Blog 9 Vito Acconci- “Public Space in a Private Time”.

Acconci, Vito. “Public Space in a Private Time” Critical inquiry The University of Chicago Press Chicago, 1999: 900 - 918. Jstor. University of Auckland. 7 Sep. 2008.

Acconci is an American sculptor, performance artist and video artist. He has also written poetry and critique and this reading is an article from Critcal Enquiry published by The University of Chicago Press. His work is focused around social commentaries.

In Vito Acconci’s writing Public Space Private Time, he writes
"When you’re in a plane, and you look out the window and you’re in the clouds and you have no clue as to what your route is, you might be anywhere you want to be, anywhere in the world. The image you have of where you are is different from the world in the dreams of the person sitting next to you. Except that it doesn’t matter what either of you might think, what either of you might want; you’re not going anywhere but here, where the plane has been programmed to land, where the pilot has taken you. You’re in the position of a child: “This is your captain speaking…” The electronic age- by turning concrete space into abstract space, by turning space into time- takes control out of your hands and puts it in the will of another, whether that other is called God or Magic of The Corporation of The Government.” (Acconci 1990: 914)

This quote interests me because it talks about the power being taken out of the passengers’ hand. The illusion of the ‘freedom’ of air travel is that it really seems to be a way of creating a global movement of capital. It seems although we have been given more freedom through travel, we are just part of a system that moves people around, making production and profit global.

In her series In the Place of the Public, Martha Rosler deals with the idea that an airport and airport spaces aren’t places for the public but places for the public to move through. They are build for efficiency of global movement. Stephen Wright writes on her work
"our bodies are funnelled through tunnel-systems whose design resembles an integrated circuit, through which passengers, cargo or any other commodity are shunted like electrons. Airplanes themselves are shown as mobile extensions of airport passageways, hooking the corridors of one airport to those of another airport." (Wright 2000: 2)

Rosler isn’t merely dealing with the actual architectural space of the airport, she is commenting on how the space has been created to support economic and capital systems.

Vidler writes on Rosler’s work,
"Rosler’s photographs take on the air of pictorial revelations of the underbelly of capitalism, its spaces manifested as empty, sterile non-places, determined more by mathematical calculation of times of arrival and departure than by any regard for the human subjects subjected to this control and surveillance." (Vidler 2001: 180)


Martha Rosler,
CEPA Public Art Installation- Bus Show
“In the place of the Public: airport series”,
1999
http://courses.washington.edu/hypertxt/cgi-bin/12.228.185.206/html/wordsinimages/mrairport/roslerview.html

In representing these spaces without any human subjects, one is offered to look and question the of the space itself rather than of the social interactions of people that move through the space.

References:

Acconci, Vito. “Public Space in a Private Time” Critical inquiry The University of Chicago Press Chicago, 1999: 900 - 918. Jstor. University of Auckland. 7 Sep. 2008.

Wright, Stephen. “Martha Rosler in conversation: Packaging the Public Sphere.” Parachute, 2000: 1-5. Wilson Web. University of Auckland. 30 Jan. 2008.

Vidler, Anthony Warped Space: Art, Architecture, and Anxiety in Modern Culture The MIT Press: Cambridge, London, 2001