Centers

Pointing at my own image on the video monitor: my attempt is to keep my finger constantly in the center of the screen—I keep narrowing my focus into my finger. The result [the TV image] turns the activity around: a pointing away from myself, at an outside viewer. —Vito Acconci, Body as Place-Moving in on Myself, Performing Myself, Avalanche 6 (Fall 1972) By its very mise-en-scène, Centers typifies the structural characteristics of the video medium. For Centers was made by Acconci s using the video monitor as a mirror. As we look at the artist sighting along his outstretched arm and forefinger toward the center of the screen we are watching, what we see is a sustained tautology: a line of sight that begins at Acconci s plane of vision and ends at the eyes of his projected double. —Rosalind Krauss, Video: The Aesthetics of Narcissism, October 1 (Spring 1976) This title was in the original Castelli-Sonnabend video art collection.