Space, Site, Intervention

Situating Installation Art

2000

Erika Suderburg, editor

The definitive work on the role of installation art within contemporary culture and society.

In Space, Site, Intervention, some of today’s most prominent art critics, curators, and artists view installation art as a diverse, multifaceted, and international art form that challenges institutional assumptions and narrow conceptual frameworks. Together, the essays investigate how installation resonates within modern culture and society, as well as its ongoing influence on contemporary visual culture.

Contributors: C. Ondine Chavoya, John Coleman, Sean Cubitt, Colin Gardner, Chrissie Iles, Bruce Jenkins, Amelia Jones, Miwon Kwon, Ernest Larsen, Tiffany Ana López, Catherine Lord, Kevin McMahon, James Meyer, Alessandra Moctezuma, Leda Ramos, Laurence A. Rickels, Barbara Maria Stafford, Susan Stewart, Marita Sturken, John C. Welchman.

This book is a dense, varied, and fascinating labyrinth of sophisticated writing that opens up the notions of site and space to a grand panoply of new ideas. It should be required reading for anyone making or confronting installation art in the 21st century.

Lucy R. Lippard, author of The Lure of the Local and On the Beaten Track

From Ferdinand Chevel’s Palais Idéal (1879-1905) and Simon Rodia’s Watts Towers (1921-1954) to Ant Farm’s Cadillac Ranch (1974) and Richard Serra’s Tilted Arc (1981), installation art has continually crossed boundaries, encompassing sculpture, architecture, performance, and visual art. Although unique in its power to transform both the site in which a work is constructed and the viewer’s experience of being in a place, installation art has not received the critical attention accorded other art forms.

In Space, Site, Intervention, some of today’s most prominent art critics, curators, and artists view installation art as a diverse, multifaceted, and international art form that challenges institutional assumptions and narrow conceptual frameworks. The contributors discuss installation in relation to the genealogy of modern art, community and corporate space, multimedia cyberspace, public and private ritual, the gallery and the museum, public and private patronage, and political action. This ambitious volume focuses on issues of class, sexuality, cultural identity, race, and gender, and highlights a wide range of artists whose work is often marginalized by mainstream art history and criticism. Together, the essays in Space, Site, Intervention investigate how installation resonates within modern culture and society, as well as its ongoing influence on contemporary visual culture.

Contributors: C. Ondine Chavoya, Tufts U; John Coleman, Oberlin; Sean Cubitt, John Moores U, Liverpool; Colin Gardner, UC Santa Barbara; Chrissie Iles, Whitney Museum; Bruce Jenkins, Harvard U; Amelia Jones, UC Riverside; Miwon Kwon, UCLA; Ernest Larsen; Tiffany Ana López, UC Riverside; Catherine Lord, UC Irvine; Kevin McMahon, Southern California Institute of Architecture; James Meyer, Emory U; Alessandra Moctezuma, Southern California Institute of Architecture; Leda Ramos, Museum of Contemporary Art, L.A.; Laurence A. Rickels, UC Santa Barbara; Barbara Maria Stafford, U of Chicago; Susan Stewart, U of Pennsylvania; Marita Sturken, USC; John C. Welchman, UC San Diego.

Erika Suderburg is professor in the Department of Art at the University of California, Riverside, and coeditor (with Michael Renov) of Resolutions: Contemporary Video Practices (Minnesota, 1996).

This book is a dense, varied, and fascinating labyrinth of sophisticated writing that opens up the notions of site and space to a grand panoply of new ideas. It should be required reading for anyone making or confronting installation art in the 21st century.

Lucy R. Lippard, author of The Lure of the Local and On the Beaten Track

This wonderful book seeks to expand the definition of site-specific work while dissolving its categories. This is a monster of an undertaking and a treat to read. Space, Site, Intervention is a huge book, which is itself a conceptual and temporal site of exchange. It is so sensitive to the reader, to so many cultural and political issues, that in just looking out the window one can imagine the impact on Native Americans when sighting the first fences on the vast, open prairie as the great land grab began.

Bomb

In 20 essays that try to define ‘The Space of Electronic Time,’ ‘Public Art and the Spectacle of Money’ and ‘Hidden Economies in Los Angeles,’ among other places and concepts, Space, Site, Intervention: Situating Installation Art explores the myriad directions and places in which art since the ‘60s has gone. Erika Suderburg, an artist who works in film and video (among other media), brings together a plethora of critics, artists, and academics, who contribute clear essays on the often complicated philosophical and cultural issues addressed by environmental art, body art, art in the public sphere and other sorts of work, much of it American.

Publishers Weekly

A cosmopolitan and thought-provoking examination of installation art in venues as diverse as museums and cyberspace, corporations and private patrons. This is a valuable study.

The A List, Bookman Book Review