The Red Tapes is a rich and thoroughly enthralling epic about the landscape of Self. Vito Acconci, a seminal conceptualist, dominates the three-part tape: if it isn't his gravelly voice growling out a lyrical narrative, it is his gnarled face adding a second topography to this exploration of location and logos. Part One, Common Knowledge, is novelistic in form and reveals itself as a mystery of the Self. In Part Two, Local Color, the focus is widened to include the body in a sculptural (and psychological) space. This place, perhaps a Whitmaneque America, is enveloped in a discourse of gesture, character, and inquiry. "If we couldn't make a discovery, we'd become one," utters Acconci. Where Parts One and Two employ flat space, Part Three, Time Lag, deepens the movement with a theatrical setting. Actors enter the stage, rehearsing a verbose play about the U.S.A. But this rehearsal is also a litany, a sadness, a summing up. Spinning his populous land out of the stuff of memory, art, and language, Acconci says, "We're ready. Come on!"- a call to action as urgent now as it was at its conception.-Steve Seid