Three Adaptation Studies, 1970
This experimental film is an early work by Vito Acconci, from the mid-sixties and early seventies, when as a poet he began to develop performative actions with the objects and spaces in his immediate surroundings. In Three Adaptation Studies, Acconci physically resists three very simple, yet slightly uncomfortable actions. In the first, the artist, his eyes covered with a scarf, tries to dodge a series of balls that are being thrown at him. In the second, he tries to keep his eyes wide open while his face is full of soap. And in the third, he tries inserting his entire fist in his mouth. In this way, he imposes the senses of touch, sight and taste on actions that involve some difficulty or adversity. These are simple situations somewhere between the ludic and the absurd that the artist uses to explore the reaction of the senses and the body to external stimuli, often adverse.
Technical details
- Original title:
- Three Adaptation Studies
- Registration number:
- 2198
- Artist:
- Acconci, Vito
- Date created:
- 1970
- Date acquired:
- 2003
- Fonds:
- MACBA Collection. MACBA Foundation
- Object type:
- Audiovisual recording
- Media:
- Super 8 mm film transferred to video, b/w, silent, 8 min
- 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.