Downtown

A show of photographs and written documentation of Vito Acconci’s 1969-70 performances is about as raw and devoid of artistic trappings as the New York artist’s actual performances. Murky little black-and-white photos, typed explanations and handwritten sheets have the look of scraps found in the bottom of a desk drawer, but they explain very clearly what the artist was up to in his seminal years of performance art.

In “Hand and Mouth Piece,” Acconci repeatedly stuck his hand in his mouth until he choked. “Blinking Piece” had him walking down a street in Greenwich Village and taking a photograph every time he blinked. In “Combination,” he lodged himself in a cage with three roosters for six hours. “Room Piece” involved moving the contents of his apartment to an Upper West Side gallery each weekend.

If this sounds masochistic, exhibitionistic and boring, it is, but that is part of the point. Acconci, among others, was interested in (or obsessed by) pushing his body to the limit, defining himself in terms of his space and absorbing himself into other beings. To that end, he put himself at the center of an art form that involved self-abusive or exhausting physical activity.

He has gone on to construct participatory sculptural environments, but this disturbing work is a prime component of a period when some artists treated themselves rather like laboratory rats in an effort to subvert art’s commodity status and focus on basic human functions. (Cirrus, 542 S. Alameda St., to May 14.)