the passage is the thing

so it's tuesday morning and my intellectual regime beings in ernest. i leave the house in spritely fashion and head to the library on my valiant stead Fleur (a refined road bike from a by gone age). My eagerness betrays me as i arrive early and spend a few moments queuing to get into the building. Once given access i rush to the stairs lift and pick a well lit and ventilated spot on the fourth floor. I'm ready to learn.

at this juncture it would be useful to set the scene a little more thoroughly. My reason for being in the library was to begin research on what will eventually become a 10,000 (give or take 10%) word dissertation the parameters for which were roughly established a few months ago. As such my general area of investigation is the role of the camera in documenting site specific art. A little more precisely it is art which is temporary in nature and, without the camera's testimony, would be seen by little or no one.



Richard Long

a line made by walking 1967

I spent the morning going through the work of Richard Long. I had been familiar with Long's photography for a while. also i'm particularly interested in conceptual art of the late 60's/early 70's with which Long's work is often, arguably mistakingly, associated. So i was familiar with it in this context.

But after a few hours the depth and variety of his practice became startlingly clear. Photographs, while important, form only a small part of his output which also comprises of text pieces, installations and wall drawings. 

Stone Field Allotment One Liverpool 1987

With this taken on board i began to reconsider my pre-conceived notions about Long. Before i had seen  Long's camera as being an expedient tool with which to record his fleeting interventions in nature. While it does achieve this it also embodies many of the ideas and concepts that run throughout his work. For instance Long emphasises how his work is done impulsively and quickly. This is not the product of a master craftsman. This point is crucial as anything more complex would leave us concentrating on the creation itself to the detriment of the place in which it occurs. Long's simple, straightforward images do not leave the viewer dazzled by the quality of the camera or composition. Instead technical consideration take a back seat and it is the work itself that comes to the fore. Ultimately then Long's deceptively simple images articulate the balance between nature and the intervention from the artist.

Miwon Kwon One Place after another: notes of site specificity 

I had decided to split the day into two chunks. So after spending the morning with Long's work i moved on to more theoretical work and in particular Kwon's essay (which can be found in: Suderberg, Erika, 2000. Space, Site, Intervention: situating installation art. Minneapolis, The University of Minnesota Press.)  

Kwon's ideas really challenged my own notions of site specificity. Up to know i had, logically enough, considered a 'site' a physical thing. But Kwon has a much broader definition that allows the term 'site' to be applied to a certain area of practice or investigation. Therefore a practitioner whose work deals exclusively with race could be said to be 'site specific'. The site here being the issue itself rather than any physical place. A challenging notion. 

Kwon is keen to point out that site specificity is not a chronologically evolving concept. But rather the various approaches to working site specifically all exist side by side and can even intermingle. Basically this is a vast subject and, under Kwon's definition, incorporates practitioners i would never have thought to look at.

So a lot to think about and the breadth of the subject area has, rather frighteningly, been revealed to me.  Before i get to deep into this i will really have to concentrate on defining which area of site specificity i am going to focus on.  

Overall a problematic but thoroughly revitalising day. I've started