Vito Acconci’s “Following Piece” (1969): Photography, Performance, and the Unnerving Power of Being Watched

Picture yourself strolling down a New York street, blissfully unaware that someone is following you. Not a friend or a lost tourist, but an artist—someone whose only goal is to silently track your every move. Maybe you duck into a bookstore, grab a coffee, or wander toward the subway. At no point are you aware that this stranger is trailing you, documenting your unremarkable day like a strange personal detective with no case to solve. This was the premise behind Vito Acconci’s 1969 conceptual art piece, Following Piece—part performance, part commentary on the unsettling proximity between everyday life and surveillance.

Acconci wasn’t following people to chat or even make contact. He had no interest in your favorite novel or what you were ordering for lunch. He was simply shadowing strangers through the city, recording the experience, until they entered a private space—a building, a home—where he could no longer follow. As odd as it sounds, Acconci’s piece, simple as it was, explored a bizarrely intimate relationship between photography, performance, and voyeurism. It’s a piece that might have been born in the late 1960s, but it resonates even more now, in an age where we are constantly watched, tracked, and recorded, whether we’ve signed up for it or not.

Turning the Mundane Into Performance

What makes Following Piece so intriguing is its insistence that the everyday is worth turning into art. Acconci took an activity we all do—walking—and elevated it into something that was both invasive and theatrical. The randomness of it all made it strange. The participants weren’t aware they were part of a performance, so what started as their private routine became Acconci’s public stage. Their normal, unremarkable walk was suddenly loaded with meaning—at least for him.

What’s particularly clever here is that Acconci’s work challenges our understanding of performance art itself. There’s no stage, no audience, and no applause. The “audience” had no idea the show was happening, and the only person who knew the play existed was the artist himself. The performance was invisible—there was no reveal, no interaction, no moment of recognition. It just... ended, when the subject stepped into a private space. Yet, later, those who saw Acconci’s photographs became part of the performance too, unknowingly completing the cycle.

The Camera as Witness

Acconci’s decision to document his actions through photography added a layer of complexity. The people he followed were unaware of his presence, and the photographs served as proof that this strange exercise actually happened. But the photographs also highlighted something darker: the potential for photography to become voyeuristic. Acconci didn’t just use the camera to capture a moment; he used it to spy, to transform ordinary people into unwitting subjects of his art.

We like to think of photography as a tool for preserving memories, of capturing beauty, or moments of significance. But Acconci’s work reminds us that the camera can also intrude, that it can record lives without permission. Following Pieceforces us to reckon with the discomfort of being watched—especially when we don’t know we’re being watched.

Even though the people Acconci followed were oblivious to his presence, the piece itself leaves the viewer feeling oddly unsettled. It plays with our modern fear of surveillance—the sense that our actions, no matter how inconsequential, are always being tracked, recorded, and possibly used in ways we can’t control. In the 1960s, when Acconci was following strangers through the streets, the idea of surveillance was abstract—there were no facial recognition technologies or omnipresent cameras tracking your every move. The stakes were different.

Now, though? The themes in Following Piece feel eerily prophetic. We live in a world where cameras follow us everywhere—whether it’s for security, content creation, or data collection. Every step we take in public is likely documented somewhere. Acconci’s piece forces us to think about how that constant observation impacts our sense of autonomy, and what it means to have our private moments turned into something public, whether by an artist or by a security system.

More than fifty years later, Following Piece stands as one of the more provocative and unsettling explorations of art, surveillance, and personal space. His use of photography as both documentation and violation of privacy transformed an everyday act into something disquieting, raising questions that remain relevant today.

Acconci didn’t just subvert the idea of what performance art could be; he also forced us to confront the unsettling truth of how easily the ordinary can become extraordinary, how the act of simply watching—without interaction, without confrontation—can still leave us feeling exposed. Even now, Following Piece serves as a potent reminder that no matter how mundane our actions might seem, we’re never as invisible as we think.