Vito Acconci's career, which began in the late 1960s, has included Conceptual, Performance, and Body art, as well as installation, sculpture, and architecture. Round Trip (A Space to Fall Back On) belongs to a group of installations that Acconci produced between 1974 and 1979 that incorporates architectural elements, props, and audiovisual equipment.
For this work, Acconci devised what he calls a niche that is both "in the middle of (and, by its nature, somewhat apart from)" the gallery. Lightly stained wooden stools and boxes of various sizes spill across the two black walls, the floor, and the ceiling, suggesting items that we might see in a typical home. This hallucinatory, disorienting space is far from a conventional domestic scene, however. A vacant stool beckons the viewer to sit down across from a black podium that supports three spotlights and a speaker. The lights shine brightly into the area, blinding the viewer. The artist's voice and other unexpected sounds, such as a knocking, emanate from the podium, then move around the space, projecting from speakers hidden inside three boxes, before returning to the podium. This disconcerting work, which resists a coherent narrative interpretation, reveals the artist's powerful ability to force the museum visitor into an objectified role despite the artist's physical absence.
I want to put the viewer on shaky ground so he has to reconsider himself and his circumstances.
-Vito Acconci, 1981
