For my project, one issue I am having is since I want to incorporate paint somewhere public on campus, I am wondering if there will be a big hassle for cleanup and if I should plan on bringing a tarp incase it gets a bit messy. I feel as though since I want to use right in front of the Fairnon steps as my performance location I feel as though its peak busy times would be the best time to perform my piece. I am not sure if 11:50-12:30 or 5:50-6:45 would be the best time to get the most people to engage with my performance. Another issue is whether or not it is more successful for the class to see my piece live and see people putting paint on me or if it is enough just with video/photo documentation and then bringing the work of art itself into class. These are some of the things I am currently thinking about right now regarding my piece.  As for the audience I want people who are walking by Fairnon and then I will definitely ask people in different club and class groupchats to come as well and help me out and engage with my work.

I am not exactly sure what I want to do for my performance piece however I am really inspired by Marina Abramović’s work and how much she engages with the audience. Since doing my site-specific piece and really getting out of my comfort zone I feel a lot more comfortable and excited about doing something that relies on others to make the performance work. I am really intrigued by the idea of using the library or front of the library for my location of my piece. I feel as though this is a major hub for a lot of students and it is very academics focused.

For my artist research, the artist I chose to further research was Marina Abramović. Marina is a Yugoslav artist best known for her performance pieces. When I saw her name come up I did not realize that I had actually been shown one of her works in capstone, her work just caught my eye. However, as I continued to research her, I came across Rhythm 0 which I had heard of before. This was a piece where Marina stood before an audience for six hours and allowed the audience to do whatever they pleased. She had a table full of objects, 72 to be exact, even a loaded gun. The purpose of her work was to see how far people would go with this. Marina found this piece to be much more challenging than she had anticipated and that what the audience did to her was grueling. “What I learned was that … if you leave it up to the audience, they can kill you … I felt really violated: they cut up my clothes, stuck rose thorns in my stomach, one person aimed the gun at my head, and another took it away. It created an aggressive atmosphere. After exactly 6 hours, as planned, I stood up and started walking toward the audience. Everyone ran away, to escape an actual confrontation.”. She experienced a lot during this piece. I found it very fascinating and impressive that she put so much trust into these people and endured all of this treatment for six full hours. I think it also says a lot about our society that once she started walking away everyone ran in fear of facing her.

I was first intrigued by this artist when I walked into MoMA in 2016 and Maria Hassibi’s installation was taking place on the main stair case. I still remember my reaction to the piece itself. I remember trying to understand it and trying to remain calm while right next to it. I remember feeling overwhelmed by the number of individuals who were there, something I did expect when visiting MoMA but never did I expect to find so many visitors that were still at MoMA. MoMA has always been a fast paced environment, it is something that is part of MoMA. However, the piece itself had made me question the relationship performance art creates between the work itself and the audience. This is why I decided to go back and look deeper into her work.

I have decided to work with the area that overlooks the river in the side entrance of the WVAB. This site brought about much curiosity through different conversations that had taken place with the visiting artist as well as with Professor Jim Toia. The conversations revolved around the contamination and pollution that once was present in the Delaware river and how through different efforts it has been restored. The effort put into making sure the water became healthy again just reiterated the need of care and dedication needed from our part to be able to create a healthy and clean environment. As a whole thinking about the change that has been witnessed by those who have been around for a while made me think of the gravity of the issue on a global scale. It made me think of the different efforts from organizations that have tried to help the existing situation of the water pollution today.  One of the first things that came to mind were plastic grocery bags. Essentially this is the reason as to why I chose this location.

A site-specific artwork is an artwork that carries special meanings in certain contexts it’s placed at. It could vary from sculpture, sound to performance.  Site comprises a unique combination of physical elements, such as depth, length, weight, height, shape, walls, temperature.  The artists utilize these physical elements to convey a message to the audience, or let the audience participate into the work created.  The connection between site and art is the key to site-specific artwork.

Doing research of chairs in artists’ work gave me a better understanding of the chair’s generic form and what kind of self-expressions could be embodied into the work of art.  After seeing the paintings of artist Xuhui Mao, I realized how closely one’s identity could be associated with the works he or she created.  And this triggered me to create a series of chairs associated with my memory of childhood, teenage years and college life.

Chair and Authority

Site-specific art, is art that is created solely for that location. The artist creates the piece with the location in mind. Often the point of site-specific art is to create something that interacts with its surroundings, and really elevates the space that it is in. The idea of site-specific art is that if one were to remove the art from its location and move it elsewhere, it would lose its meaning. Artist Robert Irwin was one of the first artists to promote the term site-specific art. Some examples of art specific works are Condensation Cube by Hans Haacke, and The Gates by Christo and Jeanne-Claude.

According to tate.org, “a site-specific work of art is designed for a specific location, if removed from that location it loses all or a substantial part of its meaning”. Site-specific work integrates itself into its surroundings becoming a part of the location. It is created with this location as a part of the work to be exhibited rather than other works that can be displayed almost everywhere. It includes the environment into the work. Usually, site-specific work is related to environmental work, artists tend to utilize the environment into their work. An example of this would be Spiral Jetty by Robert Smithson, which is Built on the northeastern shore of the Great Salt Lake in Utah made up of mud, salt crystals, and basalt rocks. The work forms a 1,500-foot-long, 15-foot-wide  counterclockwise coil jutting from the shore of the lake.

The work created for a site-specific location cannot be moved or altered, as it loses its original meaning. Another example of a site-specific work would be Christo and Jeanne Claude’s The Gates. The artists installed 7,503 vinyl “gates” along 23 miles of pathways in Central Park in New York City. These bright orange arches with fabric hung throughout New York City’s central park for about a month and were taken down shortly after. Christo and Jeanne Claude were responsible for a lot of site-specific artworks including the Wrapped Reichstag and the surrounded islands. Site-specific works don’t necessarily have to be outdoors, but they need to be a signific part of its environment.