Research Blog

[museumsarecomplicated]

Miwon Kwon - One Place After Another - Ch. 2  “Unhinging of Site-Specificity”

Summary:

As a fan of site-specificity and location-based projects, this chapter was painful to read at parts. It was certainly well-written, but Kwon takes a real sharp cut at the interests in projects like these, and who and what benefits from them. She talks about authorship, and how the authorization of an artist validates an artwork, even when someone else might have done the labor. And then she mentions that there’s also the instance in which the physical presence of an artist can validate an artwork as well, as well as the scenario in which an artist becomes something of a globetrotter and is invited to replicate similar projects at different sites around the world, which, Kwon argues, drastically neutralizes the impact of an artwork or practice that is intended to be site specific.

She mentions how easily site-specific work can be used as a promotional tool, and how at a time when so many places are homogenized by globalization, these artworks become instruments with which to distinguish one place from another. The chapter ends on a pretty bleak note!

 Notes and Quotes:

Replicating a site-specific work infuses cash value into the work by aestheticizing and de-contextualizing the work from its original context

“...specificity of the site in terms of time and space is rendered irrelevant...” (38)

“...active processes are transformed into inert art objects once again. In this way, site-specific art comes to represent criticality rather than performing it.” (38)

On inviting artists to perform IC and SS at museums

“They can easily become extensions of the museum’s own self-promotional apparatus, while the artist becomes a commodity with a special purchase on ‘criticality.’“ (47)

Kwon cites Isabelle Graw: “the result can be an absurd situation in which the commissioning institution (the museum or gallery) turns to an artist as a person who has the legitimacy to point out the contradictions and irregularities of which they themselves disapprove.” (47) This poses kind of a micro-crisis in the context of my own work, how are museums, artist and curators supposed to deal with this then? Setting the museums on fire and starting from scratch?

Kwon explains that the skill sets for artists have changed from formal, aesthetic skills to what Buchloh calls “the aesthetics of administration” (51). Artists “provide now, rather than produce” objects. (50) More crisis-thinking here. Curatorial work and educational work are now (and have been) in the realm of artists’ skills and practices. Does is still make sense to make distinctions between artists and curators? Like, what value can I even provide? My ambitions are maybe extremely simple and naive. Where to go now? But then again, there is value in pleasant experiences, and moments for reflection and understanding. But...how do you do this correctly?

Kwon talks about Renee Green’s attempt to deploy similar, unified projects at locations throughout the world as part of an experiment to see if working in similar modes at various locations is possible without reducing the work’s impact...but it isn’t, because the public usually only sees one of these projects at a time. (52)

Other interests at stake with SS projects:

“...the siting of art in ‘real’ places can also be a means to extract the social and historical dimensions of these places in order to vicariously serve the thematic drive of an artist, satisfy institutional demographic profiles, or fulfill the fiscal needs of a city.” (53)

SS “...supplies distinction of place and uniqueness of locational identity, highly seductive qualites in the promotion of towns and cities within the competitive restructuring of the global economic hierarchy.” (54)

SS “..can be mobilized to expedite the erasure of differences via the commodification and serialization of places.” (55)

Craig Owens characterizes SS as a “melancholic discourse and practice.” (55)

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Miwon Kwon - One Place After Another - Ch. 1 “Genealogy of Site Specificity”

I was already vaguely familiar with Kwon’s work, but it made sense to dive deeper and I will record notes on each chapter. I like this book, although it was written in 2004 and is a bit dated now.

Summary: Kwon identifies the emergence of site specificity and explains that it’s a response to modernist, object-based aesthetics, commercial systems, etc. She identifies some early SS artists, including Smithson and Serra, and how early on, SS was explicitly tied to a specific space and to move a SS piece would be to ruin it. 

She also talks about Institutional Critique as site specificity, and talked about how artists like Haacke, Buren, and Ukeles draw attention to the specific frame of the institution, and issues of value, narrative, seen and unseen labor. Here we’re still working with a physical place, but the narrative is political, it’s not just about a location, it’s about a system of power/economy.

And then she talks about artists like Fred Wilson who work with multiple sites, and multiple disciplines (the sciences, popular culture, etc) who conceptualize the site as not a physical location, but as a discourse, a suite of themes, etc. And then she goes on to mention how these ideas morph in other chapters to become more theoretical and complex.

Key notes/phrases/quotes etc:

Institutional critique:

“The seemingly benign architectural features of a gallery/museum...actively disassociate the space of art from the outside world, furthering the institution’s idealist imperative of rendering itself and its values ‘objective,’ ‘disinterested,’ and ‘true.’“ (13)

Some SS/IC practices are “aggressively antivisual--informational, textual, expositional, didactic...” (24)

Museums are in some ways meta-sites:

“...the site comes to encompass a relay of several interrelated but different spaces and economies, including the studio, gallery, museum...that together constitute a system of practices that is not separate from but open to social, economic and political pressures.” (14)

Moving to a more complex theorization of site:

“...the site is now structured (inter)textually rather than spatially...” (29)

Paradigms of site-specificity that are not discrete, but rather, often overlapping: “phenomenological, social/institutional, and discursive.” (30)

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(via arnsteins_ladder.png (322×504))

Arnstein’s Ladder. Good to keep in mind when conceptualizing participatory artwork or participation in museum contexts.

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Ch. 4 Strike Art - Yates McKee

Here are some notes on On Flooded Streets and Breathing-in-Common: Climate Justice, Black Lives Matter, and the Arts of Decolonization. 

I liked this! It was very good! McKee provides a very necessary critique of environmental and activist art practices and their historic separation from race, class, and economy. There’s good context situating some contemporary interventions surrounding the climate crisis, Black Lives Matter, Occupy Wall Street, etc. I guess the only thing I find lacking is more depth on interventions like #BlackOutTour and stuff in the Turbine Hall, which I could presumably find elsewhere. 

The reading I have didn’t have page numbers, so I will just list some key terms and ideas, because it’s probably not great to quote directly:

- Climate justice v. Anthropocene

- The romantic wilderness ideal embodied by folks like Thoreau and Ansel Adams ignores the cultural erasure of Native Americans.

- Natural disaster as a precursor to gentrification (eg. new buildings)

- So many ecological narratives are crafted without acknowledgement of the fact that people of color are and will be the first and hardest hit by climate change.

- There are different artistic approaches to climate change, some more deliberately palatable and optimistic than others.

- McKee establishes a solid set of “gestures, utterances, and performances” characterizing the aesthetics of protest in 2014.

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Doing Identity Work in Museums - Jay Rounds - 2006

Here are some notes on Jay Rounds’ writing on identity work.

General First Impressions: Rounds introduces this concept of “identity work” wherein the visitor reinforces a sense of self within the museum and collects a store of “curiosity-based” information that allows them to revisit when/if necessary and draw upon when it’s necessary for an identity to change. Rounds also suggests this kind of curiosity-based visiting as more desirable and attainable then the museum visit that is based on absorbing the maximum number of facts.

There’s a discussion of the idea that an individual needs consistency from the outside world in order to maintain their sense of self. The orderly taxonomy of the museum provides consistency and order that somehow reinforces the logic of the world, and one’s identity.

What I really didn’t like about this: Rounds doesn’t really talk about power here at all, and how power affects identity. He describes identity as something that is acted and performed by the individual, not necessarily how others see you or treat you. This is a pretty white/cis centric understanding of identity, right? I think?

Also, he doesn’t really frame the museum as a truly dialogical situation (probably because it isn’t). The museum mirrors the structures of authority/power in the world, and the visitor is supposed to be like “yup, this is what the world is like.”

He also talks about performativity, and that people have specific behaviors they perform in the museum as part of the identity work. I think these behaviors are prescriptive and limiting.

However, I do like: The approach to museums as a store for ideas for future-self-identities, the mention that museums offer a low-stakes way to take on a different identity.

Here are more notes and quotes:

About stepping beyond “browsing behavior: “get visitors to process information more deeply, reflect about prior conceptions on the basi of new information, and engage in a systematic study of exploration,” (134) (He’s quoting Leona Schauble there)

Author’s flawed read of identity, IMHO: “We make it up, and we have to keep working at it our entire lives, because identity is not something we are so much as something we do.” (135, referencing Giddens)---Specifically my critique here is that identity is also what happens to us. There’s also talk about agency shaping identity elsewhere in the article. What about those with much less agency than others? Including kids?

“Bhuvani and Phoenix describe identity as ‘the site where structure and agency collide’...’Agency’ is the awareness of our self as an actor who makes choices about what to do-- including both choices among alternatives within existing structures, and choices to challenge the existing structures and to create new ones.” (136)

Author says museum is good site for identity work because: “the museum’s intensification of order, its performative character, and its presentation of the exotic.” (139)

“One cannot construct and maintain a stable sense of personal identity if everything else is in chaos.” (139) Actually I disagree and would argue that these are moments that are formative in the shaping of one’s identity. I have a personal example involving thinking I couldn’t get on a trapeze, and then I performed on a trapeze.

“Certain pockets of life are highly structured and predictable, but when we step outside those pockets, ‘psychic entropy’ sets in and ‘our personal identity fades and goes out of focus.’“ (139, also he’s quoting Csikszenmihayli)

“The museum shows us a world that makes sense, and that is a world in which we can believe that our lives make sense.” (140). This is real darn problematic because it doesn’t acknowledge that the power structures manifested in the real world are subjective and flawed.

“She moves with careful formality, strikes a contemplative pose...” (142) Prescriptive

“Analogously, identity work can cultivate future adaptability by storing variations that are not expressed in the present, or at least not expressed in a way that would challenge the stability of present identity.” (145)

“A further step takes place when the visitor uses the exhibit experience as a way of vicariously trying on a different identity, to see how it feels.” (146)

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(via Diversity Toolkit: A Guide to Discussing Identity, Power and Privilege - Blog | MSW@USC)

I like this resource.

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The Love of Art - Bourdieu and Darbel

Bourdieu (philosopher, sociologist) and Darbel (sociologist)’s The Love of Art is focused on a premise very similar to my own research work. In the 1960′s they did a survey of art museums in Europe and studied things like taste, class, and different audiences’ abilities to appreciate artworks.

I did not read this whole book. I cherrypicked a bit, because i’m not interested in the formal researchy bits and it’s a bit dense, however, I still have some notes.

Even in the 1960′s, the authors have a pretty good understanding that art appreciation is learned, and that folks from higher socioeconomic statuses (and similarly, educational background) are more likely to appreciate art. They also identify that folks who are poorer and less educated are less likely to spend time in museums.

The authors are pretty good at orienting themselves philosophically, and they identify that Kant is right about the fact that people are drawn to what’s beautiful, but the idea of what’s beautiful varies between classes, and what are the mechanisms for teaching art appreciation? They may have identified these, but I did not read them.

However, the conclusion is really good and meaty, and I will attach the last two pages as images in subsequent posts. But basically, they really roast museums, saying that they’ve always been a site of cultural/nationalistic/religious authority that operate by making some people feel welcome, and others very intentionally left out. Oh, they also say the concept of artistic taste is bullshit and that it is learned.

Here are some quotes:

“The sociologist does not intend to refute Kant’s phrase that ‘the beautiful is that which please without concept’, but rather he or she sets out to define the social conditions which make possible both this experience and the people for whom it is possible (art lovers of ‘people of taste’) and thence determine the limits within which it can exist.” (109)

On taste: “He or she also establishes that, consequently, in its learned form, aesthetic pleasure presupposes learning and, in any particular case, learning by habit and exercise, such that this pleasure, and artificial product of art and artifice, which exists or is meant to exist as if it were entirely natural, is in reality a cultivated pleasure.” (What I love here is how they really destroy the ‘taste is natural’ or the idea that you’re either born with taste or not.)

“It is because it is the ‘realized aesthetic’ or, more precisely, culture (of a class or era) become nature, that the judgement of taste (and its accompanying aesthetic pleasure) can become a subjective experience which appears to be free and even won over in the face of common culture…The contradictions and ambiguities in the relationship of cultivated individuals with their culture are both promoted and sanctioned by the paradox which define the realization of culture as naturalization.” (110)

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Bakhtin and the Visual Arts - Deborah J. Haynes

Here are my notes about Haynes’ reading of Bakhtin. Overall, I think it’s a bit simplified and I probably need to see the original text. Basically, what I’m gleaning here is that Bakhtin provides a nice postmodern framework for reading/making meaning from art and literature, which is quite context-oriented and values interpretation/audience engagement. But a lot of this chapter left me with a “yeah, duh” kind of feeling.

I will identify some key terms that Haynes mentions, which I may revisit in my scholarship later on. 

Dialogue/Dialogism - B. uses the term “polyphony” to describe successful dialogic work, which can include “paradoxes, differing points of view, and unique consciousness. To be polyphonic, communication and social interaction must be characterized by contestation rather than automatic consensus.” (297)

Monologic- Monologic art or literature is “empty and lifeless” (296) and is bland and masturbatory, does not provoke response.

Answerability - Bakhtin’s “way of naming the fact that art, and hence the creative activity of the artist, is always related, answerable, to life and lived experience.” (295) “But nearly all art is answerable in the sense that it evolves in relation to history and historical artifacts, to personal experience and reflection, and to identifiable formal issues.” (296) Which boils down to: context matters.

Chronotope - “The concept of the chronotope describes the time/space nexus in which life exists and creativity is possible.” (298, but she cites Bakhtin there too). Basically, the chronotope is a moment in time, which includes situational values, aesthetics, experiences, identities, etc.

Unfinalizability - the concept that an artwork (or thing) is never really finished, in that it continues to be actualized by the people consuming it, making meaning from it, and recontextualizing it.

Small time and Great time: Basically different ways of making meaning within immediate, historical and future contexts. The way an artist or creator intends for something to be received/made meaningful, which may include metaphor or motifs vs. remixing or recontextualizing older content to create new meaning. 

Other notes:

For Bakhtin, actions and doing things is what creates meaning, and an orientation, within the world.

Aesthetics: “By unifying nature and humanity (and cognition and action), aesthetics could become the basic for a new approach to philosophy.” (264)

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Education for Socially Engaged Art - Pablo Helguera

Here are some brief notes for my own purposes.

- Socially engaged art is intended to be at odd withs the capitalist market infrastructure

- “Socially engaged art functions by attaching itself to subjects and problems that normally belong to other disciplines, moving them temporarily into a space of ambiguity.” (5)

- Defining relationships of SEA: construction of a community, construction of multi-layered participatory structures, the role of social media in the construction of community, the role of time, assumptions about audience (9)

- SEA creates critical reflections, doesn’t necessarily create solutions or solve problems. There’s a fine line between SEA and social work.

- Helguera does a great job outlining different modes of participation on pages 14 and 15: nominal participation, directed participation, creative participation and collaborative participation

-”The key to a successful project lies in understanding the social context in which it will take place and how it will be negotiated with the participants or audience in question.” (30)

- Helguera writes about different types of conversations that exist between artists, their audiences, and communities participating in SEAs. These conversations are often limited “by power structures and logo-centrism.” (42) It is in a SEA artist’s best interest to complicate/reimagine/mix pre-existing conversational formats in order to co-create knowledge and create a mutually beneficial exchange. This is really hard, and usually this relationship is pretty imbalanced between artists and communities.

- Helguera cites Bloom’s Taxonomy for a method of measuring parts of SEA

-it’s very important for the artist to clearly articulate what is their responsibility/work, and what is the work/responsibility of the participants. It’s also important for that relationship to be flexible and rethought if necessary. Part of the work is really understanding your public’s skills/strengths and really making a place for them to demonstrate them

- Helguera cites Open Space Technology (56) as a useful tool for brainstorming and co-creating knowledge

- The chapter on antagonism is maybe the best part of the book, in which Helguera outlines different types of antagonism. For the purposes of this text, antagonism isn’t something overtly damaging, but it is critical and complicated, and can sometimes use pre-existing channels for interventions. the typology of antagonism in SEA he provides (61) is as such: voluntary (participants willingly submit to participation because there is an interest or purpose, like money), nonvoluntary (participants find themselves adjacent to, or exposed to, the critical action, like the Yes Men), involuntary (I think this is about trapping or forcing the public to witness?). Helguera says “the greatest difference in these scenarios is the kind of relationship between the artist and the participants and the discussion that takes place between them concerning the action to take place.” (62)

- “The implicit logic of the confrontational approach is that certain statements cannot be negotiated openly or directly with the public, and so people have to be forced into the experience through a series of steps that are firmly in control of the artist.” (64) This means that confrontation isn’t necessarily aggressive, it just means forcing a way to discuss things people won’t talk about, or in an unprecedented format for that kind of discussion. Also, these kind of interventions are super dependent on social context.

- Super fascinating concept: Bakhtin’s “the carnivalesque,” established by anecdote about the Feast of the Ass in medieval France, which disorders hierarchies and meaning. (67) 

-”However, it is only when play upsets, even if temporarily, the existing social values (Bakhtin’s carnivalesque) that room is created for reflection, escaping the merely hedonistic experience of spectacle...Artists take their tactics from the replication of institutional structures, but allowing carnivalesque interactions both validates the experience as an artwork and still manages to be constructive.” (70)

- Notes on documentation: Documentation has to come from multiple sources because one source isn’t adequately socially engaged and reflect a ton of bias, obviously.

-”Transpedagogy” blends education and and art-making processes.

-Helguera also identifies what the academic study of art-making *should* look like, which is a more expanded relationship to general skills, and awareness of context.