[Broadside] Steps (Stepping-Off Place)

New York: Vito Acconci, 1970. Good. New York: Vito Acconci, 1970. Broadside (28x21.5cm) xeroxed from typescript. Previous folds and heavy wear and soil from use with small loss at top edge not quite approaching text. A Good example only. According to the previous bookseller this piece came from the library of Fluxus poet and musician Jackson Mac Low.

A rare example describing the Situationist performance artist Vito Acconci's early famous performance piece "Steps": every morning at 8am at his apartment on Christopher Street beginning in February, 1970, and (presumably) forever afterwards on alternating months, Acconci would step up on an 18-inch stool at the rate of thirty steps a minute, an activity he would maintain until he could no longer hold the proposed rate. At the end of each month he would issue a report (not included here). "The public can see the activity performed, in my apartment, any morning during the performance months. Whenever I cannot be home, I will attempt to perform the activity wherever I happen to be." According to digitized copies of his reports, Acconci would begin each performance month only able to maintain the activity for just a few minutes at a time--by the end of the month he could hold if for nearly thirty minutes, if nothing else a testament to endurance training.

We locate only one other example of this proposal, at the Biblioteca del Museo Reina Sofia in Spain.