What Makes A Site Specific?

Credentials: ART 908

Phone: Mondays 5 PM - 8 PM

Art that engages place, whether formally or contextually, is an increasingly significant part of contemporary practice. Discourses on site-specificity have been prevalent in the visual arts, theatre, and dance since (at least) the 1960s. While early conversations focused on fidelity to formal properties (whether of landscape or of architecture), more recent works focus on human contexts, emphasizing the needs and interests of the people who occupy a site. Working site-specifically promises a deep and ethical engagement with places and the people that inhabit them. At the same time, it raises a myriad of provocative questions about the nature and culture of place. This seminar will take a long hard look at the literature on site-specificity in an effort to discern its trends and biases.

Drawing on six decades of literature theorizing the site specific, the seminar will investigate both the theoretical and the material components of making performances, installations, and other kinds of creative work that is geo-located. It will be equally relevant for graduate students in performance studies, art, or dance as these are the fields that have produced the most literature on site specificity. In addition, it may be of interest to students studying performance in a range of area studies programs as well as those in human geography whose primary focus is on space and place. In addition to weekly reading and discussion, students should expect to produce one paper and one project.

Text under consideration include:

One Place after Another: Site-Specific Art and Locational Identity by Miwon Kwon (2004)

Performing Site-Specific Theatre: Politics, Place, Practice edited by Anna Birch and Joanne Tomkins (2012)

The Routledge Companion to Site-Specific Performance edited by Vicky Hunter and Cathy Turner (forthcoming)

Off Sites: Contemporary Performance beyond Site-Specific by Bertie Ferdman (2018)

Site-Specific Art: Performance, Place and Documentation by Nick Kaye (2013)

Moving Sites: Investigating Site-Specific Dance Performance by Victoria Hunter (2015)

On Site: Methods for Site-Specific Performance Creation by Stephan Koplowitz (2022)

Site-Specific Performance by Mike Pearson (2010)

The Lure of the Local: Senses of Place in a Multicentered Society by Lucy R. Lippard (1998)

Site Dance: Choreographers and the Lure of Alternative Spaces edited by Melanie Kloetzel and Carolyn Pavlik (2011)

Inside the White Cube: The Ideology of the Gallery Space by Brian O’Doherty and Thomas McEvilley (1976)