Site-Specific Art

- General features
- Distinction between Actual/Physical Site
and Discursive Site
- A shift that Miwon Kwon defines as the
“unhinging” of Site-Specific Art
- Examples

Rebecca Belmore, Vigil, 2002

McGill University
ARTH 202: Intro to Contemporary Art
Instructor:L Erandy Vergara-Vargas, PhD
“As a site-specific work of art is designed for
a specific location, if removed from that
location it loses all or a substantial part of its
meaning. The term site-specific is often used
in relation to installation art, as in
site-specific installation; and land art is
site-specific almost by definition.”
- TATE
 Context

- In 1961, as Clement Greenberg published his collection of essays (Art and

Culture) and his work and abstract expressionism had reached the top in
the U.S.s art world, artists began to interrogate Greenberg’s strict ideals
about art and the terms by which he defined modern art

- According to Greenberg, “the best modern art continued the historical

trajectory of painting since the time of Manet, which he understood to
involve a progressive evolution towards falteness as artists became
increasingly effective at exploiting those qualities specific to the medium of
paint. For Greenberg even sculpture was to be judged by the same
criterion of displaying optical rather than illusionistic volume.” - Arnason
and Mansfield

- This is the context of Minimalism, the time when artists questioned

Greenberg’s dominant doctrine, the privileged place of painting in the
artworld, and instead insisted on the object itself and its relationship to the
environment and the embodied experience of the spectator
MINIMALISM
- This movement originated in New
York City in the 1960s
- Aesthetic of extreme reduction of
elements and forms
- Predominance of geometric forms
and repetitions
- Industrial materials
- Rectilinear, machine-made
sculptures
- Minimalist art got rid of the
metaphor, individual touch,
emotional expression, clear
references to style
- This reduced and simple forms
aimed to prevent psychological
absorption
Sol LeWitt, Two Open Modular
Cubes/Half-Off, 1972. Tate
- Minimalist art is open to multiple interpretations

- Early minimalist works came in the form of sculpture

- The writing of artists such as Donald Judd, Robert Morris, and Tony Smith defined
minimalist art

- These works were also called literalist for their literal, non-symbolic use of materials and
its preference for simple forms, the kind of aesthetics that Frank Stella described as the
“what you see is what you see”

Robert Morris, Untitled (mirrored

cubes), 1965. Mirrors on wood,
Dimensions: 53,3 x 53,3 x 53,3 cm.
 ● Untitled (L-Beams) consist of three identical
beams, that given their position and location
in space can appear quite different
● Our perception of these sculptures can
change, depending on the lighting conditions
of the room, our position in the gallery, the
depths of the shadows they generate, and so
forth
● Here, we cannot see these beams as
isolated, self-contained objects, instead they
appear to change depending on a series of
conditions that include ourselves, how we
perceive them
● While observing this work, we realize that, as
embodied subjects, we are not separated
from the objects we see
● According to Rosalind Krauss: “no matter
how clearly we might understand that the
three L are identical (in structure and
dimension), it is impossible to see them as
the same… the fact of the objects’ similarity
belong to a logic that exist prior to
experience; because the moment of
experience, or in experience, the Ls defeat
the logic and are ‘different.’”

Robert Morris’s Untitled (L-Beams) 1965

Site-Specific Art - General Features
Site-Specific Art emerged in the late 60s and 70s. As Miwon Kwon explains it
“incorporated the physical conditions of a particular location as integral to the
production, presentation and reception of art.”

“The idealism of modernist art, in which the art object in and of itself was seen to have a fixed
and transhistorical meaning, determined the object’s placelessness, its belonging to no particular
place, a no-place what was in reality the museum… Site specificity opposed the idealism—and
unveiled the material system it obscured—by its refusal of circulatory mobility, its
belongingness to a specific site.” Douglas Crimp, On the Museum’s Ruins, 1993.

MEL BOCHNER
Measurement: Room, 1969
Tape and letraset on wall. Size determined by
installation. See more:
http://www.melbochner.net/exhibitions/measure
ment-room/
Site Specificity

Spatial-cultural discourse which combines “ideas about art, architecture and urban design, on the
one hand, with theories of the city, social space, and public space on the other.”
- Rosalyn Deutsche, Evictions, Art & Spatial Politics, 1996.

Kwon points out that: “initially Site-Specific works took the site as an actual location, a tangible
reality, its identity composed of a unique combination of physical elements: length, height, texture,
the shape of walls and rooms, scale and proportions of plazas, buildings, parks, distinctive
topographical features, and so forth.”

In short, Site Specific art “gave itself up to its environmental context, being formally determined or
directed by it.”

Daniel Buren, Within and Beyond the Frame. John Weber Gallery, N.Y. 1973
The assigned reading traces a historical genealogy of Site-Specific art:

We can identify three main paradigms:

1) The phenomenological: physical conditions of museums such as lighting,

humidity and so on; examples include Hans Haacke’s Condensation Cube
(1963-1965)
2) The social/institutional: practices that challenged the innocence of the exhibition
space; the institution (i.e. Mel Brochner & Daniel Buren, Mierle Laderman Ukeles)
3) The discursive

According to Kwon Site-Specific art was developed constantly moving out and into the
gallery, back and forth, within the museum and engaging with the outside world and
everyday life.

She also identifies a shift in the 80s and 90s, when the site is re-conceptualized: as a
theoretical concept, a social issue, a political problem, an institutional framework, a
magazine page, a neighborhood or seasonal event; it can also be a a billboard, a
community; it can be literal or virtual as a theoretical concept; even particular formations
of desire (4; 29).
Kown makes a distinction that will structure this presentation between Actual/Physical Site and
Discursive Site

1) the site of action or intervention is grounded in an actual/physical site

2) the site of effects or reception is what she calls the discursive site

This distinction or separation, however, doesn’t mean that the actual preoccupation with the
conditions of a particular SITE that the pioneers of site-specific art such as Daniel Buren or
Robert Smithson sustained have become irrelevant, but rather, what Kwon identifies is that in
more recent years the site of action and intervention, if conceived to be continuous, began to
be pulled apart.

The site, she poses, is lo longer exclusively structured spatially, but (inter)textually, so in
relation to other elements.

The model has thus moved from a map to an itinerary, a disconnected “sequence of events
and actions through spaces” “ a nomadic narrative whose path is articulated by the passage of
the artist.”

What she identifies is a shift whereby “the site has been transformed from a physical
location—grounded, fixed, actual—to a discursive vector—ungrounded, fluid, virtual.”

This move is what she describes as a the “unhinging of Site Specificity” which according to her
poses central questions regarding the role of art and the artist.
“In the early 1960s Haacke produced works that
explored the interactions of physical and
biological systems and their natural processes.
Although related to the cube form adopted by
minimalist artists, Condensation Cube departs
from the notion of the static object animated
only by the interaction of the viewer. It consists
of a sealed Perspex box filled with a small amount
of water. Condensation begins to form and to
run down the sides of the box, changing
according to the ambient light and temperature.
The work’s appearance therefore depends upon
the environment in which it is placed.” TATE

Hans Haacke, Condensation Cube,

1965/[2006]/[2013]. Sculpture
Plexiglass and water
76 x 76 x 76 cm. Image: MACBA
Examples - Memory and Site-Specificity
Two projects where the sites are engaged as actual/physical sites of action and critical
intervention

I want us to reflect on the ways in which the work, by being located in specific sites, enhance the
project or the artist’s potential to make an impact or intervene the social - political context

Both projects engage in practices of remembrance, so I’ll draw from scholars Liedeke Plate and
Anneke Smelik to address issues of memory. According to them, cultural memories are
continuously negotiating individual and collective discourses and practices of remembrance,
therefore they give meaning to and also affect the past.

“Memories are not only shaped by the social context in which they are produced, but also by the
material and technological means available to produce and reproduce” them.

Additionally, memories are always re-presentations making past experiences visible and
sometimes tangible in the forms of “images, sensations or affects,” therefore the means that make
memories possible are of crucial importance, for they mediate memory.

This formulation raises questions on the relationship between a memory, and the technologies or
media by which historical events are remembered. So I want to take this ideas to reflect on the
relevance of a specific site connected to collective practices of remembrance.
REBECCA BELMORE
● She is an established Canadian artist exploring
themes such as history, memory and identity
● Some of her most well known pieces are part of her
multimedia installation The Named and the Unnamed
(2002) held at the Morris and Helen Belkin Art
Gallery, Vancouver in 2002. Vigil, the piece I want to
discuss, was included in this show, but it can be
considered a Site-Specific piece, a Site-Specific
performance if you want
● It was commissioned by the Full Circle in Talking Stick
Aboriginal Arts Festival and it was filmed, and
included in the show “The Named and the Unnamed”
● The site was the corner of Gore and Cordova Streets
in a Vancouver neighborhood known as Downtown
Eastside, a neighborhood linked to prostitution,
poverty and crime
● The aim was to denounce the disappearance of sex
trade workers predominantly Aboriginal woman
● The site is not fancy at all, just a regular sidewalk
near a back alley Rebecca Belmore, Vigil, 2002
● The performance lasted 50 min.
● Please watch the video….
● The performance ends simply when the artist
replaces her pants and leans visible exhausted
against a parked pick up truck
Elements of the performance:

● The site was the corner of Gore and Cordova Streets

there Belmore started the performance by cleansing
the sidewalk as she was wearing red gloves
● Then this action was followed by the lighting of
candles; the artists then destroyed roses with her
mouth and cried out the names of missing women, with
a visible sense of anguish and anger
● The names are inscribed on her arms in tick black ink
● After calling each name, Belmore dragged a rose
across her mouth, stripping off the petal and spitting
them onto the ground
● She then put on a red dress, removed her pants, and
began nailing the dress to a wood pole; we can see her
bottom, with great effort she ripped the dress from the
pole, constantly nailing and ripping until the dress is
reduced to scattered shards of red fabric
● What remains of that dress and Belmore’s action are Rebecca Belmore, Vigil, 2002
just pieces of red fabric clinging to the pole and littering
the sidewalk
 Installation – removed from the site

● The video is projected on a screen punctured with red

lights
● It draws attention to the alarm, the seriousness of the
situation of the missing woman, also evokes the candles
the artist lit during the performance
● At the same time they prevent viewers from clearly seeing
the performance

Rebecca Belmore, Vigil, 2002

The Site

- This performance and the exhibition were developed by Belmore to denounce and reflect
on the disappearance of nearly 60 women, most of them Aboriginal sex workers, who
had disappeared from that Vancouver neighborhood since the 1980s.
- So the context is: concerned residents of the area and activists had asked authorities to
investigate these disappearances
- Initially they were ignored; but eventually a formal investigation was launched in 1999;
- In 2002, the DNA of 31 missing women was found on the property of rural pig farmer
Robert William Pickton of Port Coquitlam, BC; he was eventually charged prosecuted for
first degree murder, but, while that one arrest helped to solve some of the mysterious
disappearances, Belmore’s piece was reflecting on the larger picture linking the
disappearances of aboriginal woman to the public policies that rendered them invisible
even before they disappeared
- The reasons are vast, but overall, the fact that many of the women were prostitute had
functioned to ignore or even justify their disappearance
- Another central aspect is the fact that they were racialized as woman of color, aboriginal
woman and that didn’t help to make such bodies matter
- This specific site of crime and excess, in a way becomes a space where drugs,
prostitution and whatever comes with them is normalized
- Vancouver Downtown Eastside then represents a site of containment because the
bodies that are drawn to or pushed to that side are not spread throughout the city
- Sociologist John Lowman refers to this phenomenon as the “discourse of disposal,”
and he explains that in the mid-80s, as a result of gentrification and the Expo’86 (World
Exposition on Transportation and Communication), a series of residents groups formed
with the concrete aim to eliminate street prostitution
- This resulted in the relocation of prostitution from Vancouver’s West End to Downtown
East: a poor area with reduced police surveillance at the time
- The site of Belmore’s performance is charged with these conditions and history that
has contributed to render male violence against women common in that area
- The artist activates the site by performing this ritual of remembrance & by calling the
name of some of the missing woman: so although the action is ephemeral it is
significant that she chose this site where there are otherwise NO SIGNS of the missing
woman
- Claudette Lauzon: “Belmore’s is a body that refuses to vanish from a space in which
women’s bodies are expected to vanish without a trace, using her own skin, and the
metaphorical skin of the red dress, as surfaces on which to re-inscribe the traumas
inflicted on Vancouver’s missing woman, the artists insists upon mapping the inevitable
traces of ghostly presence.”
- Now, if we think about public monuments and memorials, which often become
integrated in the public space with architecture and urbanism, what is the productivity of
activating this site with a site-specific piece such as Belmore?
RAFAEL LOZANO-HEMMER, LOUD
VOICE
- He is an established media artist, mostly known for his high-tech spectacular
installations
- He refers to his installations in public spaces as Relational Architectures,
which “can be defined as the technological actualization of public space with
alien memory.” Alien memory: “it does not belong” The alien is not a passive,
but active within the space. Creating social experiences in public spaces,
anti-monuments, as opposed to the monument that represents power. “An
antimonument is an alternative to the Fetish of the site, the fetish of the
representation of power.”

- In particular, the piece I want to discuss is a Site Specific work that directly
engages with the history of a site.
 Background - Student Movement

In Mexico, the Student Movement of 1968, began in July,

after the police dissolved a confrontation between two
street gangs and students from two different colleges. The
mod ended with the arrest of several students, and
police’s assault on the campus of Vocacional college
number 5.

In the following weeks, protests turned into a Student

Movement, including large segments of the population
and students opposing the authoritarian regime. In fact,
the confrontations aggravated so much, that in August and
September the government ordered the violent occupation
of the two largest universities of Mexico.

Generally, two opposing forces clashed in 1968: on the

one hand, the students demanded their right to public
expression and university autonomy.
On the other hand, President Gustavo Diaz Ordaz
responded with persecutions, kidnappings, and torture
against those who publicly displayed their rejection to its
authoritarian regime.

TOP: Rodrigo Moya, August 1, 1968. Published in 2008 - La Jornada.

BOTTOM: August 28, 1968. Fondo Documental Manuel Gutiérrez Paredes.
 Student Movement

Finally, on October 2, 1968, the government decided

to end the protests. Ten days before the Olympics
celebrations, the president ordered the massacre of
students and civilians protesters. On that day,
around 10,000 people have gathered at the
Tlatelolco Square. Around 6 pm, after a student had
announced that the programmed march had been
canceled due to the military deployment, two flares
were shot from an helicopter, then the shooting
began.

By the next morning, the government’s official

explanation was hat armed provocateurs among the
students had begun the firefight, and that security
forces had returned the shooting in self-defence.
This version was supported by Mexican-censored
media: in fact they lie reporting that only 20 to 29
people had been killed, and they justified the federal
Pedro Meyer, poster, 1968. Government's intervention to “restore the order.”
This illustration, published on a local newspaper
accurately captures the context of october 3:
The day after the massacre, in a local newspaper, black
stood as a symbol of mourning, but the absence of
colour also drew attention to the absence of images,
because soldiers prevented any photograph of death
bodies to be taken. In fact, it is said that president Diaz
Ordaz declared “If images are published, they will all
know.”

So this give us a sense of government intention to hide

the traces, the bodies, to delete this event from history,
so that the Olympics could start peacefully on October
12.

In this context of repression and censorship, the

commemoration of the Student Massacre has been
central to counter the silence and the absence of
images. Moreover, it has been key to interrogate the
official History.

Abel Quezada Rueda, Why? This illustration by, published on the

newspaper Excélsior the day after the Massacre, accurately
captures the historical context of 1968. Photo: book Memorial del
68, UNAM
In this process oral histories and
testimonies have been crucial, for
remembering this event and to claim justice

Despite the fact that for a long time the

government imposed its own version of the
Massacre, many other versions have
circulated in oral, audio-visual and written
forms ever since 1968. In many cases, the
framework for the dissemination of these
“minor stories” has been the
commemoration of the Massacre at the
Tlatelolco Square, where each year, a
historical phrase resonates: “October 2 is
not forgotten.”

Manifestation, October 2, 2010. Agencia Informativa Matrix

Loud Voice, 2008

This installation was commissioned in 2008 by the

Centro Cultural Universitario Tlatelolco to
commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Student
Massacre.

- The megaphone was modified to amplify

participants’ voice into speakers installed around
the space.

- Also, their speeches were broadcasted live on the

University’s Radio Station 96.1 FM.

- Visually, participants' voices activated a light beam

pointing towards the top of a building which was
occupied the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1968. As
the light reached the top of this building, it activated Square of the Three Cultures (Plaza de las tres culturas)
three searchlights, pointing towards the north, west Mexico City. Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Loud Voice
and southeast of Mexico city. (2008)

- In addition, the work included historical speeches

and testimonies, so when no one was speaking on
the megaphone, the light on the ground was off, but
the lights on the building visualized recordings with
archival material and interviews with intellectuals.
Loud Voice deploys new media to intervene the tangible
space, adding to the Tlatelolco Square electronic layers
produced by participants bodies. The megaphone installed
at this site of protest and censorship invites passers-by to
identify with the historical context, and with the politics of the
site by speaking aloud.

1) Loud Voice creates the sense of transforming

participant's voice into flashes of light projected into
the sky. Instead of imposing a specific imagery,
Lozano-Hemmer used searchlights to incorporate
minor stories as non-figurative traces, creating an
spectacular and moving effect. As some of the
participants recounted, the work created the
impression that participants words became light and in
that sense it opened poetic associations of light as
thought, energy and hope.
2) Loud Voice amplified participant's voice, though an Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, "Voz Alta, Relational Architecture 15",
updated version of a media which was one of the few 2008.Photo: Antimodular Research
that students had access to in 1968. In fact, portable
megaphones, mimeographs, and oral enunciation in
markets, buses, and other public spaces were the only
means that students had to tell their side of the story
and to counter the official version, so the deployment
of a megaphone in Lozano-hemmer's work functions
to renovate orality, and to reconsider the importance of
free speech in the current context.
3) The fact that speeches were broadcasted on a
local radio station was key: access to media is
definitely something that students did not have in
1968.

So this Site-Specific work enabled people to speak

without censorship and that is significant, because
that is precisely what students demanded in 1968

Furthermore, since the 1968 Massacre has not yet

been included in the history books of Mexico at
primary and secondary levels, testimonies still are
what many people have to pass the story from one
generation to another

So this SS work effectively engages with the history

of the site at many different symbolic, aesthetic and
political levels
Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, "Voz Alta, Relational Architecture 15",
Now, in forms of cultural memory such as 2008. Photo: Antimodular Research
Lozano-Hemmer's installation, testimonies can be
shared in ways that not only retrieve participants
narratives, but also, propose novel forms of
communication and aesthetic experiences.
What is also interesting, is the artist's decision to privilege the individual instead of the collective, thus
allowing passers by to identify histories about this event to human beings with actual names, bodies,
families, and histories

When participants used the megaphone, they shared precisely that, their experiences, their point of
view of what happened on October 2 at that precise location

Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, "Voz Alta, Relational Architecture 15", 2008. Screen-shot

Judith Butler emphasizes the need to “make noise for those who have disappeared without a trace.” According
to her, it is crucial “to make the trace, to make a sound, to disrupt that notion of the public sphere that would
make certain kinds of images un-seeable, make some kinds of noises inaudible, make certain kinds of words
unsayable.” So we can reflect on this point, how do contemporary artists “make noise” in historically charged
spaces? How do they engage with repressed or inaudible histories or memories? How do they transform the
ways in which we remember and in turn the stories transform the site-specific works?

< Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, "Voz Alta, Relational Architecture 15”, 2008

> Leobardo López Arretche, El grito, 1968
“VATNASAFN/LIBRARY OF
WATER is situated in
Stykkishólmur’s former library
building, overlooking the ocean on
one side and the harbour and town
on the other. One of the most
distinctive elements of the
installation are twenty-four glass
columns containing glacial water
from around Iceland – gathered
from the glacial tongues of
Vatnajökull, the glaciers of
Hofsjökull, Langökull,
Snaefellsjökull and glacial rivers.
Horn describes
VATNASAFN/LIBRARY OF
WATER as a “kind of lighthouse in
which the viewer becomes the
lighthouse in which the view
becomes
the light.” - E-flux

Roni Horn, Vatnasafn/Library of Water, 2007. Permanent installation since 2007,

initiated by Artangel.
Stykkishólmur, Iceland
Photo: Roni Horn, libraryofwater.is
Roni Horn, Vatnasafn/Library of Water, 2007. Permanent installation since 2007,
initiated by Artangel.
Stykkishólmur, Iceland
Photo: Roni Horn, libraryofwater.is
Roni Horn, Vatnasafn/Library of Water, 2007. Permanent installation since 2007,
initiated by Artangel.
Stykkishólmur, Iceland
Photo: Roni Horn, libraryofwater.is
Roni Horn, Vatnasafn/Library of Water, 2007. Permanent installation since 2007,
initiated by Artangel.
Stykkishólmur, Iceland
Photo: Roni Horn, libraryofwater.is