Site-specific Art Research Articles

Cosmopolitan Mobiles: Mobilizing Artists and Other Floating Things around the Matsu Islands

Abstract: This essay examines the multiple relations of mobile, mediating entities that cross politically disputed waters to be transformed and rendered visible on the shores of the Matsu archipelago in the Taiwan Strait. Drawing on an ethnographic account of the Matsu Biennial in 2022, this essay seeks to unmoor our understandings of archipelagos and site-specific art from the sitedness of the island itself to the floating trajectories and mobilities that operate in between. Moreover, it explores the structures of contradiction that permit an artistic poiesis and coexistence of paradoxical realities via interlapping cases of disenchanted ghosts, planktonic suspensions, temporary sustainability, and so on and, ultimately, suggests that the facticity of "bricolage" might offer a path to embracing modes of mobile cosmopolitanisms considered archipelagically through embracing mobiles already cosmopolitan.

Intimate places

Our essay starts from our first-person experience of visiting El Eco Experimental Museum in Mexico City. Over the course of our visit, El Eco became, what we will call an ‘intimate place’ in which we were able to explore personal thoughts, memories, and feelings. We go on to compare El Eco to Black Water (2021), a site-specific art installation by RAAAF. We draw on Donald Winnicott’s work on play to show how intimate places like the El Eco museum have commonalities with the therapeutic setting of psychotherapy. They are places that enable people to freely associate by enabling a visitor to be in a state of relaxation, and by affording a rich array of disruptive possibilities for self-exploration. We understand such intimate places as playgrounds that can (temporarily) disrupt rigid patterns of resistance or avoidance, enabling a person to confront difficult emotions and experiences that might otherwise go unnoticed.

Between-ness

In this paper, a theoretical framework developed in a doctoral program of research concerned with connecting philosophies of between-ness with design practice is described. The theory of ‘spatial excess’ as defined by Elizabeth Grosz is shown to be particularly useful in reconceptualising design practice. Central to this is an understanding of spatial excess in relation to anti-deterministic space, the search for different spatial inhabitations, and ephemeral people-space relations; dimensions developed further in the doctoral program through two spatial practices that exist outside conventional architecture and design – site specific installation art and experimental making. These are outlined in the paper together with findings that suggest that practices of spatial excess might be most potent in sites that are conceptually and physically interior, and that these practices should happen in everyday contexts and environments where they can be initiated by their occupants.

ARTISTIC INTERPRETATIONS OF WATER ISSUES IN THE CONTEXT OF URBANISM : THE YAMUNA RIVER IN DELHI

The present paper explores the reflection of water issues within urban spaces in contemporary art practices, specifically focusing on the Yamuna river in Delhi. The Yamuna holds historical and religious significance and plays a crucial role in meeting the water needs of Delhi's 31.2 million population. However, the rapid urbanization of Delhi has led to detrimental consequences for the river, including increased pollution levels, encroachment on river banks, water scarcity, reduced water flow and detachment from its surroundings. The paper examines contemporary artistic interventions that address these ecological concerns through new media, site-specific art projects and public art. The aim of this paper is to identify those artists and to discuss the various artistic modalities in which these ecological concerns are addressed in the form of aesthetical structures and to discover how art is functionalized as a social and collective agent to create awareness among the public. It also aims to explore how artists are incorporating the ecological aspect of Urbanity in their works. the methodology involves interviews with artists, where their creative insights are explored to discern the multifaceted relationship between the river's ecological challenges and urban development. The study employs an interdisciplinary approach that sheds light on the complex interplay between environmental concerns and artistic expression. the paper concludes how art functions as a social and collective agent, raising awareness among the public about the ecological urgency caused by rampant urbanization.

For whom do site-specific art structures provide territorial services? The case of European peripheral areas

ABSTRACT What type of site-specific outdoor art structure is more likely to induce and catalyze artistic territorial services and for whom are these services intended for? Answering this question will help the understanding of territorial impacts of such art projects in European peripheric areas. This article is based on the analysis of a European database on 128 site-specific outdoor visual art structures informed by 36 distinct criteria like accessibility, location, institutional statuses and funding, initiator and audiences, site-specificness criteria, etc. A typology, produced by the statistical analysis of this database, shows that three main intelligible categories dominate site-specific art initiatives: ‘art-washing sculpture parks’, ‘territorial art of peripheries’ and ‘eco-artistic front of art projects’. They all have different kinds of specific interactions, sometimes critical, with the local territory. They act differently as artistic territorial services (ATS) providers. ATS in Spain (Cesar Manrique artworks in Lanzarote Island) show how art is transformed into mass-tourism attraction; in France the Forêt d’ Art Contemporain in Nouvelle-Aquitaine and in Greece, the Vovousa Festival in Epirus, show how art can reinforce territorial identity and environmental commitment, but with very mixed benefits to the local economy.

History, heritage, and the site-specific in contemporary Iranian art

ABSTRACT Emerging in the context of American and European art during the 1960s, the term ‘site-specific’ has been employed to characterize art projects created with a specific location in mind. This departure from traditional artistic expressions within galleries and museums primarily focused on formal considerations, often divorced from the socio-political context of the site. In Iran, where site-specific art has flourished for nearly as long as in America, the concept of ‘site’ is deeply intertwined with history and heritage. Here, while formal aspects remain relevant, the shape and meaning of art are primarily shaped by the historical significance of the site. By primarily examining the work of Tehran-based artist Pooya Aryanpour, this article explores how Iranian site-specific artists have expanded the boundaries of art by establishing a dialogue between art objects and the rich history and cultural significance of specific sites. This practice has enabled Iranian artists to transcend the constraints of governmental institutions. Above all, site specificity empowers Iranian artists to facilitate intimate dialogues between art objects, history, heritage, and the people for whom heritage and cultural identity matter, further enriching the connection between art and history.

Contemporary Ukrainian Visual Culture on the Way to the International Cultural Space

The article is devoted to the visual culture of Ukraine since independence. It pays special attention to the trends and phenomena of contemporary Ukrainian visual culture that have entered the context of world culture through recognition on international cultural platforms (competitions, festivals, biennials, etc.). The considerations concern the development of various trends in contemporary Ukrainian art, which use various artistic media: photography, installation, performance and film. In particular, Ukrainian conceptual photography was the most interestingly represented by several generations of photographers of the Kharkiv School, who combined radical bodily imagery and social criticism. The Ukrainian installation is represented by the works of artists of the REP (Revolutionary Experimental Space) group, which is focused on the unity of art and politics and considers artistic creation as a political act. An interesting sub-direction of the installation is the video installation, which delivers an original combination of contemporary Ukrainian artists with site-specific art and artistic means of reflecting on the traumas inflicted on Ukrainian society by the war. The article pays special attention to the development of contemporary Ukrainian cinema. The author demonstrates the connection between the work of contemporary Ukrainian filmmakers and the traditions of Ukrainian poetic cinema. In addition, other trends in Ukrainian cinema are identified: the experimental search for a new film language, the development of documentary cinema, on top of the convergence of fiction and non-fiction artistic languages in the work of contemporary Ukrainian filmmakers. The dominant issues of contemporary Ukrainian films selected for screening at leading European film festivals are identified: inclusiveness, reflection on Ukrainian history, war trauma, psychological rehabilitation of combatants, etc.

‘장소특정적 예술’로써 제주 아르떼뮤지엄의 전시콘텐츠 발전방안 연구

Recently, ‘Arte Museum’ has been gaining popularity. In this study, the direction pursued by the 'Arte Museum' was found to be in 'site-specific art', which reveals the place and considers the audience's reaction to be a formative element in completion element of the work. This study compares the way in which the place of 'Jeju' is expressed in the Jeju Arte Museum with the method of expression in the Yeosu and Gangneung Arte Museums. In doing so, the study attempts to uncover what exhibition contents are needed to continuously develop the Jeju Arte Museum. To this end, this paper explores the characteristics of 'Arte Museum' through theoretical discussions on 'site-specific art' and examines place and audience in the exhibition contents of Arte Museum in Jeju, providing comparisons to the Yeosu and Gangneung cases. A scenography approach is adopted to reveal the place of Jeju and which is recognized as an approach for inducing specific reactions from an audience, specifically focusing nature and cultural heritage, as a framework for analysis. Through this, we compare the difference in the way Yeosu and Gangneung reveal the space of place and the audience, and we investigate whether these places have succeeded in establishing themselves in the context of site-specific art with the potential to transform the region. Through this, it is intended that we can learn more deeply about the effect of local culture in the case of the successful mobilization of audiences, specifically while utilizing local nature and heritage of interest to locals.

Art-Heritage-Environment: Common Views Art Collective Engagement with Bedouin Minority in Israeli Desert Region (2019–2021)

The Bedouin and Jewish inhabitants of the southern Israeli desert region share a common desert vista. However, they are diverse, multicultural communities who suffer inequity in access to valuable resources such as water. Between 2019 and 2021, Common Views art collective initiated a socially engaged durational art project with Bedouin and Jewish inhabitants entitled Common Views. The art collective seeks to enact sustainable practices of water preservation as a mutually fertile ground for collaboration between the conflicted communities, by reawakening and revitalizing rainwater harvesting, as part of traditional local desert life. Their interventions promote new concepts of Environmental Reconciliation, aiming to confront social-ecological issues, the commons, and resource equity, grounded in interpersonal collaborative relationships with stratified local communities. Their site-specific art actions seek to drive a public discourse on environmental and sustainable resources, while reflecting on the distribution of social and spatial imbalance. They take part in contemporary art discourse relative to socially engaged practices, yet their uniqueness lies in conflictual sites such as the discord arising from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and their proposed model for resolution linking politics with environment. It utilizes renegotiation with histories and heritage, as a vehicle to evoke enhanced awareness of mutual environmental concerns in an attempt at reconciliation on political grounds.

How to make site-specific art when sites themselves have histories

The term “site-specific” is generally used to describe art self-consciously made to exist in a certain place, effectively making the site a static background for the dynamism of art. If we accept this definition, then how are we to account for the fact that sites themselves have histories? This paper addresses this question by analyzing four performances by the Chicano/a collective Asco: Stations of the Cross, First Supper (After a Major Riot), Walking Mural, and Instant Mural. Whittier Boulevard carries a portion of El Camino Real, which once connected the Catholic missions of Alta California. We know Asco was aware of this fact because a member of Asco once “used the phrase ‘el camino surreal’…to describe Whittier Boulevard as the setting where everyday reality could quickly devolve into absurdist, excessive action.” Contextualizing these performances within the geography of colonial California challenges interpretations of Asco as merely opposing contemporaneous events like the Vietnam War and gentrification, whereas Asco had a more nuanced and expansive understanding of oppression linking the Latin American diaspora. Together, these performances show us how a group contests domesticating and folklorizing stereotypes. Although preexisting scholarship explains these gestures as “protest art,” situating them against Whittier Boulevard allows us to appreciate the radicality of Asco. By engaging with Catholic and muralist imagery, Asco draws parallels between their experience as racial minorities and the history of Latin American colonialism, which highlights both the composite nature of Chicano/a identity and how artists might make site-specific work when sites themselves have histories.

Changing Gellerup Park

Some low-income social housing neighborhoods are undergoing radical transformations in Denmark. Classified as “ghettos” and “parallel societies,” and marked by area-specific legislation, we identify a triple exposure in these neighborhoods. The residents are exposed to inequality, stigmatization, and discriminatory inter-ventions. Parallel to this, cultural policies and programs have ap-proached these same neighborhoods based on the assumption that they can be “elevated” through art. Drawing upon a broader re-search in art project in four social housing areas (Eriksson, Nielsen, Sørensen and Yates, 2022), this article focuses on Gellerup Park in Aarhus and considers how two site-specific art platforms address the site and time-specific conditions of the area, offering alterna-tive relations and forms of engagement.

The Expansion of New Media Art in Indian Visual Art Practices: An Analysis

Artistic creativity thrives in line with cultural contours and individual artist intent. The Digital age is a postmodern reality. The postmodern era is either on the verge of its conclusion or it has almost concluded. Galleries and museums are far from exempt from the effects of these technological transformations. By the mid’90s a number of young artists had begun to make installations and site-specific art objects even as others continued to work in the conventional mediums of painting, sculpture, and print-making. Notion of pluralism and multiculturalism infect the artists of the 90’s, as there is a confident borrowing from all cultures and frequent crossovers. Artists like Ranbir Kaleka, Shilpa Gupta, Sheba Chhachhi, Thukral and Tagra, Jitish Kallat and many more are blurring the gap between the art and cutting edge technology with their inter/multidisciplinary approaches in their art practices.

Street Art, the Discontinuity Thesis, and the Artworld

Abstract The topic of this article is the relationship of street art to both the street (or “the street”) and the artworld. I take it as significant that philosophers have turned their attention to “street art” and not, say, “urban outdoor art” or “site-specific art in urban settings.” The “street” in street art seems to imply more than a location or geographic modifier. I consider the further significance of the “street” in street art, and the view, argued or assumed, of the street when philosophers discuss street art. My second target in this article is what I have called the “discontinuity thesis.” This is the idea, defended or assumed in some of the most important philosophical writing about street art, that street art represents a radical break with the artworld and is “antithetical” to it. I argue that the discontinuity thesis is mistaken, and that to understand the larger institutional context of street art we must examine the sociology of artworlds. Street art has followed a familiar process and pioneering street artists are best seen as “mavericks” in Howard Becker’s sense. I argue that seeing street artists in this way can help better understand and appreciate their work.

Latin American Environmental Research and Practice

This dossier brings together four essays that show how recent scholarship, art, and design practice are shaping the emergent field of Latin American Environmental Humanities – a rapidly consolidating discipline that cross-fertilises methods and perspectives stemming from the social sciences, arts and humanities, natural sciences, and Indigenous thought, to critically interrogate environmental histories and confront contemporary challenges. Together, these review essays map a critical renewal of cultural studies that is currently unfolding through recent theoretical-analytical publications, ethnographic work, art practice, and site-specific art and design collaborations. We trace routes through a diverse corpus of emerging environmental scholarship, artistic and situated practice research, and public engagement activities, to show how they respond to the urgent challenge “to think in the presence of ongoing facts of destruction”. The books, artworks, and collaborative fieldwork projects reviewed here problematise the culture/nature dichotomy as constitutive of the current ecological and climate crises, rethink the Western metaphysics of ontology and semiotics, and seed sympoetic experiments and alternate ways of knowing that reach across disciplinary divides.

PROBLEMS OF TERMINOLOGY WITHIN THE CONCEPT OF «UKRAINIAN LAND ART»

Abstract. Fundamental art studies in the field of land art are not yet available in Ukraine, and individual articles in periodicals do not reveal the principles of the formation of the actual Ukrainian art of the environment, its features and differences from abroad land art. To date, the phenomenon of Ukrainian land art has not received its own term and for thirty years in a row uses the borrowed foreign name «land art», while the uniqueness of domestic environmental art is an indisputable fact. The article considers the peculiarities of the formation of land art abroad and in the system of Ukrainian contemporary art. The analysis and clarification of terminology related to land art in Ukraine has been carried out. The author's term for the phenomenon of the Ukrainian land art is offered. The study found that the application of the foreign term «land art» to the domestic art of interaction with the environment is not exhaustive, because it does not reveal the full range of creative communication of artists with the environment and is too narrow in relation to it. At that time, the term «mystectvo dovkillja» («art of the environment»), introduced by P. Bevza, is too wide a range of artistic creativity, where «environment» is used in the sense of «environment» as one that contains the entire surrounding space. Therefore, it isn't inexpedient to apply the foreign term «land art» to the creative practices of Ukrainian artists. At the same time, «art of the environment» is too abstract a concept for the term «land art», which aims at a specific creative interaction with the earth. Environmental art aims to decorate and equip a person's place of residence, which expresses his utilitarianism and may include: both landscape art and landscape design and monumental art, site-specific art, ecological art, as preservation and repair of the Earth's resources, etc. Domestic artists work with natural materials in the natural environment in order to create a new art product. Accordingly, instead of the term «Ukrainian land art» it is appropriate to use the term «pryrodotvorche mystectvo» («natural creative art»), because the context of the Ukrainian art form is characterized by creative interaction with the natural environment and materials as a way to create a new art product. Theoretical research of the work is the basis for further in-depth scientific development of the problem, namely, the phenomenon of land art in the system of contemporary art of Ukraine.

Artificial Landscape: in search of publicness through urban spectacle in Hong Kong

Screen technologies increasingly permeate the experience of public space in Hong Kong. Large media walls have occupied the façades of many buildings, rendering a cityscape with dynamic information visible as a new urban skin. This article is a case study on Artificial Landscape, a site-specific media art project located on Asia Pacific’s largest LED outdoor screen. The case sets an example of how a public screen can serve as a mediating agent. It provides an opportunity for artists to provoke absent ideas in the public space and explore subversive potential, including critical reflection on issues surrounding surveillance, consumerism and rapid urban growth. The case also exemplifies how a public screen can mediate the public to experience an alternative context through artistic intervention, where negotiations of perceptions and subjectivities are made possible. This article provides insights into a public screen’s mode of spectatorship, quality of public space and curatorial strategies in an urban context. This is achieved by illustrating how various artworks extend the notion of publicness and remediate the mutually constitutive relationship among the built environment, media technologies, artists, public and everyday encounters.

Curating pandemic contingencies: Remote collaboration and display reconfiguration in practice

Amid the restrictions on travelling and gathering imposed during the COVID-19 pandemic, exhibitions with international collaborations in Hong Kong experimented with curating across borders and time. This article examines recent curatorial practices in Hong Kong’s art institutions, particularly relating to site-specific installations and performances that had to cope with the artist’s physical absence and institutional restrictions. Two site-specific art commissions – Shirley Tse’s Negotiated Differences (2020), installed at the M+ Pavilion, and Eisa Jocson’s Zoo (2020), performed at Tai Kwun Contemporary – serve as cases in point illustrating how curatorial practices enabled remote collaboration and display reconfiguration to address authorial absence and institutional interventions during the installation and exhibition phases due to the pandemic. The former case study decentralized the authorial control of artistic criticality from the artist to a collective curation and installation process, while the latter evolved in accordance with protean institutional and social contexts by actively changing the display during the exhibition. Despite the pandemic-imposed separation and restrictions, these two case studies shed light on how curators collaborated with artists and participants across distance and time, actively and flexibly forging responsive and relevant connections between site-specific artworks and the immediate present. Their curatorial practices – as artistic mediation – complicated the conceptual framework of artworks and exhibitions through co-curation and co-production with artists, thus lending a collaborative dimension to the model of exhibition-making and the role of the curator as the ‘curator-as-artist’.

Introduction: Abstracts from the Spectra 2018 Symposium

Spectra 2018, presented by the Australian Network for Art and Technology (ANAT) in collaboration with the University of South Australia and Experimenta Media Arts, surveyed the current array of art-science practice and research across Australasia and interrogated the impact of inter- and transdisciplinary research and practice upon the arts, sciences and individual practices involved.The Adelaide event consisted of a peer-reviewed symposium, a curated exhibition and performance program, workshops and a series of public events. Artists and scientists approach creativity, exploration and research differently; together, they open up new ways of seeing, experiencing and interpreting the world. Spectra 2018 explored the increasing convergence of art and science and considered how each area impacts the other and how, together, they shed light on who we are and where we are going.Spectra’s first iteration, in 2012, was instigated by artist Mary Rosengren and CSIRO scientist partner Cris Kennedy. Spectra 2012 brought together some of Australia’s leading artists and scientists to discuss the use of images and data in the studio and the laboratory. In 2018 Spectra was reimagined as a showcase for research and creative work being produced through interdisciplinary collaborations between Australian and New Zealand artists and scientists.The texts that follow in this and future issues of Leonardo are a selection of abstracts from the symposium papers presented at Spectra 2018. The texts arise from a wide range of artistic practices and a similar diversity of scientific disciplines. Artist-researcher Jill Scott, a pioneer of art-science collaboration in Australia and Switzerland, presented the symposium keynote. Scott proposes the incubator as the key metaphor or concept for successful art-science collaboration. In this special section, we can observe just how many forms incubators can take and the diverse disciplinary contexts in which they can successfully foster creative collaborations.The artistic disciplines that are mapped across these examples include new media, bio-art, conceptual and postconceptual practices, photography and moving image, digital visualization, interactive installations and performance environments, music and sound (including new musical instruments), textiles, theater, sculpture, painting, relational practices, site-specific art and live art. Scientific disciplines involved include astronomy, microbiology, computing, material, life and environmental sciences, engineering, physics, medical sciences and data visualization. Research foci include stem-cell research, ecological research, quantum mechanics, tissue culturing, artificial intelligence, surveillance, machine-vision, robotics, particle physics and organism regeneration and human simulations.The research teams associated with each project offer diverse motives for their activities. While some collaborators celebrate the potential of art-science collaboration to offer positive solutions for, or perspectives upon, the world, for others, a dystopian vision drives their interest, as they seek to reverse-engineer and problematize what are often seen as the exclusionary black-boxes of both the sciences and the arts. Some collaborators simply seek the opportunity to explore new forms of knowing and understanding through cross-disciplinary collaboration.The Spectra symposium was organized as a series of thematic panels—reflecting emergent themes in the peerreviewed abstracts—engaging a series of topics including materiality, visualization, nano-optics, interspecies relations, contexts (historical, technological and other), systems, environment, bio-science, the submolecular and empathy. For publication we follow this structure, with groups of abstracts comprising each theme being presented across a series of issues of Leonardo journal.

A Large, Finite Permutation of Specific, Discrete Variants: Dan Graham’s Children’s Pavilion at Chambres d’Amis (1986)

Summary In 1986, Dan Graham participated in Chambres d’Amis in Ghent, Belgium, curated by Jan Hoet as an art exhibition outside of the museum, in individual houses. With the help of a local architect, Graham constructed a glass and steel pavilion in a private garden. The resulting work, Children’s Pavilion, is largely forgotten, but it is a pivotal work within the evolution of his oeuvre. Many of Graham’s concerns and topics – such as the relationship between public and private, the nature of a garden, and the possibility of site-specific art works, closer to architecture than to the fine arts, outside of the museum – were also an important part of the exhibition concept of Jan Hoet. Moreover, Children’s Pavilion is not a ‘unique’ work: it is closely related to previous works (both pavilions and spatial proposals), while it has also spawned – and continues to spawn – new projects, collaborations (with Jeff Wall) and pavilions that are often seemingly identical. This double proliferation – both topological and permutational in nature – is typical for his oeuvre, but it also creates very specific problems. Everything within his body of work seems connected, and although these connections are necessary to fully understand each individual pavilion or proposal, they are in many cases still waiting to be revealed.

Architecture and Sites

Several contemporary architects have designed architectural objects that are closely linked to their particular sites. An in-depth study of the relevant relationship holding between those objects and their sites is, however, missing. This paper addresses the issue, arguing that those architectural objects are akin to works of site-specific art. In section (1), I introduce the topic of the paper. In section (2), I critically analyse the debate on the categorisation of artworks as site-specific. In section (3), I apply to architecture the lesson learned from the analysis of the art debate.