Análisis Miwon Kwon

8/21/2019 Análisis Miwon Kwon

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http://isites.harvard.edu/fs/docs/icb.topic1080191.files/Villalobos%20Kwan.html

Gabriel Villalobos

Professor David Rodowick

Proseminar in Film & Visual Studies: Theory

October 15, 2012

One Place After Another , by Miwon Kwon

The term site-specificity has proliferated in recent discussions regarding art that establishes

an explicit position within the context of its production or reception. Commonly associated

with installation art, urban sculpture, urban intervention, public art, and relational art, thistheoretically challenging term implicates an equally complex and diverse range of artwork,

practices and attitudes.

One Place After Another: Site-Specific Art and Locational Identity, by Miwon Kwon, is a

significant revision of contemporary artistic practices that have been associated with the

notion of site-specificity. Kwon offers an account of the diversity of relationships that have

been conceived to be possible between the work of art and its context, discussing the

aesthetic, critical, and ethical problems these relationships generate.

The term site-specific art does not denote a particular language or medium of production;

rather, it suggests a more conceptual approach to the role of art within a certain

context. This complicates the task of identifying recurrent themes or common procedures.

Kwon evaluates a variety of projects in order to map the diverse interpretations and

outcomes of this artistic approach. Using this analysis as evidence, the author argues

that the transformation of site-specificity has influenced current perceptions of the

artist and the social impact of a work of art. Moreover, this discussion reveals the

particular situation of every individual subject within the world, as well as

contemporary notions of place, identity, community, and the public realm.

One Place After Another is the result of research pursued by Kwon for her doctoral

thesis, which she presented in 1998 at the School of Architecture at Princeton

University (Kwon, viii). The previous year, an article by Kwon was published in the

journal October. When contrasting this article to the book published five years later, it

is possible to identify the underlying interests and further development of Kwon’s

research. With minor changes and additions, the October article is reproduced in the

first two chapters of the book, and informs part of the conclusion. As she states in the

introduction of the book, her objective is to critically examine site-specificity “not

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exclusively as an artistic genre but as a problem-idea” (Kwon, 2). Kwon is particularly

interested in the implications of site-specificity for artistic, curatorial, and critical

practices.

One Place After Another continues to be unique among the published works that address

this particular art form. Other books focusing on site-specificity, such as Erika Suderburg’s

Space, Site, Intervention: Situating Installation Art ; and Claire Doherty’s Situation, are in

fact collected essays from artists and critics, and were published after Miwon Kwon’s book.

Hers is therefore an unprecedented scholarly examination of this practice. This means,

however, that Kwon’s account is influenced by her own concerns and her position within

the art world. As a first incursion in site-specificity, One Place After Another omits

artistic experiences and theoretical viewpoints that could be relevant for its analysis.

It can be argued that while her book offers a valuable frame for the study of site-

specific art, this frame is partial and requires further inquiry and complementingliterature.

The many places of Site-Specificity

The emergence of site-specific art in recent decades echoes the critical standpoint of art

practices of the late 1960s, while addressing the limitations posed by public sculpture, Land

Art, conceptual art, and other forms that challenged the traditional relation of the art work

to its context. Through sculpture, Minimalist artists questioned not only this relationship,

but also the way it determines the viewer’s perception of the work of art. This implies thatthe presence of the viewer as a bodily entity was conceived as necessary for the work to be

meaningful.

The interrogation of the boundaries of art within its context incited the examination of art

institutions as neutral meaning-producing contexts. Towards the 70s, artists such as Hans

Haacke, Michael Asher, and Mierle Laderman Ukeles created work that confronted the

museum and gallery as exclusive spaces, as politically driven corporate entities, and as

consumers of art-turned-commodity. The sites that these projects address are thus not solely

physical, but also institutional. Kwon points out the parallel dematerialization of the site

and the artwork through these explorations – verifying a more general and ongoingdialectical unhinging of contemporary art.

This allowed for a more conceptual understanding of the site of a work of art not (only) as a

particular physical location, but as a discursive context.

From the late 1970s onwards, site-specific work has dealt with matters of gender, race,

sexual preference, human rights, political abuse, and ecological detriment among other


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issues. It has also found theoretical and practical aid in a wide range of disciplines and

spheres, from philosophy and anthropology to architecture and urban discourses. Miwon

Kwon schematizes these conceptions of site-specificity – phenomenological, institutional,

and discursive – not as chronological, mutually exclusive developments but as

simultaneous and contending models.

As site-specificity has become increasingly popular within the institutional circles of

contemporary art, it has brought about daring consequences for the artists, as well as for the

critical reception and appraisal of the work. The persistent drive for possession and

historical revisionism has motivated museums and galleries to create reproductions of work

that was initially conceived to be irreproducible. This has been combined with a theoretical

examination of site-specific work within the frame of a particular artist’s aesthetic

language, discursive interest and professional development, rather than as statements on the

complexity of a particular context. At the same time, institutions across the globe

increasingly commission artists who work site-specifically, inducing them to become

nomadic service-providers.

The critical edge of site-specificity is ostensibly compromised. Miwon Kwon warns of the

extent to which site-specificity has become a method or style, superficially received as

criticality and once again commodified for the market and the masses.

The book reveals how the theoretical complexity of site-specificity can be grasped best by

analyzing concrete examples of its application. Kwon discusses and contrasts the

experiences surrounding Richard Serra’s Tilted Arc of 1981 and John Ahearn’s sculpture

project for South Bronx Sculpture Park in 1991. These experiences prompt the author to

review the successive views on public sculpture by cultural authorities and government

agencies in the United States from the late 1960s to the 1990s. The first instance of publicart in the US, under the paradigm of the Art-in-Public-Places Program, produced a great

number of monumental sculptures in open urban spaces across the country. Most of these

modernist abstract sculptures by internationally renowned artists (such as La Grande

Vitesse by Alexander Calder, 1967, or Red Cube by Isamu Noguchi, 1968) are self-

referential and establish no real dialogue with their urban setting. They were, and still are,

deemed public due to their placement in open, accessible places.

This approach soon drew criticism, as the sculptures operated more as one-sided means of

self-promotion for the artists than as truly public ventures. New guidelines determined that

public art works should engage with the site. This was mostly understood to mean that

public artwork had to serve a public function that would improve the life quality of the city– by the 1980s, works of art in public spaces served as street furniture and decorative

elements. Authorities once again equated tangible embellishment with social advancement.

This continues to be an authoritarian stance, since it imposes a particular (official) aesthetic

to the image of the city and presupposes a “right” way of using and enjoying public space.


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For Miwon Kwon, Serra’s Tilted Arc prompted the debate around the definition of

public art, the consequences of placing art in public spaces, and the notion of site-

specificity. Tilted Arc was a 12-foot-high, 120-foot-long steel plate with a slight curve.

This work was placed in 1981 in the Federal Plaza in New York, an open space surrounded

by government buildings, and after tense debate, hearings and lawsuits, removed in 1989.The sculpture was soon criticized for obstructing people crossing the plaza, for its

“ugliness” and “uselessness”. Complaints were presented against Serra, on the grounds that

the sculpture threatened the physical and mental wellness of the community. Some even

argued that the work hindered vigilance, enabling vandalism and criminality and even the

possibility of a terrorist attack.

It is interesting to note the use of terms such as public and community in the Tilted

Arc debate. These were used in detriment of a real community and an authentically

democratic, public space. The victimized community that ultimately removed the

sculpture was really the bureaucracy of the adjacent buildings. These employeesalready exerted their own modality of privatization and control of the Plaza; this is

evident in their worrying over security and vigilance. In this way, Tilted Arc

demonstrated the inoperability of the Federal Plaza as a public, democratic space.

Richard Serra’s work evidenced the problems of placing art in public spaces. Against

the idea that art embellishes the city and thus improves the life quality of its

inhabitants, Serra used art to denounce a dysfunctional and contradictory public

space.

The experiences surrounding this sculpture motivated cultural authorities in the United

States to re-examine their understanding of public art. It was acknowledged that a publicwork of art should involve a form of active interaction with the public, especially the

community that it will directly impact. However, producing an artwork with the approval

or collaboration of a community does not guarantee its success, as John Ahearn’s case

shows.

Ahearn was commissioned in 1991 for a public art project for the Sculpture Park across the

local police station. A resident of South Bronx, Ahearn had been interacting with the

community for the production of his work for many years. His cast sculptures depict local

residents of the Bronx, focusing on the Latino and African American community, and have

been exhibited at mainstream venues as well as locally. Nonetheless, the three sculptures

that he created for the commission were severely criticized by the community; particularlyby members of the community who did not know Ahearn, and who were offended by his

depiction of subjects they deemed negatively stereotypical. They alleged that his portrayal

of “dodgy” people of color (who were neighbors and friends of Ahearn’s) as

representatives of the South Bronx perpetuated the negative image of the community. It is

precisely the notion of community that generated these complex issues; as all those

involved believed that Ahearn’s project should stem from and reflect the community in a


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truthful way, yet there was never an explicit agreement on who exactly conformed such

community.

Through this example, Kwon casts her doubts over the assumption that a community-

based art project will necessarily produce a truthful, inclusive and advantageous

outcome for the community in question. Site-specific works of art that operate withsocial contexts are expected to benefit, reassure, or otherwise validate people’s

identity and quality of life. Conflicts usually stem from the multilayered reality of

these identities and lifestyles, the organic composition of communities, and the

complex relations an individual artist can establish with them.

The experiences surrounding Serra’s and Ahearn’s projects reveal the challenges of

working in the public sphere. Miwon Kwon compares these cases to the experiences

derived from the exhibition program Culture in Action, curated by Mary Jane Jacob for the

city of Chicago in 1993. This program sought to bring about community-specific projects,

by now termed new genre public art, through which the spectator would become an activeco-creator. The shift from the use of the terms site-specific art and public art to new

genre public art responds to a concern by a new generation of artists who advocate a

more critical, collaborative, and research-based approach to site than their

predecessors. Pointing out the distinction between site and place, artists like Suzanne

Lacy and Martha Fleming and critics like Jeff Kelley allude to a new, humble attitude

that allows for “truthful” collaboration with “real” people. As the study of the

projects for Culture in Action shows, this attitude is not exempt from

misinterpretation or confrontation.

Kwon distinguishes four conceptions of community that drove the projects. SuzanneLacy’s Full Circle exemplifies the model of “community of mythic unity”, an artificial

community produced through the artist’s search for a common trait. In this case,

Lacy set up committees of women to nominate prominent women of Chicago. These

female role models, who intentionally ranged in profession, social status, race, and so

on, were commemorated through one hundred boulders that were placed across the

downtown area. As Kwon points out, this project was in reality based on a

reductionist view of the artist of a diverse collection of people as a collective, with no

further engagement with the people of Chicago.

Another model applied in Culture in Action was that of “sited communities”. Theseare existing organizations with defined entities, with which an artist or artist collective

establishes a temporal relationship. In many cases, such as the two projects studied,

the artists arrive at a preconceived conceptualization and strategy for the project, and

then are paired up with fitting organizations by the curating authority. Here,

although the community being engaged is well defined, and the resulting outcome may

be a productive one, the artist maintains its status as intellectual author. According to


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Kwon, some have even condemned this model as abusive, as the community in

question is only employed for the consecution of the artist’s own interests. A similar

issue arises when a new community is created for the production of the project, and is

dissolved when it concludes. These “temporary invented communities” have also been

regarded as manipulated by critics, serving as agents for the concretion of an

extraneous intent.

The fourth model of community engagement identified by Kwon produces a new

community that prevails after the completion of the art project (or, rather, the project is

maintained by the newly constituted community after the initial engagement with the

artist). This is the case of the projects initiated by artist collective Haha, and artist Iñigo

Manglano-Ovalle. Being residents of Chicago themselves, they benefited from previous

relationships; these bonds sparked the conceptualization of the projects as well as the

assemblage of groups of people that would carry them out. Both project-communities

persisted until the time of Kwon’s research. As the author argues, this home-team

advantage –an artist belonging to the community with whom they work – does notguarantee a more successful or meaningful art project; this was evidenced in the case of

John Ahearn. It is also debatable whether a community-based art project is more successful

because it endures. These assumptions would imply a particular expectation of what a

context-specific work of art should produce. The cases studied by Kwon manifest the

theoretical complexity of analyzing and evaluating site-specific and community-based art.

The last chapter of the book furthers the discussion of the ethical role that an artist

assumes when working site-specifically. Community-based artists claim that their

work expands art beyond its elitist institutional boundaries and actually generates

beneficial interactions. However, critics like Grant Kester question the ethical

neutrality of the artist to engage objectively and disinterestedly with a community. He

is skeptical of what he terms aesthetic evangelism, the notion that artists can really

improve the living conditions of others through their art. This new nomad artist, who

approaches a community with the institutionally granted authority to generate a

critical reading of its conditions, may well be promoting new forms of colonizing

consumption of “authenticity”. The dialectical unhinging of contemporary art

allegedly upholds its critical authority, but at the same time may be reinforcing the

alienation of its subjects. This is said of artists like Santiago Sierra, who openly

exploits his “collaborators” for menial and sometimes degrading tasks while gaining

international acclaim.


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Kwon concludes the book by assessing the creative potential of the postmodern

artist’s own deterritorialization. The interest in authenticity, memory, meaning and

place emerges as a reaction to the homogenizing force of global capitalism. Other

views embrace this nomadic condition, celebrating impermanence and ambiguity as

progressive qualities of advanced art practices. Don DeLillo’s play Valparaiso allows

Kwon to reflect on the idea of being in the “wrong” place. Valparaiso is a portrayal of

a contemporary businessman who finds himself within an overarching system of

global connectedness that displaces him from his destination. This narrative suggeststhat our identities and sense of place are shaped more by non-decisions towards these

systems than by active self-formation.

Site-specific practices are thus experiments on the relational possibilities of

contemporary society. These rhyzomatic bonds are based on adjacencies and

distances between entities, and therefore cannot be expected to produce definite and

univocal meanings, outcomes, or identities. Not only should artistic practices be

understood under this paradigm, but critical and institutional roles within the art

world as well.

Kwon concluye el libro, evaluando el potencial creativo de la propia desterritorialización

del artista posmoderno.

El interés por la autenticidad, la memoria, el sentido y el lugar surge como una reacción a la

fuerza homogeneizadora del capitalismo global. Otras opiniones abrazan esta condición

nómada, celebrando la impermanencia y la ambigüedad como cualidades progresistas de las

prácticas artí sticas avanzadas. La obra de Don DeLillo Valparaí so permite Kwon para


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reflexionar sobre la idea de estar en el lugar "equivocado". Valparaí so es un retrato de un

hombre de negocios moderno que se encuentra dentro de un sistema general de la

conectividad global que le desplaza de su destino. Este relato sugiere que nuestras

identidades y sentido de lugar tienen forma de no-decisiones hacia estos sistemas que por la

auto-formación activa.

Miwon Kwon, a travé s de este análisis y cr í tica exhaustiva de obras y ejemplos, define

finalmente las pr ácticas de sitios especí ficos como los experimentos sobre las posibilidades

de relaciones entre la sociedad contempor ánea. Y aclara que al estar sujetos estos a

múltiples posibilidades, no se puede esperar producir significados definidos y un í vocos,

resultados o identidades. Esta situación explica el porqué deber í amos entender dicha

pr áctica del “sitio especí fico” como un paradigma en constante reinterpretación.

The situated value of One Place After Another

It is evident that Kwon’s concerns lean towards the theoretical implications of the varying

interpretations of site-specificity. The book is therefore not an account on all possible

relationships that a work of art can establish with its context, be it physical or discursive.

As we have said, the cases she examines allow her to verify the multiplicity of reactions

that a site-specific work of art incites, and the dialectical redefinition of site-specificity that

stems from such experiences.

In this sense, one of the greatest values of Kwon’s book is her description

of the complex panorama of critical thought that is implicated in this

modality of artistic practice. The richness of her discussions of the case


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studies provides an insight of the challenges of working in the public

sphere.

On the other hand, the fact that her focus is more on the theoretical debate than on

the aesthetic possibilities of site-specificity raises the question of whether the book can

be received as an objective and inclusive study of this practice. The omission of

relevant artists like Gordon Matta-Clark or Allan Kaprow, or of experiences that

stem from other art forms like theater, sound art, or street art, may reveal a biased

emphasis on the inheritors of visual art that serve the author’s arguments. The

analysis is further limited because the artists discussed are all based in the United

States. It is unclear whether this was a conscious decision of the author to limit the

scope of her research, or her book is part of an American-specific debate on

contemporary art. Considering Kwon’s particular concern for the globalization of art

practices, it is significant that she fails to mention if any relevant site-specific practices

exist in other countries.

It could also be argued that an exhaustive, revisionist account would not reflect the

theoretically complex nature of site-specific art. It may be that any study of such an

intermedial model of art necessarily places more importance on its ambiguity and

variability. Inasmuch as site-specificity has come to involve social relationships, it is

evident that a critical analysis will adopt a sociological standpoint. Regardless, Miwon

Kwon’s book undoubtedly occupies a quite specific place within the theory and study of

contemporary art.

It can thus be inferred that, while this book offers a valuable and unprecedented basis for

the study and discussion of site-specificity, a more detailed analysis requirescomplementing with other literature. Because of its focus on the social facet of site-

specificity, One Place After Another could be related more with books that address

relational forms of art (such as Nicolas Bourriaud’s Relational Aesthetics, Grant

Kester’s The One and The Many or Claire Bishop’s Artificial Hells), than with studies

that focus on defined formats like land art, installation art, or experimental

architecture. Any scholar focusing on a particular stance of site-specific art or related

practices can benefit from Kwon’s overview, and then proceed to other appropriate

literature.

Practices like site-specific art not only revolutionize the relationship between artist,

work of art, and context, but also defy their study and critique. The plurality of these

practices complicates common terms or objective interpretations. Such challenging

models for art production confront traditional forms of theoretical enquiry,

demanding of the critic a lucid and learned standpoint. In this sense, they achieve

their quest in renewing the institutions and discourses of art, compelling them to

become more alert, informed and plural.


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Works Cited

Kwon, Miwon. One Place After Another: Site-Specific Art and Locational Identity.

Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2002. Print.

---. “One Place After Another: Notes on Site Specificity”. October , Volume 80 (Spring,1997), pp. 85-110. Print.

Análisis Miwon Kwon

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