Openings

The film Openings is an experiment in which Vito Acconci investigates the boundaries of his own body. This film shows Acconci carefully plucking out every hair from around his navel. He made Openings in 1970 as part of a series of similar actions that he recorded on Super-8 film. In his Corrections, for example, he used matches to burn off the hair at the nape of his neck. As this illustrates, the themes that emerge from Acconci’s oeuvre involve the relationship between the body and space and the boundaries between the private and the public. Openings also sees the artist using his body as material for his work. By capturing this intimate action on film, he is exploring the lines of demarcation between private and public. Acconci’s early films, such as Openings, form the foundation of the works that he made from 1971 onwards, in which he involved the viewer in his work in a confrontational manner.