The setup for this video is simple and strong: in the foreground, a table, one side of which touches the bottom of the screen. In the background, an empty chair against the wall. The impression is one of a closed, cramped place, rather like the inside of the monitor. Vito Acconci enters this space and sits on the chair facing the spectator, his arms beneath the table which he stares at. He begins an insistent, ambivalent monologue, as if he is seeking to convince himself in turn either that there is a women under the table rubbing his thighs or that he is rubbing them himself: "I want to believe there's no one here under the table […]. I want to believe there's a girl here." Then, raising his head, bringing his hands out from under the table and rubbing them together, he speaks directly to the spectator: "I need you to keep your place there at the head of the table. I need to know I can count on you […]"

By this movement of exclusion/intrusion, this attempt at communication is reminiscent of Home Movies: a hypothetical, invisible woman, the camera/spectator and the artist. Here, however, there is no longer any specific reference to the past, autobiography or his work, but to a raw psychological fact which forces the spectator to become a voyeur and an accomplice.

One can feel the constrictive presence of the table, where Vito Acconci's reflection is clearly visible, like a metaphor for the television and its screen. Undertone also evokes the relationship which may occur in a confessional and the perversion of an education in which everything which happens below is not acceptable.

Kamel Boukhechem