vigueur d'art publique

Miwon Kwon's Sitings of Public Art: Intergration Vs Intervention ostensibly magnifies the complexity of constraints inherent in public art. The two key examples she defines fall into the US public art category of art-in-public-spaces specifically that of Serra's Tilted Arc and Ahearn's South Bronx Sculptures. These two key works as selected by her signpost the constraints of producing a public site-specific artwork without the proper consideration (this could be an infinite range of factors from community, consensus, demographic, dialogue, inquiry, investigation, historical context of both place and people, the list is endless, etc) and hence being rejected by the community in turn detrimental to the work's longevity, and public justification and identification. Both of these artworks are object based site-specific artworks they are not object based community artworks per se. What I mean by community is the depth or high level of collaboration intrinsic to the work qua community. These artworks did not fail as art but Kwon highlights these objects in the way they form certain constraints, very distinct thresholds which bound them to a place, an identity, and of course a community. Ultimately being rejected by this community due to the multiplicity of complex mechanisms that are involved in socio-cultural power, and institutional power aspects of public art. In Serra's case – bureaucracy, and the art-name fetish became a determining force for selection; in Ahearn's case this predilection to use members of the community as representations within his work secured his role. What becomes problematic especially in Ahearn's case moreso than Serra, is that using people from the community (assimilation) as models for representation within the work don't necessarily constitute this notion of public art that embraces community it may uphold some kind of communal identity but it remains simply too rudimentary as public art or public identification. Assimilation (or incorporation, or involvement) I think in this sense is an authorial tool, a tool of representation (authorial determinism by Ahearn) which doesn't take into account the complexity of identity formed by community and place or that can somehow encompass or address the communities inherent overall complex dynamic/diversity/signification/reflexivity/structure et al. Kwon's varied premise argues not for any particular way to navigate through the difficulty and layered field of the public art sphere, so the dialogue she develops seems liminal almost like some intricate display of fence-sitting which is not a bad thing just tricky to determine and definitely highly engaging due to those multiple and complex notions that so penetrate socio-political art objective/subjectivities.