A work of art is a work of art, people say. But we know there
is a context as well. And if we look at our museums of modern art we
see a lot of attention is given to his peripheral realm. Art is
vulnerable to its context. It was this notion that Adorno brought to his
often cited remark about the museums as the family sepulchers of
works of art (T.W. Adorno, 'Valery Proust Museum').
We are familiar with the vocabulary of 'site-specific', a term
strangely enough mostly connected with the public art debate. The
museums with its white walls are not recognized as sites with the
specific meaning of isolation. as places where living art is reduced to
autonomous entities in a so called 'neutral' environment. Apart from
the question if this viewpoint is right or good, to move a work of art
from artist's studio to exhibition place should have its effect on the
work itself.
Site-Specificity, a technique in which context was incorporated
into the work itself, originally developed to counteract the
construction of ideological art objects, purportedly defined by
independent essences, and to reveal art's determination by its
institutional frame...' (Rosalyn Deutsche, 'Uneven Development', in:
'Out of Site')(thanks to Renée Green).
As a consequence of the institutional critique debate of
the last two decades, the term 'institutional' has got a more global
than specific meaning. But in this change of connotations one the
particular thing became clear: site-specificness was an ideological
and institutional term in itself. Under the pressure of this claim of
site-specificity the site-specific art work represented more and more the
site itself. Shortly, it became an illustration of its context.
'It could be argued', Stephen Prina said, 'that this is
precisely what the cultural institution performs: acts that transform a
state, condition or quality of being into an object, from active to
passive state; a meaning elusive in life is accomplished in death. I
would prefer, however, to cite this transformational instance as an
example of an institution exerting its productive capabilities,
demonstrating its will to narrate.' (Stephen Prina: 'We Represent
Ourselves to the World: Institutional Narritivity', in: lectures 1992,
Witte de With, center for contemporary art, Rotterdam)
As important narrative features he mentions these three:
I also agree with his observation that since 'all cultural work,
whether consciously or not', could be considered as 'work on and of
representation, a reflection on the mechanism is necessary.' That
mechanism is: 'the reduction of meanings to stories.'
This was why Stephen Prina asked the rhetorical question: 'In
whose interest is it to protect context, as though it were a sovereign
state?' In an interesting proposal to reformulate the site-specificity he
introduced the new realm: system-specific, as an better word for
site-specific. System-specific, he said, is 'a way of working that
analyzes and employs the procedural structures that inhabit a site,
with the full recognition that these structures can be displaced,
aligned with other discourse and practices, be wrested from their
context so their full potential may be explored, or not.'
At last I would like to quote the man who thought in pieces,
Marcel Mauss: 'There is always a moment when, the science of certain
facts not yet being reduced tot concepts, the facts not even being
grouped together organically, these masses of facts receive that
signpost of ignorance: 'miscellaneous'. This is where we have to
penetrate. We can be certain that this is where there are truths to be
discovered: first, because we know that we are ignorant, and second,
because we have a lively sense of the quantity of the facts.' (Marcel
Mauss: 'Techniques of the Body', in: 'Incorparations') (thanks to Simon
Leung)
Being aware of the (positive and negative) qualities of the
WWWsystem in which the work is presented, make the production and
reception of a work of art into an interesting, a never ending,
incomplete, experience.