Site and situation notes

Site -> Space occupied by work
Space occupied by work - political/physical/ideological

Situation-> Artwork becomes situated in a space

Quotes that reference site and situation:

"by situated we refure to those artistic practises for which the 'situation' or 'context' is often the starting point"- Clair Doherty

"Context as an impetus, hidrance, inspiration and research subject for the process of making art, wheither specified by a curator or commissioner or proposed by the artist"- Clair Doherty

"Re-imagining of place as a situation, a set of circumstances, geographical location, historical narrative, group of people or a social agenda" - Clair Doherty

Clair Doherty is looking at the way in which artists situate work. The first quote focuses on how artists create artwork for a specific space, the space in question often being a gallery space. The second quote reflects how the situation or context an artwork is placed in affects how it it viewed. Artwork has different connotations depending on where it is displayed. It also looks at how this context is not always controlled by the artist as it is often up to curators to chose where an artwork is placed, thus effecting how the artwork is viewed entirely. The third quote looks at place, not just as a physical geographic position but also as something less physical. It references how the time in which an artwork is produced is a context for which it is viewed.

"Derive-playful, constructive behaviour and awareness of psycho-geographic effects [in which persons] drop their usual motives for movement and action...and let themselves be drawn by the action of terrain and the encounters they find there" - Guy Debord (1955)

Guy Debord is talking about Situationism. He was one of the key members of Situationist International. This quote looks at the way in which Situationism focuses on the creation of situations and how psycho-geography causes people to create new situations by removing themselves from their usual walking routes.

"a work of art when placed in a gallery loses its charge and becomes a portable object or surface disengaged from the outside world" - Robert Smithson

Robert Smithson's quote brings up the way in which the institution becomes a mausoleum for art objects. It stops being a functional object and its worth far exceeds the sum of its parts. It becomes disengaged through use of glass or rope, stopping the viewers from truly engaging through the work through touch.