One Place after Another: Site-Specific Art and Locational Identity [Paperback]

Miwon Kwon (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 27, 2004 | ISBN-10: 026261202X | ISBN-13: 978-0262612029

Site-specific art emerged in the late 1960s in reaction to the growing commodification of art and the prevailing ideals of art's autonomy and universality. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, as site-specific art intersected with land art, process art, performance art, conceptual art, installation art, institutional critique, community-based art, and public art, its creators insisted on the inseparability of the work and its context. In recent years, however, the presumption of unrepeatability and immobility encapsulated in Richard Serra's famous dictum "to remove the work is to destroy the work" is being challenged by new models of site specificity and changes in institutional and market forces.One Place after Another offers a critical history of site-specific art since the late 1960s and a theoretical framework for examining the rhetoric of aesthetic vanguardism and political progressivism associated with its many permutations. Informed by urban theory, postmodernist criticism in art and architecture, and debates concerning identity politics and the public sphere, the book addresses the siting of art as more than an artistic problem. It examines site specificity as a complex cipher of the unstable relationship between location and identity in the era of late capitalism. The book addresses the work of, among others, John Ahearn, Mark Dion, Andrea Fraser, Donald Judd, Renee Green, Suzanne Lacy, Inigo Manglano-Ovalle, Richard Serra, Mierle Laderman Ukeles, and Fred Wilson.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"What makes this book so strong is the steady course it plots through the inevitable polemical rapids." ARTFORUM

"...will be valuable for practitioners in the field." Timothy P. Brown Afterimage

"The concept of site specificity has been used to cover a wide and often ill-defined range of art practices. Kwon's important book clarifies the issues at stake and cogently lays out a number of analytical paths down which others will surely follow. One Place After Another will re-define the way we think about public art."--Russell Ferguson, Chief Curator, UCLA Hammer Museum, Los Angeles

"A compelling theoretical analysis that never loses sight of the 'here and now' of artistic practice and aesthetic experience. Miwon Kwon's exploration of the social and political dimensions of site specificity succeeds in being both original and provocative; it will provide a valuable foundation for all future studies."--Judith Russi Kirshner, critic, curator, and Dean of the College of Architecture and the Arts, University of Illinois at Chicago

"One Place After Another discusses how artists from the 60s to the 90s have engaged with specific sites and their contexts, whether in art institutions or public places. Here, sites bring to the surface what is intrinsic to a locality but often overlooked or not yet visible. This book provides an important and critical overview of discourses about site specificity that will interest artists, commissioners, curators, institutions, critics, and the broader public."--Uta Meta Bauer, Professor of Theory, Practice, and Mediation of Contemporary Art, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna

From the Inside Flap

"You are familiar with art history. Welcome to art geography, a new subdiscipline launched by Miwon Kwon's lustrous commentary on thirty-five years of artists' engagement with physical and political environments."
--Andrew Ross, Professor and Director, Graduate Program in American Studies, New York University

"The concept of site specificity has been used to cover a wide and often ill-defined range of art practices. Kwon's important book clarifies the issues at stake and cogently lays out a number of analytical paths down which others will surely follow. One Place After Another will re-define the way we think about public art."
--Russell Ferguson, Chief Curator, UCLA Hammer Museum, Los Angeles

"A compelling theoretical analysis that never loses sight of the ‘here and now’ of artistic practice and aesthetic experience. Miwon Kwon's exploration of the social and political dimensions of site specificity succeeds in being both original and provocative; it will provide a valuable foundation for all future studies."
--Judith Russi Kirshner, critic, curator, and Dean of the College of Architecture and the Arts, University of Illinois at Chicago

"One Place After Another discusses how artists from the 60s to the 90s have engaged with specific sites and their contexts, whether in art institutions or public places. Here, sites bring to the surface what is intrinsic to a locality but often overlooked or not yet visible. This book provides an important and critical overview of discourses about site specificity that will interest artists, commissioners, curators, institutions, critics, and the broader public."
--Uta Meta Bauer, Professor of Theory, Practice, and Mediation of Contemporary Art, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 232 pages
• Publisher: The MIT Press (February 27, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 026261202X
• ISBN-13: 978-0262612029
• Product Dimensions: 7 x 0.4 x 9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #63,659 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #43 in Books > Arts & Photography > Architectural Art & Design > History

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

31 of 34 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars useful addition to the literature May 15, 2004

By A Customer

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

This book is a useful addition to the literature--a more comprehensive book that also looked at practices outside the USA is what is really needed. That's one of the major drawbacks of this book, it doesn't clearly indicate that it is tracing an American history of the idea of site-specificity.

The first chapter provides a short history of site specificity from an American point of view (minimalism, conceptual art's critique of institutions) and draws heavily on James Meyer's idea of the functional site to think about the present, after that the book is a series of case studies. A better book for considering the range and history of site specific practices (which includes this book's first chapter and Meyer's essay) is Erika Suderburg's Space Site Intervention. Also useful is Site-Specificity: The Ethnographic Turn.

17 of 19 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars ok for starters February 7, 2007

By A. J. Bramwell

Format:Paperback

I was waiting eagerly for the Kwon to arrive after I purchased it, perhaps this heightened expectation is to blame for the slight sense of deflation as I read it.

The text has a fairly useful historical overview of the history of 'site' as an artistic idea, with a specifically American focus. One of my disappointments was that Kwon appears to be relying on secondary research, drawing from public art examples already extensively discussed in other public art texts, most notably those of Tom Finklepearl and Grant Kester. The book raises some interesting questions about the relationships between comissioning agents and artists in relation to the thorny problem of what constitutes an identifiable 'community.' These questions are however limited to a narrow interpretation of what public art practice is, remaining close to issues found in what has been called New Genre.

All in all useful as an introduction to the subject, a teaching tool for undergraduate students, but perhaps better as a companion text rather than a definitive source. If you have the Finklepearl already you may not need this one.

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars A great read April 28, 2007

By K. J. Swenson

Format:Paperback

This is a helpful survey of the related issues of site specificity and institutional critique. My students find it accessible, and find that it ties together major themes and artists of the 1970s. Highly recommended for those teaching/studying art since 1970.

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent interior design book! May 17, 2012

By Colin

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

This book has helped me tremendously with interior design. I never knew where to put things before and my house was a mess because of it. I knew something was amiss, I just couldn't figure out how to correct it. Miwon Kwon's book has helped me to understand the locationality and site-specificity of objects. I now see that you're supposed to have a reason for putting the coat rack in the oven or the oven in the driveway. This book has really allowed me to take control of my life. I used to just fumble around with stuff--everyday objects would look like big question marks to me, but now all I see is intentional locationality and and site-specificity.

23 of 44 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars one contention after another August 9, 2002

By sb yap

Format:Hardcover

I find Kwon's book informative and insightful, especially as a practitioner working with installation and context-specific project, and with current development of contemporary theories particularly in mind. Kwon's geneological approach towards reading the development of site-specific work is impressive, obviously overlaid with cultural theory in her analysis. Although she has focused mainly on the perplexity of community-charged art projects at the later chapter, her delivery on spatial politics and the many other facets of the production of site-specific art is most valuable, especially with some useful terminology and concepts (in reading the progress of these practice). Reading the text in conjunction with few other similar books on the issue of space, site and art production, one could discern some of the common notions of criticality and urgency in addressing the unscrupulous co-option of mainstream institutional forces. No doubt, the text could post as both informative and also a challenge towards artistic production, itself in turn becomes a site of intervention as it suggest (and aim) for communal praxis in an (politically correct) age of `glocalisation'.

14 of 45 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars One obscure word after another is more like it September 27, 2003

By Eric S. Bowman

Format:Hardcover

Miwon Kwon's writing is extremely wordy and very hard to grasp. You'll inevitably spend more time looking up her obscure vocabulary than actual reading. I found her writing hard to comprehend even after reading chapters multiple times. I'm a college level reader, and have experienced few problems understanding other art related readings. Her sentences are incredibly redundant and very hard to understand. Honestly, I would ONLY recommend this book to College Professors or anyone with a PHD; otherwise save your self the time and pass this one up. You'll be happy you did.