Week 1: Reaction to Suderburg intro
Reaction to “Space, Site, Intervention”, Introduction, by Erika Suderburg
Suderburg sets out to define what is meant by site-specific and installation art, and only partially succeeds. She succeeds by using examples to define a set of candidates, she fails by not then providing a synthesis. However, I found the piece useful in that it gave me a large set of examples, some of them unknown to me, which helped me construct my own synthesis.
The piece starts by setting out the problems of definition, and trying to identify when installation art came to be identified as such. She then describes in greater depth a number of possible paradigmatic early examples of installation art, such as the Wunderkammer and the (mostly English) architectural follies. From there she moves to an examination of outsider constructions such as the Palais Ideal and Bottle City, and Schwitter’s Merzbau. Of these, probably only the last was self-defined by its builder as a work of art. Various examples of more modern installations are referenced in the text, and in the accompanying timeline.
In spite of this extensive sample, and several intriguing points of commonality, there is no attempt to synthesize a definition. For example, prior to 1913, a great number of the examples given are works of architecture and/or interior design. This suggests surrounding or immersing the viewer, and a necessary physical scale, as a key possible attribute of installation art. Some of the architectural examples given have little or no practical use, such as the Eiffel Tower or the Electric Tower at Coney Island. This suggests an artistic or ludic intention as another key attribute. Starting from 1913, many of the examples are drawn from pieces typically considered sculpture, like Serra’s oft-cited Tilted Arc, so physicality is a key attribute. (Though there are allusions to the possibility of site-specific art in a virtual environment, these are not developed in the introduction, at least prior to page 13.)
Though the field of installation art is, in Suderburg’s words, “… a crooked but inviting path that is erratically signposted”, it would have been useful to outline enough connections between those signposts, to establish that it is indeed a path! As it is, I found it an interesting representation of the territory.