About the Book
Part of the acclaimed 'Documents of Contemporary Art' series of anthologies.
A unique set of conditions produced in both space and time and ranging across material, social, political and economic relations, Situation is now a key concept in 21st-century art. This anthology traces its evolution from the 1960s emergence of site-specific art to its divergent implications in the global era. Among the topics surveyed are the limits of site; the role of the artist as ethnographer or fieldworker; the relation between action and public space; the meaning of place and locality; and the crucial role of the curator in new situation-specific art.
Artists surveyed include: Vito Acconci, Allora & Calzadilla, Francis Alÿs, Carl Andre, Artist Placement Group, Michael Asher, Amy Balkin, Ursula Biemann, Bik Van der Pol, Daniel Buren, Victor Burgin, Janet Cardiff, Center for Land Use Interpretation, Adam Chodzko, Tacita Dean, Elmgreen & Dragset, Andrea Fraser, Hamish Fulton, Dan Graham, Liam Gillick, Renée Green, Group Material, Douglas Huebler, Bethan Huws, Pierre Huyghe, Robert Irwin, Emily Jacir, Ilya Kabakov, Július Koller, Langlands & Bell, Ligna, Richard Long, Gordon Matta-Clark, Cildo Meireles, Jonathan Monk, Robert Morris, Gabriel Orozco, Adrian Piper, Walid Ra’ad, Raqs Media Collective, Paul Rooney, Martha Rosler, Richard Serra, Situationist International, Tony Smith, Robert Smithson, Vivan Sundaram, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Lawrence Weiner, Rachel Whiteread, Krzysztof Wodiczko and Qiu Zhijie.
Writers include: Arjun Appadurai, Hannah Arendt, Marc Augé, Wim Beeren, Josephine Berry Slater, Daniel Birnbaum, Ava Bromberg, Markus Brüderlin, Susan Buck-Morss, Jon Bywater, Michel de Certeau, Douglas Crimp, Gilles Deleuze, T. J. Demos, Rosalyn Deutsche, Charles Esche, Graeme Evans, Patricia Falguières, Hal Foster, Hou Hanru, Mark Hutchinson, Mary Jane Jacob, Vasif Kortun, Hari Kunzru, Miwon Kwon, Lu Jie, George E. Marcus, Doreen Massey, James Meyer, Ivo Mesquita, Brian O’Doherty, Craig Owens, Jane Rendell, Simon Sheikh, Jan Verwoert and Peter Weibel
Table of Contents:
Introduction; The Limits of Site; Fieldwork; Action and Public Space; Place and Locality; The Curatorial Imperative; Biographical Notes; Bibliography; Index; Acknowledgements.
About the Author :
Claire Doherty is a curator and writer, and the Director of Situations, a commissioning and research programme based at the University of the West of England, Bristol. She lectures widely on curating, commissioning, art and place, and has published essays on a broad diversity of artists.
Review :
"Claire Doherty's Situation offers a scholarly yet accessible cross-disciplinary mapping out of the complex discursive interpenetrations of notions of site, public sphere, social space, location-driven research processes and related issues, from the perspectives of artists, curators, art historians, critics, theorists and other cultural producers. The five sections comprising the book propose useful ideational constellations, generating a trans-historical (i.e. non-linear/anti-chronological) interplay of excerpted artist writings, critical texts, curatorial frameworks and theoretical discourses from the start of the 1960s to the present, enlivening the conversation about what it means to be situational." - Joshua Decter, Critic and Curator, Director of the Master of Public Art Studies Program (Art in the Public Sphere), USC Roski School of Fine Arts, Los Angeles "This excellent and stimulating book revisits the notions of site and space to underline the increasing importance of situations, opening and thinking about new ways of making and curating art." - Hans Ulrich Obrist, Co-director of Exhibitions and Programmes and Director of International Projects, Serpentine Gallery, London
