This is Vito Acconci

Vito Acconci (Italian: [ˈviːto akˈkontʃi], ; January 24, 1940 – April 27, 2017) was an influential American performance, video and installation artist, whose diverse practice eventually included sculpture, architectural design, and landscape design. His foundational put on an act and video art was characterized by “existential unease,” exhibitionism, discomfort, transgression and provocation, as capably as wit and audacity, and often full of zip crossing boundaries such as public–private, consensual–nonconsensual, and real world–art world. His do its stuff is considered to have influenced artists including Laurie Anderson, Karen Finley, Bruce Nauman, and Tracey Emin, among others. Acconci was initially keen in forward looking poetry, but by the late 1960s, he began creating Situationist-influenced performances in the street or for small audiences that explored the body and public space. Two of his most well-known pieces were Following Piece (1969), in which he prearranged random passersby on New York City streets and followed them for as long as he was able, and Seedbed (1972), in which he claimed that he masturbated while under a stand-in floor at the Sonnabend Gallery, as visitors walked above and heard him speaking.

In the late-1970s, he turned to sculpture, architecture and design, greatly increasing the scale of his work, if not his art world profile. Over the next two decades he developed public artworks and parks, airport blazing areas, artificial islands and other architectural projects that frequently embraced participation, change and playfulness. Notable works of this period include: Personal Island, designed for Zwolle, the Netherlands (1994); Walkways Through the Wall at the Wisconsin Center, in Milwaukee, WI (1998); and Murinsel, for Graz, Austria (2003). Retrospectives of Acconci’s accomplishment have been organized by the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam (1978) and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (1980), and his work is in numerous public collections, including those of the Museum of Modern Art and Whitney Museum of American Art. He has been official with fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts (1976, 1980, 1983, 1993), John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation (1979), and American Academy in Rome (1986). In auxiliary to his art and design work, Acconci taught at many cutting edge learning institutions. Landmarks, the public art program of The University of Texas at Austin, exhibited Theme Song (1973) and archived an essay dedicated to Acconci and his work on their website

Acconci died on April 28, 2017 in Manhattan at age 77.