Robert Smithson and site and non site work.

Land art and the conventional art space is a problem tackled by Robert Smithson. As Smithson was a pioneer of this movement he was able to see that art work that could not be put in a gallery could not thrive. Therefore, for all land artists documentation or  "non sites" became the work seen by audiences in gallerys and, in that way, pieces of art themselves.


Funnily enough by choosing an outdoor space i have intentionally limited myself to the exact reverse of this. I am unable to choose any 2d work at the exhibition site, due to theoretical as well as practical issues. In this way I am placing more value on the reaction of the senses and first person experience. Rather than relying on documentation and written information , The thoughts and feelings the works will provoke, will be sound or visual experiences and convey universal meaning, as the theme of the exhibition must be universal to truly comment on what it is to be an individual experiencing that point on the planet not.


For these reasons I am considering a particular piece of work by Robert Smithson, eight part piece.


 "I would say the designation is what I call an open limit as opposed to a closed limit which is a non-site usually in an interior space. The open limit is a designation that I walk through in a kind of network looking for a site. And then I select the site. There's no criteria; just how the material hits my psyche when I'm scanning it. But it's a kind of low level scanning, almost unconscious. When you select, it's fixed so that randomness is then determined. It's determined in uncertainty. At the same time, the fringes or boundaries of the designation are always open. They're only closed on the map, and the map serves as the designation. The map is like a key to where the site is and then you can operate within that sector."


Section from Smithsons website about choosing sites for work. 

This same piece was both site , in a salt mine,  and non site, in the gallery. Smithson Made these two separate pieces and highlighted the importance of the space to context of the work. 


 "I'm using a mirror because the mirror in a sense is both the physical mirror and the reflection: the mirror as a concept and abstraction; then the mirror as a fact within the mirror of the concept. So that's a departure from the other kind of contained, scattering idea. But still the bi-polar unity between the two places is kept. Here the site/non-site becomes encompassed by mirror as a concept- mirroring, the mirror being a dialectic."


Another quote from Smithson's website.


This piece of work, being placed in my chosen site, highlights the contextual position of my exhibition in terms of gallery techniques concerning land art, as well as art theory. My choice to exhibit land art and performance art on site, is something that in the real world is often impractical, due to differing times or places of the work being created, However as my exhibition is virtual I am free to indulge in conceptual harmony, and present something interesting, hopefully.