|
Site-Specific refers to sculpture or any other art which responds/interacts with/is inspired by its surroundings. In part site-specificity in art
responds to a greater historical trend which places art in everyday life as opposed to a separate and privileged sphere. Artists
producing site-specific works range from people like Robert Smithson,
Andy Goldsworthy and Christo to Richard Serra and younger artists like Sarah Sze.
Later revisions and problems with the term
The Exploding Cinema, a UK-based diy film collective defines site specific in their Dictionary of
Video Art as:
"Locations and environments may have some kind of drama or meaning for ordinary people (eg. a dole [welfare] office) but this
has no signigance for the bourgoisie until interpreted by the heightened sensibilities of the artist."
This compaint addresses the fact that the idea of site specificity as an iconoclastic choice to reject the commercialism of
the gallery system has become one of the mainstays of the established duchampian school of commercial, contemporary international
artists.
The re-presentation of sites of trauma, neglect or mealancholy can be seen as part of the cultural process of 'regeneration'.
The aesthetic sensibilities of the artist make the sites, and the subjects they purport to represent depoliticised and therefore
acceptable for cultural scrutiny.
A good recent example of this process is British artist Jeremy Deller's 'The Battle of Orgreave' (2003), a site-specific
re-enactment of the clash between picketing miners of the NUM and riot police outside the BSC coking plant at Orgreave, South
Yorkshire, on 18 June 1984. Filmed by Mike Figgis and Channel 4, this became a startlingly graphic documentary about the
historical events and their social context. Many of the 'actors' had actually participated in the original riots as police or as
rioters. Deller's representation is well meant, and by involving the miners who had initially participated in the strike, he does
alleviate some of the familiar problems of 'high culture' representations of working-class people and realities. However, the
market reality is always in evidence. Press and documentation of the event refers to it as 'Jeremy Deller's The Battle of
Orgreave', and in Art Angel publicity he is credited as having 'conceived' the idea. Of course this is standard practice in the
naming of authored material, and without Deller's idea and cultural caché the film would not have been made. However, the naming
of the project as art, the standard assignation of an author, and the contexts in which it is marketed and distributed are
problematic. Deller's position as conceptual author and the marketing of the film through art and media channels privileges his
position over the participants', despite his objections. In the 'high culture' context of the art gallery this film becomes a
commodity from which he gains notoriety and financial reward, whereas the participants were volunteering, so the process
inevitably commodifies the experiences, the stories and representations of the ex-miners. This film can be seen as the first
stage in the 'heritagization' of the Miner's strike; not that the strike was not a significant event before Deller's film, but
this representation of it was engineered by an outside interest, and used to generate and enrich a market that is completely
independent of Orgreave and the people whose experiences are represented.
This is the crux of the Exploding Cinema's point about site specific art - it manages to alienate the
representation of some part of everyday life, or history from its previous inhabitants, by drawing it into the privileged sphere
of art, rather than the other way round as was originally intended.
|