Week 1

I rarely ever miss a lesson and I unfortunately missed the first group tutorial, upon talking to classmates, I discovered that this semester’s theme is Listening art and Site-specific Art. When it comes to the idea of site-specific art, upon research at a quick glance, it seems that refers to the intervention an artist has when creating specific pieces of art that are integrated with its surroundings. The relationship between the art and its surroundings is also explored. 

With a quick dive into Tate, it is also factual that, when it comes to Site-specific, the artwork would not work as a sole piece if removed from its location, as the surroundings is a substantial part of its meaning also. Whereas land art is site-specific almost by definition entirely. There are some early examples of this work, for instance in 1977, Chicago, an oversized steel baseball Bat was created and situated at 100 feet high. This ball was created from local sourced, open lattice steel, which holds a close reference to the area’s link to baseball whilst also resembling a police truncheon, which gives sentiment to the violent past that Chicago holds in its history. 

The ‘Batcolumn’ was designed by Claes Oldenburg, consisting of steel and aluminium, painted with polyurethane enamel. Located in the Harold Washington Social Security Centre, it was commissioned in 1975 by the Art in Architecture Program of the United Stated General Services Administration in conjunction with the National Endowment for the Arts.