Acconci Vito - Pryings 1971
Pryings is a vivid investigation of the physical and psychological dynamics of male/female interaction, a study in domination, violation, and resistance. It is a recording of a live performance at New York University. As Acconci tries to force Kathy Dillon's closed eyelids open, the camera stays fixed on her face. Dillon pushes back, sometimes defending her face and while trying to break free. The couple struggles violently and passionately, locked in a silent hug; Acconci's brutal torture is laced with a diabolical tenderness. The desire for and resistance to close contact are literally enacted via the body connection.
"In Pryings, one of his earliest and least verbal tapes, the artist is seen trying to force open and gain entry into any and all of the orifices of a woman's face. His persistence outlasts the running time of the tape, as does the persistence of the woman under attack, who manages to persevere in her attempt to guard her metaphysical privacy."
—David Ross, "A Provisional Overview of Artists' Television in the US," Studio International 191 (May/June 1976)
The sexual dynamics of seclusion and power are richly implied by this remarkable performance, which pits man and woman against one another in a struggle for mental and physical dominance.
International reputation has been bestowed upon Vito Acconci due to his artful techniques, which are controversial, influential, and frequently radical. Since the late 1960s, Acconci has played a significant role in contemporary art. His provocative and ultimately political works have progressed from writing to bodyworks, conceptual art, performance, film, video, multimedia installation, and architectural sculpture. He has concentrated on architecture and design projects since the late 1980s.
Acconci created a series of conceptual, performance-based videos in the 1970s that are still remarkably powerful and innovative over thirty years later. Among the important early works in the medium are seminal pieces like The Red Tapes (1976) and Theme Song (1973). The intense interaction that Acconci's psychodramatic movies compel between the artist and the audience, the body and the ego, public and private, subject and object, absence and presence, is raw, crudely constructed, and powerfully direct. Acconci took advantage of the immediacy and mediation that come with technology to create personal self-expression through video.
In his videos, language acts as a trigger for a physical and psychological quest for identity that takes place inside the body. Video is likened to the close-up, a personal theater setting for in-person deeds and confessions. Acconci's performative performances and stream-of-consciousness monologues, captured in real time by a fixed camera, are very intimate and frequently bordering on exhibitionism. They chronicle the intrusion of the private self into the public arena.
Using controlled performance scenarios to study the dynamics of interaction through manipulation or self-concentration, early cassettes such as Pryings (1971) and Remote Control (1971) are body-based exercises. Works like Undertone (1973) and Theme Song (1973), which convey the self through language and psychology more and more, are intense, one-on-one interactions with the other as "you." With the spectator, whose presence is essential to the works, Acconci adopts an aggressive or seductive position, implying the viewer as witness, voyeur, or collaborator. Through the process of forming an intensely intimate yet mediated relation between artist and other, video allows him to conduct a rigorous examination of the "I".
“Everything I did in art was based on a hatred of art and a hatred of museums, because it was the opposite of everyday life,” Vito Acconci said in 2008.
In the 1970s, the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare proposed a set of safeguards to address the lack of protections under the law. A set of principles of privacy were set forth in the HEW Report, called Records, Computers and the Rights of Citizens: report of the Secretary’s Advisory Committee on Automated Personal Data Systems. These core practices were built upon by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) when it created a set of Fair Information Practices in the OECD Guidelines on the Protection of Privacy and Transbroder Flows of Personal Data.
In the 70s, Vito Acconci engaged performance art to investigate and satire privacy as an objective fact outside the legal system. Does Pryings 1971 have more significance now that it was only a conversation about privacy in the 1970s? This art can be considered video art as performance art based on videos. Artistically produced video content is disseminated via the Internet and continues to do so. Does this conclusion make us unintentionally consider the possibility that privacy snooping is the root cause of cyberbullying?
Acconci tackles his short film with a theme of violence, sexuality, and some component of the body in almost all of his works. His true goal in "Prying" is to force the woman to come out into the open, as seen by his forced attempt to open her eyes. This performance could be his way of symbolizing how - we as humans compel our bodies to behave in particular ways as he fights the woman to open her eyes - the aggression is obviously evident.
It would be great if the symbolism in this case wasn't truly the opening of one's eyes—that is, if it meant the viewer's eyes—but rather the hands of the underappreciated visionary artist on the eyes of the underappreciative Philistine spectator. Even if we assume the worst and see Pryings as an allegory about the battle of the visual arts, we still have to admit that Acconci doesn't win in the end since Dillon successfully battles to keep those irises off-camera. Therefore, the allegory's potential may be fruitier than we initially believed.
The "Pyrings" becomes visible in the artistic expression, yet the bullying remains covert.
Carley James
Auckland, New Zealand
10:07 PM, Jan 29, 2024
Artpendix Press
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