Site-Specifics + Three score projects

This reading is very dense, and I will go over it in class. Alot of it - the references to modernism, etc. will be confusing. Ignore what you do not understand, as there are a few key points in the reading that I think you will understand, and they are the important ones.

The key point is in the first sentence, that in site-specific work, which is what you are going in the final projects, the work is an exchange between the meaning of the work itself (whatever you create) and the place where you situate this work (the block, the park, the area, the building etc.) And the more that the work and the place have an integrated relationship, the more you realize that this particular exchange, could not happen anywhere else. It is specific to the place. There are analogies to semiotiocs, which is a theory in linguistics, but since we did not go over this in class, this is too complicated to reference. Some of you may have studied linguistics in your other classes, in which case, you will understand the references to sign and signifier. But in plain english and in relation to the projects, what this means is that if you can identify all the political, aesthetic (what does the place look like, is it beautiful or ugly, is it modern or historic, what are the visual conditions), geographical, institutional or whatever other issues make up the complexity of the place itself, that will inform and even determine what you create in that place.

What all the references to minimalism mean is that in minimalism, which is where the work of art is reduced to the simpliest form of an idea (an all white canvas for example, being a "painting", the reception of the work of art is shifted from the pictorial quality of the work itself, in the brain and physical experience of the viewer. The viewer has to work harder to make meaning from an all white canvas, and further still, based on where that canvas is located. This shift of interpretation of meaning - it is not in the picture, it is in the mind of the viewer, is similar to what happens with a site-specific work. Minimalism also played with the time and space of the viewing or experience of the work, and here is where it moves to the the work of "art" in the public sphere. It breaks down the notion of "what is art"... it opens the space of interdisciplinary discourse, it approaches the condition of theater, or an event, that has a "start" and a "finish" and something that happens in-between. It emphasizes the transitory and ephemeral experience of viewing.

This was beautifully illustrated by three scores I want to point out:

The writing of text, "I am grateful for the air I breathe" on the sidewalk. Emily said that she thought of it as a prayer ritual, which one could sort of see when someone else "performed" her instructions. There was the performance of writing; adding text the public space; text referencing the library where we were located, but released from the books, or screens of the computer. Text that remained as a relic of an event (the event started from the when the score was handed to someone and we started watching it be written, to the point where it was written and we walked away.) The time it took to wait for it to be written, and thus is slowed down the time of comprehension, during which we were taking in a variety of other sensations. The fact that the text remained when we walked away, washed off by the rain and scuffed away by footprints. The site continued to speak, and took on different meanings: when it was being written on, the act of witnessing, the act of it remaining as a silent public message, the act of its erasure, and after, when it had vanished. The text itself, breathing air, located at the doorway of the library, referenced the enclosure of the building - especially the library, which as a heterotopic space, has elaborate rules of entry, participation, and exit. So, air in that location, could also mean freedom from enclosure - physical freedom, referenced by breathing. Are we all grateful for the air that we breathe? And what air are we breathing?

The second score I want to point out is Mariam's array of jars containing highly pungent fluids. This could be considered a sculpture by how it was composed (formally lined in a row, in a handmade display holding the jars), and it had alot of cultural references for and from Mariam, in thinking of the project. As she said, the smells of her homeland, are part of what make her identify home. So, "home" and "away" became part of the smells as other people were interpreting them. The sculpture was portable - we set it on the floor in the classroom, we set it on the floor in the library hallway, and we handed it from one person to another. The portable experience - instead of us passing a fixed installation, it was passed around - was olfactory. By engaging the sense of smell, by isolating it and highlighting the act of smelling as physical, was as subtle and ephemeral as the writing and breathing of Emily's score.

The third score I want to mention is Patrick's score:

Call a friend with your cell phone
Speak to your friend interpreting a symmbol sheet of little pictures that include: sun, box, the number 18, arrow, a hand with two fingers, the letter Q, the word delicious, a Christian cross, a dollar sigh, a penis, a musical note, a bed, a flower, what looks like it could be fesces, a stick figure saying "hey", a heart, the word grotesque and angry face (stick drawing).
Let your friend interpret your interpretation of my interpretation.

So, Patrick is giving clues that this symbol palette is possibly a private language that he constructed to describe something. His location is a mixed reality experience, as we as the viewer/participants were watching Gaby phone her a friend (her sister?) and speak to her in Polish, which further obscured the "linguistic" understanding of the communication. There was language which referenced signs, which contained a language structure and for those of us who could not understand Polish, we were oblivious to the what it contained. For the the class, we experienced sound, and observed actions, but those sounds and actions were delivered to another somewhere, (where we couldn't see) and traveled through a no-where (the satelite system) to arrive in the anywhere of its destination. Patrick set this up to be a puzzle, a labyrinth that would unfold into a series of other labyrinths, that was by chance, interpreted by Gaby in a way that added very interesting and increasingly obtuse layers to the game. In effect, the cell phone became a way to exit the heterotopia that was not concrete. Gaby's voice left the controlled arena via an air wave... perhaps this is the air that we are now breathing?