Holiday time meant we got some reading in. We went for Miwon Kwon’s One Place After Another which is about site-specific art and approaching it as a “problem-idea” (using the authors words) according to its political, cultural and even social dimensions. The author analyses the different reconfigurations of site-specific as a genre within the cultural frame, considering the political and social problematics that accompanied the evolution of site-specific art since the 1960s.
We always knew we were making work that might blend in to the background or work that is specific to the place but until the last year or so we never thought of it as site specific but reading this book really did cement it in our minds; the work and its context are inseparable. There’s also a great quote by Richard Serra's "to remove the work is to destroy the work". Something which we definitely relate to, we barely keep any of the work we produce because it doesn’t make sense outside of its current situation.
