Site specific practices lay emphasis on the presence of the physical condition of the location as an integral part of the reception of art (Kwon, 2004, p. 1). Also, in conventional terms, the physical inseparability between a work and its site of installation makes the site specific art unique. Unlike the viewing experience gained within the confinement of the walls of a museum, the site specific art provides an opportunity for the audience to decipher the institutional conventions and understand the ways in which institutions shape the meaning of the art to adapt its cultural and economic value (Kwon, 2004, p. 14).
The two artists who have been chosen for the discussion here utilized the site of art intricately to raise questions on the social, economic and political arena and to challenge the prevailing system (Kwon, 2004, p. 3). For them the site of art is not merely a geographical location or an architectural setting. The artists made use of the sites to bring about a network of social relations (Kwon, 2004, p. 6). Their works exposed the cultural confinement within which the museum artists function.
Firstly, I have chosen to analyse the works of Mierle Laderman Ukeles, in relation to Kwon’s discussion on site specificity and integration Vs intervention. Before starting her career as a maintenance artist, Ukeles was struggling to acquire the freedom of an artist due to her obligatory duties as a mother and a housewife. During that time, in which she was pregnant, she felt lot of changes physically and mentally within her and also saw changes happening around her in the social and political arena. New York based art critic Robert C. Morgan (2002) says in his article Touch Sanitation: Mierle Laderman Ukeles, ‘Ukeles wanted to reinterpret the conventional housewife stereotypes, not in imagistic terms, but through a systemic style of creative action’. Hence she announced her intentions through a manifesto and declared herself a maintenance artist. By becoming a maintenance artist she transformed the mundane activities of the household maintenance into works of creation. She further extended the references in her work to expose conditions of work, stereo types handed to maintenance workers at all levels, ecological situation, and institutional critique (Morgan, 2002).
In one of her performances in 1973, Ukeles washed the floor of the Hartford art museum during routine operating hours. Through this performance she showed that the site of art could be deviated from the actual place of art. In the conception of a site, the physical condition of a specific location ceased to be the primary element in these ways (Kwon, 2004, p. 19). She wanted to prove that the tedious domestic tasks typically associated with women could be taken as a means for aesthetic contemplation. Also the performance helped people realize the unseen and the unrecognized labour of daily maintenance workers who are responsible for the perfectly immaculate presentation of the museum (Kwon, 2004, p. 19). The critical intervention of the site through this performance adopted a strategy which is immaterial to aesthetic appreciation, in the conservative visual sense. The performance does not establish a specific relation with the site permanently but presented itself to be experienced as ‘an unrepeatable and fleeting situation’ (Kwon, 2004, p. 24).
In the performance called Touch Sanitation, Ukeles showed how the site oriented art can shift its attention beyond the gallery space and address social concerns of the institutional frame. The performance involved Ukeles meeting 8,500 workers of the New York City Department of Sanitation. She shook hands with each one of them, thanking them for the service they provide to keep the city clean and alive. The gesture of handshake involved no immediate spectatorship and raised a number of important questions regarding ecological issues and the stereotypes connected with maintenance employees. It created an awareness of what happens to the inestimable tonnes of waste discharged every day and about the existing social mind-set that encircles the sanitation employee who keeps the city alive by his maintenance work (Morgan, 2002). Hence the conceptualization and production of site oriented arts such as these are possible through the collaborative involvement of the audience group, in this case, the employees themselves (Kwon, 2004, p. 30).
While initial definitions of site specificity supported the immobility of the art work from its site, Ukeles defied this concept with ‘The Social mirror’. The unhinging of the site specificity was embodied in ‘The Social Mirror’. One of the New York City sanitation trucks was reconfigured with mirrored glass panels to show the interrelationship between the people who discharge garbage and the people who collect them. The truck continues to be a mobile public art work.
The second artist chosen for the discussion is the well known yet unknown graffiti artist Banksy. His satirical pieces of art combine graffiti with stenciling work and aimed at criticizing issues regarding politics, culture, ethics and the like. It could be argued that Banksy relied on the commercialization of his site specific art. For instance, in February 2007, a house with a Banksy mural on the sides was sold through an art gallery and the Banksy mural was listed as an item that came with the house attached.
In 2006, Banksy created an image of a naked man hanging out of a window. The image sparked some controversy, but the City Council left it up to the public to decide whether it should stay or go. After an online discussion 97% of people supported the stencil and the City Council decided to leave it up on the building. This incident revealed ‘the problematics of site specific art in the mainstream public art context’ (Kwon, 2004, p. 57), which also meant that the appropriateness of a site specific art could be decided upon public intervention.
By no means have banksy’s site specific works served the purpose of ‘aesthetic edification and urban beautification’ (Kwon, 2004, p. 65). But his satirical view point in his works jolts the viewer and makes him/her to reassess the social and political values. The messages that were written on the walls of London and Bristol Zoos which expressed the boredom felt by the animals and stunts like the same tell us that Banksy utilized the site of work to provoke deliberation on the part of the viewer. As Serra stated, Banksy’s site specific works ‘invariably manifest a judgment about the larger social and political context of which they are a part’ (as cited in Kwon, 2004, p. 74).
In addition, I would like to describe the works of Ukeles and Banksy in terms of Roger Fry’s Essay on Aesthetics. Fry, in his essay, said that art cannot be considered merely as a theory of imitation (Harrison & Wood, 2003, p.75). Definitely the works of both these artists are not imitations of any situation, though they might have been inspired by so many political, social and ecological factors.
According to Fry, human life is of two parts. One is the actual life, a greater part of which is made up of intuitive appropriate reactions to the sensible substances and their accompanying emotions (Harrison &Wood, 2003, p.76). On the other hand, the imaginative life, wherein the instinctive reactions are absolutely unnecessary, provides an opportunity to the human beings to ‘be focused upon the perceptive and emotional aspect of the experience’ (Harrison and Wood, 2003, p.76). Hence Fry suggested that art is essentially ‘the expression and a stimulus of this imaginative life’ (Harrison & Wood, 2003, p.76). Banksy’s graffiti and stenciling works and Ukeles’s performances as a maintenance artist express the desirability of their imaginative life and help the audience to reflect upon their aspirations and aversions of which the human character is capable (Harrison &Wood, 2003, p.76).
Fry also argued that due to the limited requirements of our actual life, our sense of vision is restricted to things that are only needful for our purposes (Harrison &Wood, 2003, p.78). Only toward an object that exists for no reason does a man adopt ‘artistic attitude of pure vision’ which is free from the urges of necessities (Harrison &Wood, 2003, p.75). Ukeles’s performances like The Hartford shower, The Touch Sanitation and The Social Mirror showed the above concept to be true. People pay no attention to details of how a museum is kept clean everyday, how the enormous amount of garbage produced in a city is kept away from it or how much of hard work the sanitation workers have to put in to keep a city alive. But when these issues are presented through an art form, people get interested and really look into what the underlying problems are.
For Banksy, the aesthetics of art is clean and immediately comprehensible (Collins, 2007). Banksy with his graffiti and stenciling creations made places such as roadways, pavements, building walls, places where an ordinary person would be the least interested, into sites of notable works. The creations enable the audience to a disinterested intensity of contemplation which is the result of cutting of the responsive action (Harrison &Wood, 2003, p.79).
Fry described the emotional elements of design in his essay. They are namely; rhythm, mass, space, light and shade, and colour. He also suggested a sixth element, which is the inclination to the eye of the plane (Harrison &Wood, 2003, p.81). One could think the contribution of these elements is negligible in both Banksy and Ukeles works. But however diminutive their presence is, the impact they make on the viewer is significant and long lasting. The emotional elements present in their work appropriately combined with the demands of the imaginative life (Harrison & Wood, 2003, p.82), help the audience recognize the elements of aesthetics present in their works.
In conclusion, the intention of the works of Banksy and Ukeles is to powerfully influence the audience to respond to their site oriented art and instill in their minds the ideology behind their works. At the same time, people enjoy the level of aesthetics possessed by their works which compel the audience to ‘regard it with that intense disinterested contemplation that belongs to the imaginative life’ (Harrison &Wood, 2003, p.82).
References
Collins, L. (2007). The invisible man of graffiti art. Retrieved from
Harrison, C., & Wood, P. (2003). Art in theory 1900 – 2000. An anthology of ideas.
Massachusetts, MA. Blackwell publishing.
Kwon, M. (2004). One place after another. Site – specific art and locational identity.
Massachusetts, MA. MIT press.
Morgan, R.C. (2002). Touch Sanitation: Mierle Laderman Ukeles. Retrieved from
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