Television, Furniture, Sculpture -- Vito Acconci -- Gabi Smith

The first part of Acconci's essay that stood out to me was his concept of a television set making the power of the screen handleable. It brought to mind a Bo Burnham interview in which he discusses his film Eigth Grade. In the interview Burnham describes how he felt it was important to release the film on the largest screen possible (as opposed to offers to release it online or reformatting it as a tv show or something) because he felt that a large part of the message of the film was establishing his thirteen year old female protagonist as powerful. He discussed how the audience should be humbled before her and her problems, and that upon rewatching on a TV or a laptop, the viewer could get another unique experience by literally feeling closer to her in proximity and size through the screen.

Acconci's point about television sets being initially sort of trojan horsed into the home was also really interesting. I think this is why often times video installation not based on projections or minimal screens make use of the TV and the screen as a weighted object. As Acconci says, they designate direction. They become sculpture.

About half way through I got kind of lost in the argument about the TV's relation to bodies and sex-lessness of TV.

I was also interested in Acconci's assertion that making video work comes with a level of privilege unique to American experiences? While this may have been true at the time of this being written, I don't think thats true of today at. When smartphones and televisions are in the hands of even some of the poorest people in the world, there is a far lower barrier to entry to make video art then fine art painting of sculpture.