The Red Tapes

What are the different voices that Acconci uses when speaking in the work and to what means? 
Acconci uses spoken word in a very concise and dramatic way. He repeats words in a normal voice about his actions relating to a specific act, such as saying "vroom, collision, break, get out, abandon car, find the money" while pictures of cars were shown to illustrate external actions of what is going on. In a huffy, low voice he says words such as love, desire, remorse, and repression- they sound like meditations, trying to invoke some kind of deep connection with the essence of these deeply emotional words. When he repeats the words  "what do I say, what I do", the voice feels very neurotic and desperate. He says snippets of sentences- repeats sentences from stories that are out of context and vague- but I get the idea that he talking about committing crimes, dealing with disgusting thoughts, feeling out of his body and disconnected, whispering stories of traumatic traumatic pasts. When panning over pictures and objects, his voice sounds nostalgic when speaking specific words that refer to his past. He makes playful humming sounds, overlaps his voice, and sometimes there is a deep longing to escape in his voice. The voices sound very intimate, as if he is speaking from inside his head, from deep inside.There is also a point where he is repeating letters with mathematic relationships and  temperature degrees, which translates to me as moving through space.
excitement about showing parents where their children died while serving in the military.

What characters does he embody/perform?
He tells many stories, and I am not sure if it is all coming from the same character or from different characters. In the beginning he claims to have no feelings, then later becomes very emotional and sounds desperate, and later tells snippets of stories that express an inability to express his feelings. (confusion?) He speaks of a traumatic past and of a childhood, someone who is stuck in a moment and can't scream, someone who went through electroshock therapy and is regretting things he didn't say. There are points where is it obvious he is speaking of a committed crime and says "Where's the body" and "tangled motives disturbed the evidence" He sounds like a remorseful criminal. He had to retrace steps to deal with evidence traces. He does say "I was the murderer" and makes me think there is some disassociative identity crisis. He felt helpless, seeing his body from afar as a murderer- this was the real him and he became his conception. At one point he sounds like a tour guide of the United States using different mediums of speech. He sounds Mentally deranged and the layered voices sounds demonic- maybe they embody what other people/society is telling him what to do and how to feel. Also, society is telling him to "remember" things such as government and self.Sometimes he is creepy with a playful undertone, humming in between his words- adding to the mentally deranged characteristic. 

Locate instances of nationalism as well as lone individuality in the work. What do references to nationalism “do” or emphasize with respect to our understanding of the story.
He whispers words "national security" and "secret wars". I feel like the few parts of the video that could be translated as nationalism are sarcastic, such as when he says, "Here we are- the free state, the central state, the wonder state- to your right the empire state. All aboard" when pointing at the map and goes on a tangent using the word 'green'. He says he wants to 'Suck the blood out of Kennedy's head, sticking his fingers in the bullet hole', ect.- various disgusting things he would have done to him.  He says "we have no country", which is perhaps an anarchist statement. At one point, his silhoette is in front of american flag and he says he has to keep moving to keep warm and that he is trapped by a rooffall, he feels buried alive. This translates as lone individuality to me. He's out in the cold, and his thoughts are 'that he sees and hears ghosts but there are no ghosts, no responses. These statements translate as lone individuality to me. He repeats'"We are the people"- he begins to show portraits of soldiers, scenes of warfare, government officials, and prison and makes bomb sounds- perhaps to emphasize how we really treat people in this country in relation to warfare. 

How do the formal strategies (the look and how different elements are put together) of video, still photos, painting, film, and performance contribute to the content of the work? Provide specific examples.  
The close-ups of Acconci's face and performance provides an intimacy to his thoughts because we can see into his eyes and feel as though we are having a conversation with him. The still photos invoke nostalgia. The landscape photographs with bell sounds/atmospheric sounds contribute to the idea of "topography of self"- the literal typography of landscape is a metaphor for the description of self. The video has an overall feeling of a collage, presenting objects and words that, by themselves may have no meaning at all, but in relation to eachother, tell a story.

How do you ultimately understand the narrative or story of this work? Please describe.
The story plunges us into the confusing, neurotic, disgusting thoughts that plague capitalism and war. The order seems like it is in reverse- telling us snippets of stories and emotions that are caused by corruption and war, and then later in the video, it reveals to us why this is happening with the display of the war and government photos and reference to Kennedy. I don't think that the narrator is telling the story of just one person- but of all those who have been betrayed by the United States. He is also expressing the frustration that the people's attempts towards revolution has ultimately failed. The elements come together as poetry, there is an abstract rhythm to it that is not linear in nature- it is a convoluted description- which is appropriate for the subject matter.