Three Adaptation Studies

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.