ONE PLACE AFTER ANOTHER - Monoskop

such cases it is necessary to work in opposition to the constraints of
the context so that the work cannot be read as an affirmation of questionable
ideologies and political power. I am not interested in art as
affirmation or complicity. 38
Thus, in Serra’s practice, site specificity is constituted as a precise discomposure
between the art work and its site. And this discomposure—which is antithetical both
to the notion of art’s and architecture’s complementary juxtaposition, as in the
art-in-public-places model, and to that of their seamless continuity, as in the artas-public-spaces
model—is intended to bring into relief the repressed social
contradictions that underlie public spaces, like Federal Plaza, rendering them
perceptible, thus knowable, to the viewing subjects of the sculpture.
It is important to point out at this juncture that, in Serra’s case, this critical
function of site-specific art is directly tied to a critique of the medium-specific concerns
of modernist art. 39 As Serra explained, “Unlike modernist works that give the
illusion of being autonomous from their surroundings, and which function critically
only in relation to the language of their own medium, site-specific works emphasize
the comparison between two separate languages and can therefore use the language
of one to criticize the language of the other.” 40 So that in addition to working
against the physical and sociopolitical conditions of the site, the art work simultaneously
addresses the site itself as another medium, an “other language.” Put a little
differently, working against the site coincides with working against the modernist illusion
of artistic autonomy. In Serra’s case, the “other” to his own language of sculpture
is architecture. And architecture, in turn, serves as the material manifestation of
“questionable ideologies and political power,” which Serra is interested in exposing
and subverting. So that in the end, working site-specifically means working
against architecture. 41
This is not to say, however, that this “working against” is a straightforward
opposition. Note that Serra never speaks, for instance, of merging sculpture and architecture
into some new hybrid form to obliterate their categorical distinctions (as
so many contemporary artists are prone to do today in the name of radicalizing
75
SITINGS OF PUBLIC ART: INTEGRATION VERSUS INTERVENTION