Reading 3: David and Rogoff.

David, Catherine and Rogoff, Irit “In Conversation.” From Studio to Situation. Ed. Claire Doherty. London: Black Dog Publishing, 2004. 82-89. Print

An art curator and theorist, Catherine David was the principle director of the 1994-1997 Documenta X in Kassel. In 1998 David took charge of Contemporary Arab Representations in Europe. She was the principle curator of the 2009 Lyon Biennial.

Irit Rogoff is a curator, theorist and writer. She published “Terra Infirma: Geography’s Visual Culture” in 2001. Rogoff founded Goldsmiths College at London University in 2002 at which she holds a professorial position.

In “In Conversation” Irit Rogoff puts describes the two modes of or approaches to “fieldwork”. One is Rapport; the other is Complicity. She relates these different models to site-specific artwork.

Rapport is described as investigative approach, which exposes and reveals hidden things. It involves an insight to and understanding of a location that is assumed. The assumptions are based on an empathy with the location. Rogoff notes that rapport involves conceits and illusions but is an analytical approach (Rogoff.86).

Rogoff describes complicity as an emergent idea. It is about the artist’s/curator’s collusion with a place. In this sense the artist uses the location covertly to create artwork that creates a deception that works against the location itself. The artist uses the discourse of the site itself to work against itself (Rogoff 86-7).

I would like to extend on the concept of site-specificity and therefore the bounds of the notion of complicity.

It is apparent that Rogoff’s conception of site-specificity is not entirely geographical. When talking about the idea of collusion within complicity she references enabling contexts and situation as well as language (Paragraph 6, p86). I take this to mean the discourse around the location.

What we see more and more in contemporary art, is the site becoming and being utilised a cultural and socio-political position to either create rapport or complicity with. The geographical locale is not longer the specific, but the discourse associated with it. Therefore work that does not exist in a specific geographical location may still be regarded as site specific. This includes artwork in the gallery space/presentation space, broad casted and web-based artwork.

In T.J. Demos’s article, “Rethinking Site-Specificity” he critiques Miwon Kwon’s concept of site as discursively determined (articulated in “One Place after Another: Site-Specific Art and Locational Identity”2002). He posits that this idea suffers from a “potential referential reductiveness” (paragraph 5p 98). By this Demos means that Kwon’s model neglects the discourses surrounding material practice and history.
Rogoff’s idea of complicity will benefit from multiple conceptions of site. The materiality and history of a place may be colluded with as well as the socio-political discourse of a place. Rogoff’s idea may be extended to the gallery space and to the Internet.

References:

Demos, T J. “Rethinking Site-Specificity” Art journal, Vol. 62, No.4 (2003): 98-100. Jstor. Web. 23 June 2010
Kwon, Miwon. “One place after Another : Site-Specific Art and Locational Identity.” Massachusetts: MIT Press , 2002. Print