Refabrication and Unhinging of Sites

Miwon Kwon provides a concise description of site-specificity within mediums of art across the board. He argues that the development of a site is transmitted not only through the aesthetics presented in an art work, but also through the context in which the artist created the piece. While understanding of site is fluid and particular to the individual observer, it is nonetheless an essential component for the thorough perception of a site-specific work. Kwon devotes his first chapter to deconstructing the term “site” and providing examples of how its manifestations. What struck me the most was his connotation of “site” as not being limited to the artist’s objective, but also “demanding the physical presence of the viewer for the work’s completion” (12), a mechanism which I had never observed as a component of the particular art work.

His second chapter analyses the implications behind the re-fabrication and relocation specific works, and the extensive debate behind such initiatives. Since the 1960’s, museum culture has induced artists to recreate certain paintings and models in order to exhibit them in more locations for the general public. However, critics argue that this practice removes the authenticity of the piece and that all “recreations are inauthentic not because of the missing site of their original installation but because of the absence of the artists in the process of their (re) production” (39). Kwon argues that there is an original and earnest intent behind each original works of art have no guarantee of public acceptance or solid objectives other than to convey the artist’s analytical claim. Therefore, remakes of popular paintings, installations, and sculptures lose their uniqueness. Then again, re-fabrications allow for greater access and visibility to the piece by the public, and permit the artist to extend his sphere of influence; which Kwon claims will “lead to a hermetic implosion of (auto)biographical and subjective indulgences” (51) by providing an incentive for generating art that didn’t exist before.

Kwon argues that alterations to site-specific art work, whether physical or spatial, refute its originality. However, given that settings for (and in) which pieces were created, have changed drastically over the years, is the siting of art, then, meant to be modified in order to appropriate its original intent to new social sites?

According to his claims regarding authenticity of art and how it’s defied through re-fabrication, would Kwon argue that Andy Warhol’s silkscreened works lack site-specificity?