Upon
arrival in a new city, I invariably orient myself by walking
through the urban environment without a map or a guide,
allowing both the architectural and psychological pull
of the city space to determine my path. I've done this
for as long as I can remember, many years before discovering
the Situationists' concept of the dérive,
defined as "an experimental behavior linked to the conditions
of urban society: A technique of transient passage through
space."1 The Situationist International politicized freeplay
by promoting "the experimental forms of a game of revolution."2
In/SITE/Out unifies
interior and exterior spaces in order to investigate the
diminishing distinction between various types of space.
The artworks are situated in public space such that a passerby
may encounter various pieces while traveling normally through
the New York City streets. Inevitably works will be altered
according to the environment in which they are situated;
some will remain in pristine condition, others changed
by weather, perhaps some will be embellished or vandalized,
while others may be covered by advertisements according
to the rhythm of the rapidly changing façade of
the urban landscape. The artists selected the sites for
their works based on their personal attraction to different
locations within New York City's terrain, inspired by the
Situationists' concept of the dérive. The
participants in In/SITE/Out have all, at times,
located their practice outside the traditional parameters
of art spaces. These works interrogate the distinction
between public space/private space, center/margin and interior/exterior
space. Furthermore, these artists utilize the exhibition
space, rather than engaging in a wholesale rejection of
the gallery context. The artists either activate the space
or introduce traces or documents from their projects into
the gallery interior.
In approaching In/SITE/Out we
may begin at the location of the Apex exhibition space,
a storefront building in Tribeca. Historically, artists
have incorporated the alteration of storefronts into their
works: Claes Oldenburg's The Store (1961), Daniel
Buren's Untitled (Green and White Stripes, Bleecker
Street) (1973), Barbara Kruger's Untitled (Questions) (1991)
at Mary Boone and Mike Bidlo's Saint Duchamp (1996)
in the East Village. Günther Selichar transforms
the gallery exterior by placing a striped covering on the
front window in Who's Afraid of Blue, Red, and Green? (2001).
The translucent window treatment allows light to filter
through the blue, red and green stripes that represent
the primary colors of pixels. Thus, the screen (computer/TV
monitor) is implicated as a site through which visual experience
is mediated, in the terms outlined in Guy Debord's Society
of the Spectacle, from the perspective of both the
exterior and the interior of the gallery's architecture.
Upon entering the exhibition space one encounters Runa
Islam's Exile (1998), which marks the borders
between inside and outside. Islam's adaptation of the ubiquitous
exit sign highlights spatial boundaries, suggesting that
art in "exile" occupies a positive position.
The spatialization
of the gallery interior is equally underscored by the projects
that occur in the public sphere. In another device of demarcating
space Jan Baracz's Walk-Through Frame 2.0 (2001)
employs the architecture of the frame not as a window onto
the world, but rather as a confining structure that designates
the art object in terms of class and cultural status. Henri
Lefebvre justly argues that the device of a frame is an
insufficient model to describe space: "Vis-à-vis
lived experience, space is neither a mere 'frame', after
the fashion of the frame of a painting, nor a form of a
container of a virtual neutral kind, designed to receive
whatever is poured into it."3 Baracz instead alludes to
alternative realties indicating the site by which one enters
a deeper dimension of experience.
Interstitial/SITE
There are some
works that resist the binary opposition posed by inside
and outside but rather slip into discrete interstices.
For example, when traveling in a car one occupies an in-between
space. Dave McKenzie uses this site metaphorically
in the video Another Perfect Day (2001) to reflect
both emotional interiority and the "norms" of comportment
within public space, specifically in relationship to the
body. Surveillance and control of public space is maintained
by the State and corporate interests via security and police
forces designed to maintain order and protect capital interests. Philippe
Meste theorizes that the next revolutionary moment
will be an aestheticized moment based on social, political
and artistic freedom.4 The sculptural works Bagpower (1998/99)
and Robotgun (2000/01) introduce the vocabulary
of military strategy into everyday life, positioned specifically
at the level of individual subjects.
The experience
of space is altered by both collective and personal memory.
The temporal aspects of performance or actions are located
in discrete time/space fragments that are impossible to
completely preserve. Accra Shepp's Flag Project (2001)
refers to a parade of elementary school students (organized
by Shepp) in which they carried flags of their creations
through the East Village on Martin Luther King Day. Shepp's
photo-based sculpture preserves the historical memory of
the Civil Rights Movement.
As cultural consumers,
we attend lectures, panel discussions and performances
often located in galleries, at universities and cultural
institutions. Rainer Ganahl inverts this location
with a reading seminar that encourages active participation
in a theoretical and cultural exchange within the framework
of the gallery setting. Reading Karl Marx (2001)
invites the public to participate in a structured discourse
during the duration of the exhibition.
Out/SITE
Ellen Harvey's New
York Beautification Project (1999-2001) postulates
that certain forms of visual representation are acceptable
only within strictly determined space. Furthermore, by
painting discreet neo-classical landscapes directly onto
exterior surfaces, Harvey insists that an artist's body
and subject position are implicated within the experience
of creating works in the public domain. The Beautification
Project's Poussin-inspired oval paintings of idyllic
scenes question Kantian notions of beauty; and more critically,
they insist upon access to public space.
Public space is
clearly abused by commercial images as evidenced by building
scaffoldings, walls and abandoned structures that are plastered
with advertising images. Johannes Kahrs' Detail (2001)
critiques the rampant police aggression based on racial
profiling by representing the agents of power located in
the repressive apparatus of the State. A photograph that
illustrates Franz Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth inspires
Kahrs' drawing. Kahrs decidedly utilizes the traditional
genre of charcoal drawing to oppose the highly produced
quality of advertising photography that is specifically
designed to be immediately legible. The politicized image
in Detail requires both interpretation and contemplation
by the viewer rather than rapid visual consumption.
Oona Stern adapts
two architectural sites, a parking hut and a seemingly
abandoned building, in the project of altering aspects
of architecture within public space. Stern's trademark
intervention, the magnification of the surface qualities
of building materials, are posted onto these architectural
structures. Stern inserts the sign for wood and brick onto
the buildings in the works Wallpaper (brick, hubert
st) (2001) and Wallpaper (wood, hubert st) (2001),
thereby reducing the geographical location and architectural
language of these structures to the essential elements
of their building materials. Brett Cook-Dizney's
large-scale portrait Service and Protection (1999)
depicts residents from underrepresented communities by
giving voice to their narratives and in turn engaging others
within that community in art practice. Service and Protection involves
Cook-Dizney interviewing subjects and then painting large-scale
portraits in a response to the Diallo police brutality
case.
Spaces are often
defined by their function and, equally, cultural meaning
is inextricably imbedded within the architecture of these
spaces. Karin Sander subtly alters strictly coded
spaces and thereby neutralizes their inscription to reveal
the overdetermined cultural status of a given site.
The works in In/SITE/Out permeate
public space, allowing the viewer to experience aspects
of the exhibition through their selected encounters with
these artworks. The exhibition acknowledges that there
are no neutral spaces and that all contexts implicate meaning
into artworks. Furthermore, space cannot be defined by
a static model as "Space is a social morphology: it is
to lived experience what form itself is to the living organism,
and is just as bound up with function and structure."5 In/SITE/Out insists
that art practice engage with the fluid formations that
structure space. Therefore, art must occupy the multiplicity
of locations that both produce and determine social space.
Karen E. Jones
© March 2001
1. Ken Knabb, Situationist
International Anthology, (Bureau of Public Secrets:
Berkeley, 1989), p.45.
2. Ibid.
3. Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space, trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith,
(Blackwell Press: Malden. 1991), p.94.
4. Based on a discussion with Philippe Meste, Paris, June 2000.
5. Lefebvre, p. 94. |