What's the Matter with Words? Vito Acconci's L-L-llanguage of the Written Text

In June of 1970, the artist Vito Acconci repeatedly stuffed his hand into his mouth until he choked. The filmed activity, entitled Adaptation Study (Hand in Mouth), represents in the brevity of the three minutes that it lasted, how the failure of a system can propel its perpetuation [Fig. 1]. Push hand into mouth. Begin to choke. Release. Repeat. Through and in spite of its state of oral obstruction, Hand in Mouth speaks to what happens when one such system—that of language—takes its implements—hand and mouth—and puts them to what seems to be a preposterous, mistaken, even regressive, purpose.

Best known as a performance and video artist, later a sculptor and installation artist, and most recently a landscape architect, Acconci considers himself always, and from the very beginning, a writer.1 And, regardless of Acconci's writerly medium—the body, video, architectonic space, paper