Vito Acconci

The works of the New York-based artist Vito Acconci (born 1940) are more often than not about creating a public defined via the body - from his radical performances at the beginning of the seventies to his unusual architectural designs since the establishment of the Acconci Studio at the end of the eighties. His work Courtyard in the Wind for the new building of the Technisches Rathaus in Munich, a building which houses the city´s architectural department, was the first permanent structure by Acconci to be realized in a public space: A revolving ring of landscape in the courtyard may be moved with the aid of the artist´s wind power plant located on top of the Rathaus tower. The book at hand in the Cantz series is the first to document this project by the artist and at the same time grants valuable insights into the paradigm of architectural designs by the Acconci Studio. The book also features texts by Vito Acconci about the body, architecture and public space. An instructive essay by Heinz Schütz reviewing Acconci´s works from the last decades opens up the horizon against which Courtyard in the Wind is set.