Site Specificity, The Local and the Faking of Belonging By John Vella

"……successful place specific art can be made by people who live or have lived in or near the site, or by newcomers, and occasionally by visitors who have really done their homework. But in order to understand the identity of any specific place, some portable place must rest in our souls, even if it no longer exists, or never did. The artist has to ‘live here’ in some way – physically, symbiotically, or empathetically."

"The European cuckoo (Cuculus canorus) is an obligate parasite. A female cuckoo never builds her own nest. Instead she lays her eggs in the nests of other birds. She waits until neither parent is present at the nest and then flies down to the nest, lays a single egg and departs. Egg laying takes only about 10 seconds, compared with the 20 minutes typical of other bird species… the cuckoo chick also grows faster…"

Cuckoo's egg in nestDriven by ulterior motives (namely to make art), the site-specific artist often has to feign a ‘proximity’; a relationship to a place and/or people they are unfamiliar with. Over the long or short term the artist can remain compromised by their very intent; an outsider pretending not to be, conjuring systems orchestrated to appeal or otherwise relate to the animate and inanimate dimensions of the local. In this context, site-specific artworks harbour a longing for belonging that belies the artist’s fundamental inability to be of a specific place.

The very definition of ‘local’ connotes an idea of ‘belonging to’; it also alludes to a physical relationship that is for all intents and purposes monogamous, accrued and developed over a period of time. In contrast, the site specific artists’ relationship to site is more likely to be characterised as polygamous or, perhaps, as a series of one night stands, as the artist, less interested in family, often desires to spread their works (ideally between numerous players and partners) across the globe. At the risk of dragging out the metaphor, whilst they have ‘serious intentions’ in relation to their art, when it comes to the way in which they relate to a site and the people closest to it, site-specific artists are often flirts.

Being of a specific place means being there (or having a connection) over a long period of time. The cumulative nature of this process is somewhat counter intuitive when it comes to making art. In short, the artist rarely if ever has the time to embed him or herself into a place over a number of years, despite the fact that the consequences of their endeavour - their art - might be in situ forever. The cuckoo’s strategy works; operating instinctively, or beyond conscience, as it is hard-wired to not only survive but to become ‘a local’ in the unfortunate selected nest at a superior pace. Whilst many artists would cringe at the thought, their strategies for engaging sites are often subject to a similar need for speed…

However, herein lies the contradiction implicit in all site-specific practice: the distance afforded by not being from (or intimately knowing) the specific people or place, somehow facilitates a measure of objectivity (an independence from the encumbrances of locality) that can ultimately facilitate powerful art. That the frisson of being in a place and trying to know it, far from being somehow disabling, is the critical ‘cuckoo catalyst' that can enable significant formal / conceptual leaps of faith to occur.

Of course, this comes back to certain judgments about what we, as art professionals and academics consider to be ‘significant’ and what the general public sees as great art; dilemmas that are perhaps best summed up by the conflicting events of 23 November, 1993 surrounding the site-specific work: House, Rachel Whiteread.

"…on November 23rd a number of key events coincided... At 2pm, the K Foundation awarded Whiteread their prize of £40,000 for the 'worst' artist in Britain. At 7.30pm Bow Neighbourhood demanded the immediate demolition of House and at 9.30pm Whiteread was awarded the 1993 Turner Prize, broadcast live from the Tate Gallery on Channel 4 Television…"

Ironically, this work'House', Rachel Whiteread (the site of so much angst and controversy) has become localized by default, embedded experientially in the locale through its demolition on 11 January, 1994. ‘No visible sign now remains, but the sculpture continues to ‘exist’ as the best of ephemeral art exists, in addition to its copious documentation, in individual and collective memory far beyond the confines of the art world.’ Ultimately this discrepancy is activated by the nature of site-specific practice. Namely that in not preaching to the converted but to those that often sit outside of the cathedral of the white cube, site-specific practice is often more susceptible to an attack, that serves in perpetuity to strengthen it.

So perhaps for today’s artists it is not just about ‘feigning proximity’ as opposed to reconfiguring, accelerating and thereby reflecting on, the consequences of it. In this context, site specific artists and practice have a responsibility to interrogate their attempts to woo the animate and inanimate locale, not as a means to avoiding potential dissent, but as mechanisms for maintaining the ‘im’ and explicit dangers of getting too close.

This article comprises excerpts from a 2007 paper of the same title.

John Vella is an artist and Acting Head of Sculpture at the Tasmanian School of Art.

Works Cited

Lippard, Lucy, The Lure of the Local: Sense of Place in a Mulitcultural Society, New Press, New York 1997, p.289.
'Parasitism by cuckoos', Issue 4, December, 1995 asab.icapb.ed.ac.uk/.../ images/cuckoo_nest.jpg
http://www.artistsineastlondon.org/08_house/04text.htm

Images sourced from www.nature.com/nature/journal/v406/n6799/images/406937aa.0.jpg; http://naturalfrequency.com/articles/thermalelements