What links the Sex Pistols with the architect and urban designer Vito Acconci?

Very little. The Sex Pistols were linked to the work I did in installations in the mid-’70s. I was interested in how you use voice as a certain instrument that pushes people up against the wall with the hope for a result. But at some point people are saying: “Wait a minute, why am I being pushed like this? What is this pressure used against me?”

In general, though, I think architecture and music are the same thing. Both architecture and music make a surrounding. Very specifically, for the first time in my life, I am interested in music without voice. What interests me in that?

What interested me is that music has started to sound like what a surrounding does. This is what architecture does. This is something like the kind of space I am sensing I want people to be in. The kind of space that is a kind of labyrinth, that is a kind of maze. And by the 2000s that I think became clarified: electronic music, noise music. Music now acts as a kind of wallpaper, as a kind of surrounding, as a kind of ambience. And it is that ambience I think that made me—and others, I am sure—think that music and architecture make an atmosphere, make a surrounding. With both music and architecture, you can do something else. You do something else while listening to music. You do something else while in the middle of architecture. Both engender multifocus.

And if there is a keynote so far of the 21st century, it is that it is maybe not so important to focus on one thing at a time. Western culture has a bias against surface and a bias towards depth. Maybe that bias is not necessarily deserved— yes, if you concentrate on one thing in a very channeled way, of course as you go deeper into something you know it more. But that means that there are a hundred other things that you don’t know. Maybe range is as important as depth. Maybe it is just as important to know a scattering of many things rather than a focus on one. And I think both, music and architecture, are saying you can do all these things at the same time.

What is the biggest challenge for an artist working in the public field today?

I have to admit I don’t understand why someone who works in the public field insists on being an artist. Why don’t they—since design and architecture already work with the public field…It depends of course on what you are doing: If you want to do that kind of art that is maybe a kind of social criticism, then I think you maybe should do it as an artist. Or when you do a kind of commentary art or art as a demonstration—I think art can do that much better than architecture or design. If you want to do something that acts more like a space or an ambience, I am not sure art is the best thing to do.

But back to your question: Can you do more in art than in a political demonstration? Can you do more in art than in a party? You probably can. But in terms of questioning our concept of reality, art cannot do better than science, cannot do better than design. What bothers me about art—and that started already a long time ago—is that as far as I am aware, art doesn’t just define a field. But when we use the term “art” outside the field of art, we are approving it. That is a dangerous thing. It is the only field that not only defines itself but also evaluates itself. Whereas every other field—for instance, if you call something furniture, we are not saying if it is good or bad. We define it first and then we decide whether it is good or bad. Art has a head start. Why? I don’t know, and I don’t know why someone hasn’t challenged that. And what bothers me is that art can engender the self-satisfied position. The beautiful thing about art is that you can use anything in art. You can use any other material and any other technique. It sometimes excuses you and allows you.

Coming back to you: Would you agree that keywords like “poetry,” “body” and “space” are roughly useful to describe your development?

Development? Poetry, body, space is probably something that persisted throughout my career. When I was writing poetry I was working with the space of a page. When I was doing stuff with my own person, with my body, I was interested in doing a space that joined my body and other persons’. And the kind of space we do now—and maybe that is something I bring to it—is body related.