Site Insistence

Although Miwon Kwon has written "site-specific works, as they first emerged in the wake of Minimalism in the late 1960s and early 1970s..." (p. 85), I would have to question if site-specific works have not been around since the beginnings of humankind.

The Old Kingdom pharaohs from circa 2500 BCE were pretty insistent on their site. It HAD to be on the West bank of the Nile. It HAD to be located in the necropolis Valley of the Kings. It HAD to face East. Had the builders or architects in any way shape or form deviated from these requirements, I'm sure it would have been off with their heads.


The Romans were just as insistent as the Egyptians.


Monuments to the emperors (and his family), like Hadrian's Mausoleum, had to be built in the round (pun intended) and it had to be specifically located outside the city walls.

It's easy to forget that St. Peter's was once a site specifically placed in the periphery only because it has taken center stage today.

St. Peter's site is additionally important because it was also a sacred site where he was martyred. The sacredness of A Specific Site took on unprecedented frenzy during the medieval and Gothic times with the construction of the absolutely grandiose and monumental structures of the cathedrals.

We have always insisted on a specific site. Which is why my 80 year old aunt (not unlike kings and presidents) in Korea would have never considered purchasing her house without consulting the geomancy specialislt.

If our global society has "unanchored" us such that meanings of specific sites are being challenged and questioned by sculptural artists such as Antony Gormley (whom I will discuss further next Thursday), where the body has become its own justifiable site, is there a need for specific place anymore?

My own answer would have to be a contemplative yes. The most memorable sites seem to be those that are connected to memory and significant in personal and/or public history.



Humans have literally built one city upon an existing one, not always due to lack of space. This seems understandable and even valid for it is our innate desire to connect (physically, mentally, emotionally) new identities and emerging histories to our past identities and memories.

One Place After Another: Notes on Site Specificity

In Miwon Kwon's essay on site specificity, we realize that there were a multiplicity of ideas within the movement of site specific art in the 1960s and 1970s.

In looking at "Tilted Arc," by the minimal artist, Richard Serra,  we see a structure that was created for the Federal Plaza in New York, a specific site with specific physical elements; (height, length, depth). It was grounded. It held a "presence." The viewer was necessary to complete its experience. The site specific work merged with the site of the installation. Serra deemed the two were inseparable, " to move the work would be to destroy the work." When the public found the work to be too intimidating and feared it could be used as a place of hiding for wrong doers, the sculpture had to come down. But indeed, rather than it being moved to a new site, the 120 foot long structure was destroyed.

The Conceptual artists of the 60's developed a somewhat different model of site specificity. 

The Conceptualists were challenging the politics of the white cube, (ie; gallery space, museum space, etc). They insisted the white cube functioned with a hidden motive of "idealism,"and power of the elitists. One of their intents was to expose this ideology within the gallery space.

The institutions maintained that their white walls were neutral and allowed for the autonomy of the work. Conceptualists took exception to this notion, believing that the ideology of the institutions was what had been whitewashed. As the pedestals of sculpture had been knocked down, the walls were about to be exposed, as well as the power of the elite and their influence over the artists who embodied those spaces.   

In Ilya Kabakov's painting we see people looking into the inside of the white cube. 

Conceptual artist Hans Haacke's "Condensation," calls attention to the gallery space it is in. The gallery site can no longer pretend to be hidden. The content of the art is inseparable from the site and embodies the phenomenology of the culture.

Site-specific again shifted. Robert Barry and the Constructivists pushed it toward the dematerialized and de-esthetic.

The site became a "functional site," a site of information, text, video, photographs...."It is a temporary thing; a movement; a chain of meanings devoid of a particular focus." 

Kwon tells us that the "operative definition of the site has been transformed from a physical location-grounded, fixed, actual- to a discursive vector...." 

We move away from the literal interpretation of site as one specific site, anchored in place, as it embodies political, economical and ecological ideas.  

In Robin Lasser's  "The Ice Queen: Glacial Retreat Dress," she meshes site and ecological and political idea with performance. It takes on a nomadic specificity. She moves from Mount Shasta with her Glacial Queen to the downtown streets of San Jose's Zero 1 festival. The viewer walks beneath her dress tent. The every day becomes a performance. The following day she is gone.

"Site specific" has made multiple shifts, from the idea of permanence, as Serra demanded, to impermanence. Site specific work no longer seeks to be a noun but a verb. The process has become the content. It no longer (necessarily) grounds itself in one place. As it has become "dematerialized," and "de-estheticized," the presence of the artist has become even more significant. "The presence of the artist has become an absolute prerequisite for the execution/presentation of site-oriented projects," one place after another. 

 

Sculpture in the Expanded field

In this article, Krauss summarized the development of the American Sculpture in 60s and 70s as two major trends: one trend is between architecture and not-architecture; the other one is between landscape and not-landscape. The former refers to the blending of sculpture and architecture, which ultimately leads to the development of the installation. The latter embraces a broader nature - humanity space, which is finally evolving into the form of Land Art. It is evident that these two trends result in the death of classical and modern sculpture.

The traditional sculpture has been lost between not-architecture and not-landscape. Krauss divided this development into three stages. Firstly, the representative works, such as Rodin's Gates of Hell and the statue of Balzac, broke the practice of traditional monument scultpure, which released the traditional sculpture from the function of architecture, religion, ethics, literature and obtained the independence of the sculpture itself. Sculpture turned into the form of personal expression by artists themselves. This change also embodied the abandoning of traditional pedastal.

In the second stage is the modernist period and scupture entered the space of sitelessness or homelessness. The base became a part of the sculpture. The pedestal is designed as an abstract form and intergrated with the sculpture work. For example, in the work of Brancusi's Beginning of the world, the base tended toward radical abstractness which testifies to a loss of site.

In the third stage, sculpture turned into the form between architecture and landscape, which means that sculpture can't live without the environment and the background. Works of both Mary Miss and Robert Moriss embodied the importance of the unity of the work and the environment. The form of the work depended on the form of the background. The intention of the work was not to express the form of the work but the environment. Only when the environemt was fully expressed, then one can understand the form of the work. These are called environment or landscape sculpture.

Christo & Jeanne-Claude are very famous environment artists. They combined the landscape and the environment, wrapped up the architecture and the island and so on. In the work "Surrounded Island", the artists covered the island with 6.5 million square-feet pink fabric. The whole gulf looks like red flowers which are very beautiful. Though the physical meaning of the wrapping is temporary and short, the influence of work on the audience and the volunteer is timeless. I think it's hard to define what the sculpture is now. Actually the boundary between all the art forms are ambiguous. Since art acquires the cross-boundary to create the new life, it's hard to define the boundaries between Sculpture and Architecture, Sculpture and Landscape, Landscape and Architecture.