Vito Acconci

Vito Acconci’s face appears at the right side of the screen, close against the lens of the video camera he has focused on himself. Lying on the floor, he lights a cigarette, looks straight into the camera, pushes the play button on a cassette player just out of sight, and says, “I have no idea what your face looks like. I mean you could be anybody out there. Ah, but I know there’s gotta be somebody…watching me. Somebody who wants to come in close to me.”

So begins Theme Song, a video Acconci made in the 1970s, during a period in his long and varied career—which also encompasses writing, performance, installation, sculpture, and architecture—when he experimented with film, sound recordings, and the recently invented medium of video, which allowed for immediate playback. He began producing visual art in 1969, and became known for works centered upon his subversive behaviors, through which he would disrupt and question perceived societal norms. In Theme Song, he confronts viewers with a sexually charged monologue. Riffing off of the lyrics of the songs about love, loneliness, and desire playing in the background, he behaves as if there is no screen between him and the audience. “Come on, look, I’m all alone,” he implores. “I just need your body next to mine.”

Through such statements, Acconci aimed to address viewers as directly as possible, and to make people more critically aware of the way they consume and are manipulated by televised images and their underlying messages. His monologue in Theme Song is peppered with subtle criticism of televised media and our relationship to it. Through it, he suggests that television may be used to distract us from our own discontent and loneliness and to take the place of real-life human connections.