Jim Biddulph: Physical>Non>Nomadic>The shifting role of site in contemporary art practice

PhysicalNonNomadicThe shifting role of site in contemporary art practice

Jim Biddulph

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PhysicalNonNomadicThe shifting role of site in contemporary art

practice

Jim Biddulph MA Art and Media Practice 2007/8

Thinking Practices

2AMP7H1

Word Count: 3869


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PhysicalNonNomadicThe shifting role of site in contemporary art practice “The specificity of site-orientated works mean that they are conceived for, dependant upon and inseparable from their location.”i Written as a revolt against the removal of his publicly funded and

situated sculpture Tilted Arc (1981)[1], Richard Serra’s quote highlights

a key point in the history of site-specific art. It has faced much

contention since and in many respects has been the catalyst for a

number of more contemporary artists’ antithetical approach to such

declarations, which I will consider throughout this thesis. However,

Serra’s stance represents a shared concern for many artists from the

1960’s onwards. They follow in the genealogy of numerous site

orientated works legitimised by expectations passed on throughout

history; namely a phenomological encounter with a work at the

specific site of it’s creation and permanent, fixed home. The Great

Pyramid of Giza in Egypt[2], Michelangelo’s ceiling paintings of the

Sistine chapel in Rome[3], the ancient stone formations of Stone Henge

located in Wiltshire[4]; all were made for and have remained at a

specific site. Shrouded in mystery and timelessness they represent

humankind’s fascination with the monumental. In order to fully

experience such monuments the viewer must travel to the site and

encounter it in real-time and space. This is also true of much work

being produced in site-specific practices, but particularly throughout

the 1960-80’s, of which Serra’s is a prime example. This tendency

toward the monumental meant many artists- a number of whom I shall


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examine- sought to objectify site through various forms of sculpture. It

is this mode of engagement with site that two of the most noted

writers on Site-specificity, James Meyer and Miwon Kwon, have aptly

coined as the Literal site.ii Such a site involves a singular location the

physicalities and limitations of which shape the final outcome of the

work.iii However, if we fast-forward to the late 1980’s and the 1990’s

onwards it appears that the art world’s expectations and

interpretations of site have shifted considerably. Kwon feels that more

recently site-specific practice includes many additional formulations

including Context-specific, Debate specific, audience-specific,

Community-specific and project-based.iv An example of an early

alternative to the Literal site is Christian Philipp Müller’s 1986 ‘piece’

The Heart of the Periphery, where the artist led a ‘garden tour’ for a

small audience of tourists in Düsseldorf. The excursion, advertised as

a tour of “the garden of a Great Duke,”v became a disjointed journey

shared by the artist and audience alike. Like nomads they travelled

from one site to the next site, each one defying all expectations and

insights offered by the artist; as opposed to centring toward the

garden’s famous gazebo, the group converged upon a local bus stop.

The site has become a series of sites, no longer appropriated by the

singular place. There is no extraordinary entity at the centre of

interpretation and both artist and viewer (and in some cases the work)

must all engage in travel and movement in order to experience the

work in full. This is one of many examples that highlight the erosion

of the physical site, a selection of which I shall consider in this essay.


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The question is; how has this dichotomy of our expectations of site-

specific art occurred? How has the theme of the nomad come to

prominence, and how has this changed our expectations and

ultimately, what does site-specificity entail in contemporary art

practice?

In order to answer these questions it is important to examine

the origins of Site-specific practice in more detail. I would like to pay

particular attention to artists who engaged with the particularly

physical aspects of the Literal site. In this I refer to the ‘movements’ (a

term that conveniently encapsulates a number of artists many of

whom share in similar tendencies and concerns throughout their

practice, but who may have never classified themselves as part of any

group or movement) arising towards the end of modernism’s

hegemony of the art world in the 1960 and 1970’s. Movements such

as Land Art or Environmental Art as well as various forms of

conceptual practice, for whom the term site-specific became

integrated within their practice. For instance, in America in the late

1960’s came the emergence of exhibitions such as Earthworks at

Dwan Gallery, New York, in 1968 and Earth at Cornell University, New

York, in the following year. The former was organised by the American

artist Robert Smithson and included work by him and 13 other artists

who, as the exhibitions title suggests, sought to work directly with the

Earth as a raw material.vi Earth represented a more refined exhibition

involving only 6 artists including Smithson, Dennis Oppenheim and the

English artist, Richard Long. Smithson would also later work with and


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exhibit alongside Michael Heizer and Nancy Holt, two fellow American

artists who shared an affinity for site-specificity. Collectively the works

of these artists highlight some of the fundamental characteristics of

site-specific art during this period. Whether through negation of the

earth by digging and cutting (Heizer/Oppenheim)[5&6]; sculpting new

formations on site with the materials found there (Smithson)[7];

marking a presence (Long/Heizer)[8&9], or engaging with the

landscapes relationship with celestial objects or phenomena (Holt)[10]

all retain the site as the central defining stipulator for their work. The

exhibition of such work broke from convention as the artists took

themselves and the work outside, and often miles away, from any

gallery environment, frequently only offering photographic

documentation of the work as evidence. This is a significant point,

particularly when considering the potential viewer of the work. For

most of the works made by these artists and numerous others during

the period were dictated by a need for wilderness or vast expanses of

space. Therefore the viewer is faced with the phenomological

challenge; in order to fully experience the work they must find and

then get to the site at which it is located. In many cases this is a

perilous and demanding upheaval. Writer Charles Darwen was set the

challenge by Art Review magazine in 2007. During the research trip he

went in search of, amongst others, Smithson’s Spiral Jetty (1970)[7] of

which he exclaimed “ you take your life into your own hands (in)

getting to,”vii and Heizer’s Double Negative (1969-70)[5]. Indeed he

described both excursions in treacherous terms. In the case of Double


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Negative, he found discomfort; “…to get to it you drive to the half-

horse town of Overton, Nevada, and then up the side of a nearby

Mesa. Once on top, hands clamped to the wheel you bump over

roadless landscape,”viii whilst the journey to Spiral Jetty offered peril;

“…you drive for hours, illegally, across private land, the rancher

wreaking revenge by laving boulders on what passed for a track.”ix In

fact the journey was so hazardous and awkward that he had to

complete it by foot. I refer to this text for a particular reason for such

accounts are few, which highlights the uniqueness of such an

encounter. This is due to what Meyer has referred to in his criticism of

the Literal site, as the “privileged investigation,”x to which such

approaches to site entail. This criticism can be applied to not only

Land Art but also the sculptures that artists like Serra were producing

for specific public sites. For working with an actual physical site

reflects a perception of the site as unique and therefore the work itself

as uniquexi, and as such, demands the viewer’s presence to value its

inimitable quality (our thoughts return once more to the notion of the

monument.) However, there is greater cultural significance to be

considered in the artist’s necessity of site and their methods of

working. Engaging with the physical environment as a material was

not the only motive for these artists, nor was creating a monument. By

making (and taking) their work outside of the gallery environment the

artists, quite literally, took a step away from the art institution as a

whole. In doing so they released themselves from what has been

described as the “galleries differentiating function,” and the


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“confinement”xii of both its four walls of enclosure and the

predetermined expectations for engagement to which it had

monopolised. Up until this point expectation of art was still governed

by the paradigm of Modernism, particularly sculpture, which was

expected to “absorb its pedestal/base to sever its connection or to

express its indifference to the site, rendering itself more autonomous

and self-referential, thus transportable, placeless and nomadic.”xiii The

steel sculptures of the Minimalist artist Anthony Caro epitomise this

theory having toured numerous galleries around the world, one of the

most recent reincarnations occurring for the Tate Britain retrospect in

200? Whilst large and unyielding, these sculptures represent a

collectable art item, which can be ‘ appreciated’ regardless of its site.

The Site-specific works emerging in the 1960s and 1970s, mainly

those of the Land or Earth Art formulations, resisted this notion and

instead, “defied commodification by insisting on immobility.”xiv Kwon

has defined this oppositional impulse as “institutional critique,” the

idea of which was to “highlight the idealist hermeticism of the space of

presentation itself.”xv However, whilst critically engaged, it is apparent

that much of this work continued in the modernist trend of

reflexivity,xvi with a concern for the relationship between form and

content at its core. As a result, the work was dependent upon, not only

the singular site, but often the materials available on or close to the

site itself.


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There was however a shift away from the Literal site as a

physical entity beginning to occur during this period and in order to

uncover this we must look more closely at the work of Robert

Smithson. As I have stated, Smithson was a key founding member in

the Land/Earth Art movement, creating some of the largest and most

famous Earthworks to date. However, Smithson’s practice above

anyone else’s during the period (although he must not be considered

as the sole pioneer) represents an interdisciplinary and allegorical

mode of working that served to alter the viewers approach to the

work, and in some respects erode the need for a real time and space

encounter with a work in situ. Let us return to Smithson’s most

famous piece Spiral Jetty; made in 1970 in the Great Salt Lake in Utah

USA, as an example. The spiral itself was constructed with “two dump

trucks, a tractor and a large front loader”xvii that moved tons of earth

forming a spiral pathway that stretches out 1500 feet into the lake and

15 feet across, where it remains today. In construction it meets the

expected criteria of a Literal site-specific piece. However,

accompanying the giant Earthwork itself are a Film, numerous

photographic pieces, various maps, one explicit text from 1972, and a

number of others that concern the Jetty amongst more dominant

themes of enquiry [11]. Indeed, many, if not most of Smithson’s

Earthworks were accompanied by such documentation, which would

usually be displayed within a gallery context [12], or published in

books of his writing [13]. Considering this approach as a return to the

commodity item could be a possible, all be it cynical conclusion.


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Alongside this, it could be argued that they merely serve as records or

indexes for the often-ephemeral ‘outdoor’ site pieces, as many of his

works expected and even invited eventual destruction. Second Upside

down Tree (1969)[14] is an evident example of this; once uprooted the

tree could no longer have held itself to the beach to which it was

inserted. This interest in impermanence is one that Smithson shared

with a number of artists at this time, Oppenheim in particular, who

often worked with materials that were certain to alter after a relatively

short duration, such as cutting into crops for Cancelled Crop (1969)

and snow for Accumulation Cut (1969)[15&16]. However, it is important

to note that Entropy was one of the foremost concerns in Smithson’s

work, which is most explicitly examined in his writing and during

interviews; “After all, wreckage is often more interesting than

structure.”xviii

It would therefore be naive to say that the texts and imagery only

serve to breathe secondary life into the site-specific works in the form

of a gallery installation. Indeed, during an interview for Earth Smithson

identified this approach to his work as a dialectic of site and nonsite,”

whereby:

The range of convergence between site and nonsite consists of a course of hazards, a double path made up of signs, photographs, and maps that belong to both sides of the dialectic at once.xix The nonsite is a realisation of the limits of the site; the primary limit

being the physical sites incessant draw towards the outdoors. What

Smithson sought to create was a correspondence between the indoor


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and outdoors, a dialogue that took the viewer back and forth between

the two.xx The nonsites would often include containers that were filled

with materials that he had collected at specific sites, such as Slate or

Rock Salt, which were placed within the gallery context [17]. The

containers were frequently accompanied by photographs and maps

that were associated in some way with the physical site. The viewer is

therefore faced with signifiers of the site, through both fragments of

the physical; the shards of earth and rock, and representation; the

images and texts. Yet, as signifiers “the non-site functions in the

absence of a stable signified,”xxi as in the phenomenological sense, the

physical site eludes us. Smithson welcomed this, explaining, “What you

are really confronted with in a nonsite is the absence of the site,” thus

creating a “contraction rather than an expansion of scale.”xxii Indeed,

the great journey involved in collecting the materials, or in creating

Spiral Jetty for instance is expressed through an often abstract

process of mapping; the film containing footage of the trucks driving

through Utah, the photographs of the isolated site, the texts that

describe the journey and the materials that were physically brought

back to the gallery. This process creates the dialogue in which “you are

thrown back onto the site,”xxiii and yet remain in a gallery environment.

This doubling effect is one of absence and presence, which is made

possible by “...the Nonsite functioning as a mirror and the site

functioning as a reflection.”xxiv The two remain physically distant and

yet conceptually entwined, one is bound to the other; the viewer is

faced with neither and both simultaneously. Like a trekker or tracker,


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the viewer must be careful as to how they read the maps, for Smithson

himself admitted to the potential for misguidance, particularly with his

texts; “The equation of my language remains unstable, a shifting set

of coordinates, an arrangement of variables spilling into surds.”xxv This

highlights a sense of ambiguity in the work, which demanded a

cognitive engagement that site-specific practice had not particularly

asked of it’s viewer up until this point. Furthermore, this symbolises

an antithetical approach to the hegemony of Modernism and its

insistence of writing as a secondary tool in art practice. As Craig

Owens writes, “for the modernist artist…writing was not an alternative

medium for aesthetic practice; through it, work might be explained,

but never produced.”xxvi Where as for Smithson, as well as others,

Richard Long [18] for instance, writing could serve as the primary

means of artistic creation, as could the photograph, film, sculpture or

any number of mediums. This interdisciplinary approach to site is

what Meyer has since defined as the Functional site, which he

describes, in similar terms as Smithson did his nonsites, as involving:

…a process, an operation occurring between sites, a mapping of institutional and textual filitations and bodies that move between them (the artist’s above all.) It is an informational site, a palimpsest of text, photographs and video recordings, physical places and things.xxvii The most distinguished development from the Literal site being that,

like the Nonsite, the Functional site “may or may not incorporate a

physical place.”xxviii


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Through this disturbance of Modernism’s ascendancy, such

work represents a progression towards Postmodernism, to which

Smithson’s influence cannot be overlooked. Owens has observed that

Smithson’s practice “transformed the visual field into a textual one,”xxix

which represents a major turning point in the history of site-specific

practice. The development of the functional approach to site allowed

artists to investigate site with any manner of medium. But it also gave

them the ability to write and rewrite their findings and not just

through the restriction of text, but again, with any medium. To

illustrate this let us return once again to my earlier example of

Christian Phillip Müller’s The Heart of the Periphery (1989). As I have

stated, the artist orchestrated the piece in the form of a tour, a

method that he has often deployed in his work. In simulating a

conventional guided tour, but with the artist as official ‘guide,’ both

the artist and the audience members become part of a travelling

performance. This concept represents an early formation of relational

aestheticsxxx (to which Müller has been considered a seminal

instigator), as the work is dependant upon the audience for its

completion; without them there is no tour.xxxi In this sense the work

demands a phenomenological encounter of the viewer, however it

involves a series of sites of (supposed) interest involving the gardens

surrounding an eighteenth century chateau- all of which elude them.

Yet there is a conscious decision involved in selecting the site/s. In

misleading the unwitting tourists into his work, and one that is full of

falsehood, Müller draws our attention to the fact that “…the idealist


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fantasies of the beautiful and the Picturesque are still integral to the

logic of tourism.”xxxii This piece shares a similar dialogue to that of

Smithson’s site and nonsite to which he once explained, “tours to sites

are possible, these sites do not offer an effective point of destination

in which to resolve the non-sites deferral of attention…once you get

there, there’s no destination.”xxxiii Müller’s tour has a destination, but it

does not match that of the eighteenth century tourist’s that he is

critiquing, for whom, “Tourism…was an aristocratic pastime conducted

at a leisurely pace.”xxxiv The tourists, faced with a modern urban scene,

are offered a mirror that reflects their own “late twentieth century

capitalist society,” to which tourism “has become a democratised if

ephemeral pleasure, a momentary escape from a highly rationalised

work schedule.”xxxv Another of Müller’s later tours, Eight Treks across

the Austrian Border, [19] conceived for the Austrian Pavilion of the

1993 Venice Biennale, focused on the artist’s lone journey where he

trekked across the borders of Austria into its neighbouring countries.

He did so without the correct visas, thus illegally, with a photographer

who recorded his movements. The artist then mailed the post cards to

his art dealers.xxxvi As a result this performative and ephemeral act

exists only through representation. It differs to The Heart of the

Periphery in that it is the artist alone (bar the photographer) who

experiences the act in actuality. However, the artist is once more

alluding to individuals of history, which he simulates through his

movements; namely “unwanted immigrant of the post-colonial era,”xxxvii

who experienced the border crossing as an act of survival. Meyer has


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highlighted this heightened concern with the history of site, and the

traveller in particular, by defining it as Critical Nomadism. The Critical

Nomad artist “… does not enact or record an action or movement for

the spectator’s delectation, so much as locate travel itself within

historical frameworks.”xxxviii As is often the case with his writing, Meyer

offers a polar notion, which he defines as Lyrical Nomadism. In this

case the “material conditions in which mobility occurs” are generally

highlighted through the artist’s physical circulation as

phenomenological encounter.xxxix One example of this Lyrical

nomadism is a serial piece by the Afro-American artist Renee Green,

who has also been labelled under the Relational aesthetics banner. The

piece, first created for a group show in France, Project unite, and later

for a New York show where she titled it Secret, [20] involved the

installation of a tent inside the gallery space which “served as her

sleeping quarters for the show’s duration.”xl The viewer could then

stumble into the pseudo domestic space and be confronted by the

artist in any state of her everyday existence. Meyer has also noted this

as Green’s own acknowledgment of “her role as artist working in an

increasingly global art scene.”xli Thus as an institutional critique, “this

shelter within a shelter alluded to the nomad artists’ plight of never

standing still.”xlii Once more we are reminded of Smithson’s nonsites,

which he not only described as “rooms within rooms,”xliii as recognition

of their physical presence, but furthermore, “container(s) within

container(s).”xliv Greens tent, like the nonsite containers mirror and

therefore draw attention to their site: the gallery institution, the


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ultimate container for art and artists. Another of Green’s installations,

Partially Buried (1997) [21] continued in the autobiographical trend set

in her previous work but also set about exploring a specific part of

history; the year 1970. The reason for this was two fold. Firstly it

corresponded with the point at which her mother was studying at Kent

State University, a period that saw serious student protests- which her

mother did not recollect.xlv Secondly it represents a period of major

development in the history of site-specific art. The two are bound by a

specific act; the creation of Smithson’s Partially Buried Woodshed, [21]

a piece that involved a truck dumping earth onto a woodshed, created

on the University campus that year. The making of Green’s work

involved numerous journeys to the site and her home town as well the

recording of various interviews with people who were associated with

the events. However the installation did not include any physical

matter from the sites, even with the explicit connection to Smithson’s

own practice. Instead the viewer is offered fragments of information,

and indeed history, through video, photography, audio and text. Faced

with the challenge of sifting through this informational site the viewer

is free to draw their own conclusions from the records and documents

that the artist has uncovered through her exploration of the topic. As

Green has stated, her intentions, although not the final conclusion of

her work is clear:

“Hopefully my work demonstrates the complexity of things that make one authoritative statement about the way things are as specious.”xlvi


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In many ways the shift from the literal site as a singular, physical

entity was destined to occur due to its close ties to Modernism which

was eventually superseded by Postmodernism. For whilst there was an

active rebellion against modernism’s autonomy; its commodity item

and placeless sculpture in particular during the 1960-80’s, as we have

seen, the modernist tendency for reflexivity was still one shared by

many of the artists engaging with site-specificity. In this sense the

literal approach served to privilege the site, and those who could

encounter it. However, as the art world’s outlook changed with the

development of postmodernity, so too did many of those interested in

site-specificity, which undoubtedly created a counter influence to this

development. The dialogue of site and nonsite woven throughout

Smithson’s practice was certainly archetypal in this progression. The

nonsite, acting as mirror to not only the physical site, but also the

galleries confinement added further layers of complexity to site-

specific practice. As a result the need for an actual site was diminished

and as apposed to a phenomenological encounter with a real place the

viewer was introduced to a dialogue across multiple disciplines in the

form of an information-based, functional site. The allegory of such

work, often functioning as a map rather than destination, demanded a

cognitive approach to the work, be it in the form of a photograph,

text, video, sculpture or multidisciplinary installation. In addition

artists also began to realise the potential for multiple sites as well as

mediums. The rules had been loosened considerably and the limits of

site stretched. And as the world became more globalized and the artist


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more of a traveller, the artist’s movements from site to site became

part of the critique, particularly of the art institution. What is more, by

this point there was an established and globally recognised history of

site-specificity with which to critique, with many artists, such as Green

with Partially Buried, referencing the practices of the 1960-70’s site-

specific artists in their own work. Indeed, this piece also highlights a

more recent concern with history in general, and with overtones of

Modernist reflexivity, particular interest for the traveller in history;

mirroring the artist’s own, often fragmented existence. With the

development of ‘movements’ like Relational aesthetics in the early

1990’s the viewer was also bought directly into the work, or as part of

a process, often in a performative role where the artist functions as

creator, author, protagonistxlvii or even curator of their work. Miwon

Kwon offers possibly the most concurrent reflection of recent site

based practice with her notion of Discursive site practice:

“The distinguishing characteristic of today’s site-orientated art is the way in which the art work’s relationship to the actuality of a location (the site) and the social conditions of the institutional frame (as site) are both subordinate to a discursively determined site that is delineated as a field of knowledge, intellectual exchange or cultural debate.”xlviii For whilst she too recognises the importance of the artist’s nomadic

movements in creating this intertextual chain, she sees the work

“more like an itinerary than a map.”xlix Instead of a series of signposts

that may incur restrictions, the viewer is faced with various

information relating to a site that has been uncovered and organised

by the artist. This may be contained within a gallery environment or


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possibly elsewhere. But, most importantly, it opens a discussion with

which the viewer may enter and add to through their own reflections.

i Serra, R. 1994 p.203 ii Suderberg, E. 2000 p23-35 for James Meyer’s text The Functional Site; or, The Transformation of Site Specificity in which the Literal Site is discussed. Whilst Miwon Kwon does not explicitly refer to site as Literal site in the same way to Meyer she does use the term to describe certain aspects, see Kwon M. 2004 p.3/14/19/24/51 iii Suderberg, E. op.cit. p.24-25 iv Kwon, M. op.cit. p.2 v Coles, A. 2000 p.17 For James Meyer’s text Nomads: Figures of Travel in Contemporary Art see p10-26 vi Kastner, J. 1998 p.25 vii Darwen, C. 2007 p.125 viii idem ix idem x Suderberg, E.op.cit. p.23 xi Suderberg, E. op.cit. p.24 xii Kaye, N. 2000 p.93&94 xiii Kwon, M. op.cit. p.11 xiv Kwon, M. op.cit. p.31 xv Kwon, M. op.cit.p.13. For Institutional Critique see p.13-24 xvi Suderberg, E. op.cit. p.26 xvii Flam, J. 1996 p.146. For Smithson’s full text Spiral Jetty (1972) see p.143-153 xviii Flam, J. op.cit. p.257. For further reading on Smithson & Entropy see Entropy and the New Monuments (1966) p.10-23 and also p.74, 102, 206, 219, 256-258, 293, 298-299, 301-309 xix Flam, J. op.cit. p.153 For more on the Dialecttic between Site and Nonsite see p152&153 xx Taken from the full quote “The site, in a sense, is the physical raw reality- the earth or the ground that we are not really aware of when we are in an interior room or studio….So I decided that I would set limits in terms of this dialogue (its back and forth rhythm that goes between indoors and outdoors.” Flam, J. op.cit p178. For more see the full interview, p177-187 xxi Kaye, N. loc.cit. xxii Flam, J. op.cit. p.193 xxiii Flam, J. op.cit. p.180 xxiv Flam, J. op.cit. p.193 xxv Flam, J. op.cit. p.150 xxvi Kastner, J. op.cit. p.281. For the full Craig Owen text see p281-282 xxvii Suderberg, E. op.cit. p.25. For more on the Functional site see p.24-35 xxviii idem xxix Kastner, J. loc.cit. xxx


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xxxi It is interesting to note that there are no images of the piece with which to represent it. xxxii Coles, A. op.cit. p.19 xxxiii Kaye, N. op.cit. p.98 xxxiv Coles, A. loc.cit. xxxv idem xxxvi Coles, A. op.cit. p.20. The postcards were mailed directly by M “to his dealers in Cologne and New York…in allusion to On Kawara(s)” life long artistic practice whereby he mails canvases and postcards with the date of creation painted upon them to his dealers. xxxvii Coles, A. op.cit p.19 xxxviii Coles, A. op.cit p.11 xxxix idem xl Suderberg, E. op.cit. p.34 xli Coles, A. op.cit p.22 xlii Suderberg, E. op.cit. p.23 xliii Flam, J. op.cit. p.193 xliv Flam, J. op.cit. p.153 xlv Cruz, A.1997 p.49 xlvi Cruz, Amada op.cit. p.47 xlvii Kwon, M. op.cit. p.51 xlviii Kwon, M. op.cit. p.26. For more on the Discursive see p.26-56. xlix Kwon, M. op.cit. p.29. For more on Itinerant Artists see p.46-56.


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Bibliography Texts Beardsley, John. Earthworks and Beyond New York: Abbeville Press Publishing, 1989 Boettger, Suzaan. Earthworks: Art and the Landscape of the Sixties California: University of California Press, 2002 Cruz, Amada. Performance Anxiety Chicago: The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, 1997. Coles, Alex (ed.) Site-specificity: The Ethnographic turn London: Black Dog Publishing, 2000 Darwen, Charles “Land Art in the American South West” Art Review Oct. 2007: 122-133 Flam, Jack (ed.) Robert Smithson: The Collected Writings California: University of California Press, 1996 Harrison, Charles and Wood, Paul (ed.) Art in Theory 1900-2000. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2003 Hopkins, David After modern Art 1945-2000. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000 Hughes, Robert The Shock of the New. London: Thames & Hudson Ltd., 1991 Kastner, Jeffery & Wallis, Brian (ed.) Land and Environmental Art London: Phaidon Press Limited, 1998 Kaye, Nick. Site Specific art: Performance, Place, Documentation London: Routledge, 2000 Kwon, Miwon. One place after another: site-specific art and local identity Massachusetts: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, 2004


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Osbourne, Peter (ed.) Conceptual Art London: Phaidon Press Limited, 2002 Serra, Richard. Writings, Interviews Chicago: University if Chicago Press, 1994 Shapiro, Gary. Earthwards: Robert Smithson and Art after Babel California: University of California Press, 1995 Stangos, Nikos (ed.) Concepts of Modern Art: From Fauvism to Postmodernism. London: Thames & Hudson Ltd. 2003 Suderberg, Erika (ed.) Site, Space, Intervention: Situating Installation Art Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000 World Wide Web sites www.robertsmithson.com


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[1] Richard Serra, Tilted Arc (1981)


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[2] The Pyramid of Giza, Egypt (2056BC) [3] Michelangelo, Ceiling painting of the Sistine Chapel, Rome (1512)

[4] Stone Henge, Wiltshire (Est. 2200BC)


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[5] Michael Heizer, Double Negative (1969) [6] Dennis Oppenheim, Annual Rings (1968)


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[7] Robert Smithson, Spiral Jetty (1970)


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[8] Richard Long, A Line made by Walking (1967)


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[9] Michael Heizer, Rift (1968)


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[10] Nancy Holt, Sun Tunnels (1977)


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[11] Anthony Caro, Early One Morning (1962)


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[13] Robert Smithson, A page from a text. [14] Robert Smithson, Upside Down tree (1969)


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[15] Dennis Oppenheim, Cancelled Crop (1969) [16] Dennis Oppenheim, Acculation Cut (1969)


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[17] Robert Smithson, Non-Site Franklin, New Jersey (1968)


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[18] Richard Long, A 5-Day Walk in Powys (2001)


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[19] Christian Philipp Müller, Eight Treks across the Austrian Border

(1993)


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[20] Renée Green, Partially Buried (1997)


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[21] Robert Smithson, Partially Buried Woodshed (1970)


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Documents

Jim Biddulph: Physical>Non>Nomadic>The shifting role of site in contemporary art practice