Wednesday, June 6, 2012

Site specific Installation: Interventions (often easily removed)


In Rosenthal’s chapter Site-specific Installation: Interventions we are introduced to the many investigations of which installation can explore (these being physicality, functionality, intellectual, and institutional character).  Rosenthal informs us of the use of the listed frameworks and how with their use within the practice of installation served as a stepping stone for the practice to serve as a literal questioning of the surrounding space. The work Within and Beyond the Frame (1973) of Daniel Burren is utilized as an example of the questioning of the then spiritual modalities of modernism. Burren did this by extending the work ,literally curtains flowing into the street, in order to question the identity of the gallery.[1]

This progression of fusing the governed and the public spheres is analyzed via various modernist practitioners. We are of course presented with Duchamp as an academic explanation mark before the point is made.  One line however serves as to give sway to this often too seen reference this being ‘he played behavioral games with the viewers physical movements’. We are after all talking of the negotiation of space and the artists power to influence this beyond the architects original intentions.[2]

But to carry on from this sore spot and a perceived laissez-faire use of intellect, we can follow Rosenthal’s trail in search of sit specify into the sixties. Before this occurs how ever we are given a quick insight into the work of Frank Stella who altered the very shapes of his canvas’. This altering of the very canvas (also coincidently not unlike a floor plan of a white cube) is suggested to have helped move the works from the wall and across the space themselves. This trend (or use of material and space) was quickly picked up by movements such as minimalism, conceptual art and land art. It is with this new mode of practice that a mode of practice could now serve as to interject itself on the space and the viewer themselves.[3]

Via the works of Richard Serra and Bruce Nauwman a statement is made as to the very impact that a site filling and site specific could have. I would like to here to refer to a grouping of words that actually caused me to stop reading and served as a point of contention, this being ‘one that could be easily removed’. This sentence when used after the site specify point is one that serves as to go against the very intention of such a term. It in mind falls here to a matter of creating a mode of practice when presented in a gallery is one of attention seeking. I do believe in the concept of site specify but unfortunately its place lives in land art and the usually boil-esque public sculpture.


[1] This is an interesting take as one could see the open curtain and window as a semi voyeuristic invitation to peer through. An intrusion when viewed via the feminist notions at the time would serve to directly impede and cause questioning of identity.  This is further extended in the discussion of the decentralizing of the ‘space’ be this museum or designated gallery space.
[2] This screams for a reference to the Matrix, and god damn it, I am a sucker for that movie. How ever and I know I mentioned it, I believe it to be more along the lines of the MTV music awards Will Farrell re-enactment of the architect. mentioning Duchamp. .
[3] I think it important to here actually point put that by ‘space’ what I believe Rosenthal to be referring to is the institution itself.

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