Public art to Urban Identity

After reading the text by Miwon Kwon, there were many interesting ideas and issues raised in regards to site-specificity. The question of 'who is art for?' is often important as you can see through the examples of Serra and Ahearn. Although I have always thought succesful site-specific works responded to their surroundings, this also makes me think more about the importance of responding to the community. The community is so diverse that obviously there are a lot of people who will have a lesser understanding of art or are not comfortable with the implications of a work and this has to be taken in to account when making works in the public space.


One thing I wanted to talk about was the model of site-specific works as art-in-public spaces.
Because of the mention of Calder's work, La Grande Vitesse 1969, (in the city of Grand Rapids), I remembered an essay I read many months ago, which was by the same author, Miwon Kwon, I just discovered. Calder's work is an example of what is mentioned of early site-specific works being large abstract sculptures which were public for not much more reason than their being positioned outdoors.
I found this particularly interesting though as although works can cause public discontent or offense or do not hold much significance to the community, they can often become succesful. The previous article I read was Public Art and Urban Identities by Miwon Kwon.
Although there were initial concerns over Calder (allegiance to America. etc), in the end the sculpture was succesful, perhaps not for the most obvious reasons. Calder did not even visit the site where the work was to be placed. Apparently he did study the architectural plans, scale, and materials of the buildings surrounding the plaza and responded to this. The work was to visually and spatially organise the space. It was also to be a marker of identity for the plaza and add a more human element. I believe it was most succesful from what resulted from the works installation. In terms of the community, the sculpture was embraced and the response was positive. Its image was also used more widely as an identity for the city which also creates a sense of community. A graphic of the sculpture is used on street signs, a letterhead and vehicles in the city of Grand Rapids, Michigan.The community benefited from this as it became widely known and is still seen as one of the most succesful public art projects in the US. I think this use of creating a graphic from this public art to be used as an identity for the city is great!

"In a strange sense, even though the sculpture was not conceived as site specific, it nevertheless became site specific--site specificity was produced here as an effect and not engaged as a method of artistic production. " (Miwon Kwon, from the article linked below)

You can read the other text at-
http://eipcp.net/transversal/0102/kwon/en