Wednesday, April 3, 2013

Site/Sight/Non-Si(gh)t




Our heuretic approach uses several texts as sources materials - sites for instruction that we can apply to the project of aesthetic reasoning and Wellbeing.  This week we worked with Ann Reynolds book on Robert Smithson, an earthworks artist who used, well, the earth, to create pieces displayed both in an out of the institution of the museum.  Smithson's use of mapping and space results in art that reveals the position, or illusion, of perspective.  Some of his works include:







Like all art, Smithson's unique combination of elements craft deliberate meanings.  For our purposes we look to the idea of archive - what we have done thus far in this project, but also what we have done in our own personal history that helps craft our personal tradition/archive.  

Smithson also largely works with the idea of enantiomorphic constructions, the use of 'blind spots' - almost the idea of the uncanny - shifting our perspective so that we can recognize what we are not seeing - the presence/absence of 'the thing.' Ann Reynolds describes how Smithson uses these types of works to play with perception and push the audience to reexamine their position: “Enantiomorphic construction literally, and by extension, metaphorically, allows Smithson to reveal the blind spots or enantiomorphic situations embedded within a number of historically contemporary models of perception. These models are usually binary in structure, but their oppositional terms are really just mirror images of one another―enantiomorphs―with a shared blind spot, a set of hidden assumptions” (xvii).  In a similar fashion, Smithson's work also plays with the idea of site/nonsite - like the pieces of earth he installs in a museum setting, Smithson plays with the idea of a 'site' of art and a representative piece of a site. The sand, glass, earth, etc. are all taken from specific places and represent a place and time - yet they are removed, reinstalled and reconfigure as a representation. The idea of 'elsewhere' and non-site emerges in his use of the part for the whole and reminds us once more of the blind spots within our perspective - the disconnect that often happens between our senses and our thoughts/knowledge - the (w)hole.

The last work featured above is a project called "Partially Buried Woodshed" (1970) - an outdoor land art piece that quite literally is a 'partially buried woodshed.'  The site is located on Kent State University property and works to physically manifest the idea of entropy.  Twenty truckloads of dirt were piled onto of the woodshed until the central beam cracked under the pressure.  

How do we use Smithson's model of part/(w)hole, site/nonsite, blindspots, and archives to represent the accident that is Cabot Koppers?  How can we fashion an image that makes plain the entropy of our actions and reconnects people to the blind spot of the accident?




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