Vito Acconci Response

            “Television, Furniture, and Sculpture: The Room with the American View” by Vito Acconci essentially discusses how the television moves between being decoration and art. It is a piece of work that holds the attention of the audience much longer than any sculpture piece could.  Television has the ability to allow people to live vicariously, to be something more or at least other than what they are. I have not fully processed Acconci’s discussion of economic and sexual power, though I believe he is saying that the television removes the opportunity for economic and sexual power to be exerted because the box embodies our illusions of it. 
            Acconci’s argument for video art appears to state that it is the attempt to remain relevant in an industry that is evolving because of the television. He says that art struggles because everything must be absorbed by it, instead of it finding ways to immerse itself into other things. This makes me think of math and science, and how we’ve found a way to quantify and experiment with everything; we even measure happiness. Yet art limits itself to the label of approval. With approval comes gatekeepers, the privileged who decide what can be deemed art, or trend.

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