me – you, who I lived with for four years, until recently – I'm recreating incidents in our life together – I want to see how ugly I am with you…
I need viewers to be there; I need viewers to see how I've been with you; once they see it, then I can't deny it: I have to come to terms with it, I have to realize that that's the way I am with you, and there's nothing I can do about it – the only way to change it is to leave you for good.
Vito Acconci, 2001.
Technical details
- Original title:
- Air Time
- Registration number:
- 1527
- Artist:
- Acconci, Vito
- Date created:
- 1973
- Date acquired:
- 2000
- Fonds:
- MACBA Collection. MACBA Foundation
- Object type:
- Media installation
- Media:
- Single-channel video, b/w, 36 min 49 s and various materials
- Dimensions:
- Variable dimensions
- Credits:
- MACBA Collection. MACBA Foundation
- Copyright:
- © Vito Acconci, VEGAP, Barcelona
- It has accessibility resources:
- No
The MACBA Collection features Catalan, Spanish and international art and, although it includes works from the 1920s onwards, its primary focus is on the period between the 1960s and the present.
For more information on the work or the artist, please consult MACBA's Library. To request a loan of the work, please write to colleccio [at] macba.cat.
If you need a high resolution image of the work, you must submit an image loan request.
