One Place After Another: Site-Specific Art and Locational
Identity
by Miwon Kwon
MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2002.
218 pp., illus.
ISBN: 0-262-11265-5
Reviewed by Claire Barliant
CCS/Bard College,
Annandale, NY, 12504, U.S.A.
cbarliant@yahoo.com
What do most people think of when they hear the term "site-specific
art?" Richard Serras Tilted Arc, perhaps, or Claes Oldenbergs
baseball bat in Chicagoboth examples of what is now pejoratively
referred to as "plunk" art. Or else one might think of temporary
installations, such as the twin towers of light dedicated to the collapse
of the World Trade Center. Whatever images come to mind, chances are
they are out of date; the definition of what is site specific is constantly
changing.
In her groundbreaking book, One Place After Another: Site-Specific Art
and Locational Identity, Miwon Kwon charts the development of site-specific
art from the mid-sixties to the present. It is not an easy history to
document. Beginning in the mid-60s with well-meaning beurocrats who
wanted to bring "art to the people," these intentions were
complicated in the 70s as artists began to question the cultural
confinement and physical boundaries of the museum. Today artists have
moved beyond the critique of the institutional framing of art, largely
because art-world concerns are usually deemed too exclusive, and do
not belong to a broader social context. Kwon argues that as artists
seek out methods of art making that do not focus on the object, but
rather the process, many artists who work on site-specific projects
are engaging with social and political issues, rather than a physical
place.
Obviously the idea of artist as itinerant freelancer poses several problems,
and Kwon tackles these problems with convincing examples and clear,
accessible prose. Today artists are not hired to produce an object (read:
commodity) for a site, but to provide an aesthetic service. The artist
becomes a sort of manager, or beaurocrat, while the community gets to,
as Kwon provocatively puts it, "enact unalienated collective labor."
In other words, the artist provides a surrogate for a labor system in
which the workers voice is often suppressed.
As Kwon moves into a discussion of the problems surrounding site-specific
art that involves the community (this has been termed "new genre
public art" by critic Suzanne Lacy), she uses "Culture in
Action: New Public Art in Chicago" as her target. This massive
event in 1993 was a crucial moment in the trajectory of public and site-specific
art. Conceived by Mary Jane Jacob, "Culture in Action" commissioned
artists to work directly with specific communities within Chicago. It
was a break from public art that seemed to ignore community concerns
Richard Serras Tilted Arc being the most extreme and tricky
example, which Kwon also revisits in this book.
However much I enjoy Kwons challenging ideas, I have some trouble
with her attack on "Culture in Action." There were eight projects
in total for Jacobs event, and it seems obvious that such a huge
effort would have some degree of failure. But failure is a relative
term, and here, for Kwon, it seems to mean the amount of actual collaboration
between the artist and the community, as well as the amount of meddling
on the part of the curator and institution. Kwon cites examples in which
it appears that the curator was prohibiting actual discourse between
the artist and the community.
Yet I find it hard to imagine public art happening without some institutional
support, and Kwon doesnt give any examples of recent developments
in public art that have successfully involved community, so one has
the sense that were not getting the complete picture. But her
goal is not to solve problems, just to identify them.
Her hands-off approach is clear from the title of her last chapter:
"By Way of a Conclusion: One Place After Another." As the
title warns, she doesnt provide any solutions or conclusive arguments
that site-specific art is doomed. Instead, it is a lyrical meditation
on the increasing displacement not only of the artist, but the academic
as well. "As many cultural critics and urban theorists have warned,"
Kwon writes, "the intensifying conditions of such spatial undifferentiation
and departicularizationfueled by an ongoing globalization of technology
and telecommunications to accommodate an ever-expanding capitalist order
exacerbate the effects of alienation and fragmentation in contemporary
life."
Once she brings herself into the book, she drops the clinical tone and
becomes more sympathetic. Longing or nostalgia for a (generally fictitious)
stable location, is perhaps a means of survival, Kwon muses, in a world
that is (thanks to a global market economy) rapidly changing. This is
not to say that globalization is entirely bad for us, but that doesnt
mean we arent adjusting to the difference. Kwon uses an unusually
literary example, Valparaiso, a play by Don DeLillo, to show that sometimes
being constantly on the move can reveal our true character in a way
that stasis cannot. Perhaps the next phase of site-specific art will
address the nature of this mobility and fragmentation relational
specificity, Kwon calls it. While recent site-specific art is certainly
a long way from early "plunk" art, as Kwon and many others
have observed, it still has a long way to go.