One place after another provides an overview about site-specific art approaching it as a “problem-idea” (using the authors words) according to its political, cultural and even social dimensions. The author, Miwon Kwon, analyses the different reconfigurations of site-specific as a genre within the cultural frame, considering the political and social problematics that accompanied the evolution of site-specific art since the 1960s.
The book’s introduction begins with the presentation of a series of new different terms that relate with site-specific, namely site-determined, site-oriented, or site-responsive. The multiplicity of terms, as Kwon explains it, are an attempt to recover the anti-idealism and anti-commercialism characteristics of the 1960s at the same time that are intended to make a distinction from that past. This could be a paradoxical observation, yet it is relevant in the sense that it might be necessary to have some friction between the basic principles of site-specific, remaining free from mainstream institutional art focusing on the physical circumstances of a location, and the detachment of previous practices, which allows the reinvention or reformulation of the genre in order to make artworks more suitable to the present cultural and social-political contexts. Kwon identifies some of the problematics of art oriented towards site: “site-specific” term was uncritically assimilated and used by mainstream cultural institutions decreasing the artistic and political efficacy; the critical questioning of artists, curators and critics in relation to site-specific art, which resulted in a series of new formulations such as context-specific or audience-specific, destabilized the concept of site; finally, the lack of historical and theoretical basis as a probable cause for an inconclusive political efficacy. Overall, Kwon recognises a debilitated and diffuse theoretical field in site-specificity art forms as consequence of its relationship with established art institution, and the difficulty of recovering the initial essence of the earlier artistic manifestations in determined locations, which resulted in a range of unspecific terminology.
The first chapter is dedicated to the genealogy of site-specific, tracing a historical evolution of site-specific art alongside with a reflection on the artistic experimentation with physical attributes of determined locations, and the build of institutional critique of spaces related with the political and economic domain. She outlines three paradigms of site specificity (phenomenological, social-institutional, and discursive) that illustrate the expansion of site-specific art not only in the investigation of spatiality, but also regarding conceptual and disciplinary dimensions. 1960’s site-specificity art practices might fall into the phenomenological model due the incorporation of physical elements of location in the work of art valuing its environmental context and valuing the bodily (or sensory) experience of the viewer who becomes an essential element of the work of art. In addiction, it is focused on the idea of an ephemeral type of presence, i. e., materiality of the work that may tend to disappear or be destroyed as time passes. Soon, artists like Hans Haacke or Mel Bochner started to generate a path for institutional critique not restricting the artwork to an engagement with the physicality of spaces, but with the cultural and social frameworks to which art institutions relate. It seems that, to some extent, this is a middle step in site-specific art before a more significant broaden of conceptual and spatial magnitudes, embracing a wider set of disciplines (sociology, psychology and anthropology) instead of focusing solely on particular issues related with the site where the artwork is presented, at the same time that explores other spatial environments outside the art institutions targeting wider public and commercial spaces.
While the first chapter depicts the development of site-specific art since its origins, in the second chapter Kwon analyses issues concerning the commercialization and institutionalization of site-specific art accompanied by the questioning of the reproducibility/authenticity of the artwork, and the conceptual engagement of the site-specific within the mainstream of public art that would result in a sociopolitical relevance. Throughout the second chapter, the problem of mobilization of site oriented artworks is approached from two angles: the mobilization of artworks from institution to institution (art galleries, museums), and the mobilization required by artist’s professional activities. The former, is likely to be a sign of domination of site-specific art by the art market. Once, artworks bond to sites were based on the ephemerality and unrepeatability, although such pieces have been subject to refabrication altering the norms and the definition of the concept site-specific. The latter, referring to the mobility of the artist implies a change in the notion of authorship that it will become a guideline for new narrative structure. The work will not only transmit its relationship with the location, but also the relationship with the author during the process of making and production of the artwork.
The third chapter is focused mainly on the american context, consisting in a reflection on the conceptual engagement of site specificity within the mainstream public art sphere that would result in a sociopolitical relevance. In 1974 site-specific was included in an institutional program NEA (National Endowment for the Arts) to promote public art. This occurrence serves Kwon as the first of three paradigms, which she defines as art-in-public-space followed by art-as-public-spaces, exemplified by sculpture that function as urban furniture , and art-in-the-public-interest characterized by political activism project that aim the engaging of a community. Public art was, indeed, under some critique often classified as “plop art” or “object out of the pedestal”, that it had become more as beautification ornament of the urban space instead of potentiating and creating awareness of disfunctional urban and architectural features. As a response, the NEA intended to incorporate site-specific principles in order to achieve urban effectiveness of public art, asking artists to focus more on the urban environment and design coherence in urban space and, therefore, to have artworks with more social value. To deepen her reflection about the efficacy of site-specific within the public art context, Kwon focus on two examples: Richard Serra’s Title Arc and John Ahearn’s sculpture for the South Bronx. Both artists work raised controversial issues about site-specificity of an artistic intervention in the public urban space. Serra’s iron sculpture, which questioned the local architecture by disrupting its original function, became problematic at the time of its removal, since the work authenticity relies on its location, while John Ahearn’s controversy was due the social relationship that the work established with the local community.
The fourth chapter presents a case study Culture in Action approaching the artistic and social implications of the expansion of site specific into community specificity. The event took place in Chicago in 1993 and intended to propose a new genre of Public Art that seek a greater engagement and participation of urban community in (Public) Art. Culture in Art serves as an example of the conflicted relationship between institutional standards of public art and the public/community. The event was organized with the intention to address a critique to Organization of Sculpture in Chicago, and to achieve a greater democratization of art by forming new modes of intervention in the public space sphere. Kwon identifies in Culture in Action schematic typologies of community specificity in art: Community of Mythic Unity, exemplified by Suzanne Lacy’s Full Circle; Site Communities, with Simon Greennan and Christopher Sperandio’s billboard design for the Confectionery and Tobacco Workers’ International Union; and finally, Invented Communnities, with the work of Mark Dion and Daniel J. Martinez.
The author concludes her book with a brief reflection about the impact of deterritorialization and mobilization in the relationship between space and identity, which she calls the theory of “the wrong place”. Alienation, defragmentation, the tendency of travelling and migrating from one place to another characterize the place identity crisis of (post)modern society, resulting in a loss of uniqueness that site-specific art attempted to recover, but that somehow, throughout approximately three decades, fail to fully manifest social and political efficacy. She turns to theorist such as Henri Lefebvre and Lucy Lippard, emphasizing Lippard’s notions of familiarity of space, the “idea of belonging to somewhere”. Finally, Kwon completes her conclusion turning to Don DeLillo’s play Valparaiso about a man, Michael Majeski, who was supposed to travel to Valparaiso, Indiana, and ends by mistake in Valparaiso, Chile. With this last reference emphasizes the dissociation of place and identity and the ambiguity behind the idea of “the wrong place”. The bond between place and identity is perhaps no longer essential, nevertheless the idea of that bond still resist as a nostalgic desire. Site specificity in art has dealt with the conflict between mobility and the place-identity bond, which led the genre to multiply itself in different forms of action in a possible search to find its own terrain
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