Dorothea von From Exhibiting Hantelmann to Embedding: The Situated Art Work 14 Dorothea From Exhibiting von to Embedding: Hantelmann the Situated Artwork

1. Artworks and ant colony had formed at the situations foot of an oak. Even on closer inspection, it was unclear what Pierre Huyghe, had been altered artistically Untilled, 2012 and what hadn’t, where the composting facility ended and Pierre Huyghe’s the work of art began. contribution to There was something (13) required some effort in like a center to the work: order to be discovered at all. It a reclining concrete figure was not just that Huyghe had placed on an open space in the chosen a decidedly decentered middle of the lot—a replica of exhibition site: a composting an artwork by the sculptor Max facility located in the Aue-Park. Weber from the 1930s, which Even after one had located the on its shoulders had, in lieu of site, it was anything but obvious a head, a beehive populated that it was art. One found by a trembling, buzzing oneself in a kind of overgrown swarm of bees. And there lot: a pile of compost, sprouting was the elegant white female growth, through which a greyhound called Human, who, walkway led—at times really with her pink leg, became the just a beaten path, with algae- trademark of this documenta. covered puddles. The hills were Other elements of the work overgrown with plants and came to light over time: the weeds. Off to one side, paving compost hills were planted slabs were stacked; nearby, a with psychotropic, medical, mound of black chippings. An and aphrodisiacal plants such

1 von Hantelmann ——— From Exhibiting... as deadly nightshade, and planning. The bees not only angel’s trumpets. Cannabis distributed seeds, but also was also there, as well as rye, multiplied themselves, so that which although a completely the head of the sculpture harmless grain, it is particularly continued to grow; becoming likely to harbor ergot, a fungus after a few months monstrously that can be used to synthesize swollen. The site was LSD. At some point, visitors characterized by an interplay began to sense that the of design and the undesigned, stacked slabs were arranged making it seem strangely in a particular way, as was the charged—a place where the surrounding basin, in which artistic labor invested in its tadpoles splashed. Huyghe had composition became palpable, collected several artifacts—he even if this composed quality calls them “markers”—from was never entirely revealed. various times and contexts. The stacked sidewalk Robert Smithson, Spiral slabs, for example, recalled Jetty, 19 7 0 the form and materials of the aesthetics of Minimal Art, while Spiral Jetty is Robert a felled tree alluded to Robert Smithson’s magnum opus. It is Smithson’s Dead Tree from a monumental piece of Land 1969. A bench, tipped over Art constructed in stone on the and resting between the stone shore of the Great Salt Lake in slabs, was part of Dominique Utah in 1970, taking the form Gonzalez-Foerster’s installation of a spiral: the ancient symbol at Documenta11 and a small, connecting beginning and end, desiccated oak lying around space and time, and expansion was part of ’s and contraction that traverses 7000 Eichen (7000 Oaks). cultural and natural histories. Among these artistic The work that had been arrangements, other organic/ covered by water for years biological processes of before suddenly reappearing, formation were at work: has a somehow mythical status that bees and ants would that not only derives from disseminate seeds from the its remote placement in the plants was part of the artwork’s salt desert. Smithson himself, conception. The way in which in an essay corresponding this occurred of course evaded to the work, describes how

2 the overpowering, mythical many different levels: it can experience of the place hit him stem from the architecture of when he first encountered it, the given place or from the how space and time began conventions of its use, from its to intertwine through circular relations to the city, to history, movements and how the form or to society. of a spiral appeared to him as in a vision.1 Smithson’s film Decor, Villa Empain/ that is also part of the work Boghossian Foundation, Spiral Jetty unfolds manifold 2016 connections from this spiral form. He interweaves the Villa Empain is an Art salt crystals that grow on the Deco villa built in the 1930s in jetty with the solar system, Brussels, which today houses prehistoric times and science the exhibition space of an art fiction – thus reality and foundation. For this space, I fiction, present and past – in a recently curated, together with spinning dynamic. the artist Tino Sehgal and Asad Raza, the Artistic Director of Daniel Buren the Villa, an exhibition titled Decor, involving twentieth and Daniel Buren has twenty-first century artists who worked in situ since the 1960s. have no fear of the decorative. From his first situated pieces Among the participating artists with their pre-printed striped are Daniel Buren, who realized motif onwards, it is the elision an artwork in situ; Dominique of the boundaries between art, Gonzalez-Foerster, who has framework, site and context of realized several works that presentation that characterizes occupy an ambivalent place Buren’s art. He incorporates between installation and all parameters respective to interior; Felix Gonzalez-Torres, their context, which influence with some of his curtains the existence and experience that suggest hospitality and of an artwork, into the work’s domesticity; ; conception from the very Pierre Huyghe; Marcel beginning and thus abolishes Broodthaers; as well as one the clear-cut distinction of Carl Andre’s floor pieces between artwork and context. that can be walked on, which “Context” here can encompass the artist also called zones or

3 von Hantelmann ——— From Exhibiting... roads, in order to highlight that Because, we are interested in artwork and viewer share the the decorative objects’ different same space. way of being and mode of Decor is an exhibition operation. An artwork functions about the decorative in like a magnet; it asserts itself contemporary art and, at the as a center, as a protagonist same time, itself a decor of this in the production of meaning. (already highly decorated) Villa. Decor, by contrast, draws the Through this ambivalence, it gaze only to then deflect it addresses a kind of blind spot back onto the broader spatial in modern art: the unresolved and situational context. The and conflicted relation to philosopher Hans Georg decoration. With the inception Gadamer calls this the “double- of modernity around 1800, the sidedness of decorative idea of a decorative artwork mediation.” As decor, the became a contradiction in object cannot assert autonomy, terms. Painting was separated because it exists— by definition from architecture and —only in relation to a place and became autonomous, thereby as the carrier of a function. We abandoning decoration as its bring artistic positions from the primary function. Historically, visual arts together to approach this was the end of the this paradigm of the decorative, decorative and integrated and, in this villa, make its mode aesthetic object, and the advent of operation tangible. of the modern idea of the work of art. From now on, as Hegel writes in the Aesthetics, 2. The situated artwork the artwork’s “function is not merely filling surfaces on a What do these artistic wall; on the contrary, it is there approaches have in common? on its own account.”2 The Despite their different aesthetic decorative is a zone from which orientations, they share, I would the artistic object must retreat claim, a common interest. in order to become an artwork They are works that do not in a modern understanding want to be autonomous, that (which is why art wants to be are not exhibited (in the sense everything, just not decorative). of showcased objects), but So why, now, take a step enter into a connection with back from this development? the place in which they are

4 embedded. The common of objectivity, for considering interest that they share the respective historical and is their concern with the political embeddedness of forms and processes of this scientific practices as well embeddedness; their concern as the material conditions of of situating the artwork. the production of knowledge, The term “situated” has in i.e. the objects, tools, recent years become a central technologies, institutions etc. topos of a critique of science, that are implicated. A situated triggered by Donna Haraway’s knowledge is embodied, concept—formulated as embedded, inserted into early as in 1988—of “situated language, into cultures and knowledge”; a concept also traditions; it is always local, increasingly embraced in art delimited, and conceived from contexts. Carolyn Christov- its own, present situation, Bakargiev, Artistic Director based on experience, and of the last documenta, for experimental. instance, opened her first Does it make sense to press conference with a live carry this concept over into art? hook-up to Donna Haraway, in What can we even understand order to declare, in an almost by “situated artwork”? I paradigmatic manner, a “site- propose to describe the works specific turn.” presented here as attempts at With the concept of situating, which—each in their “situated knowledge,” Donna own way—approach the idea of Haraway substantially critiques a situated artwork. notions of knowledge as In the case of Robert abstract, absolute, autonomous, Smithson, turning away from and universal. She contrasts a predominant notion of art the idea of disembodied based on the centrality and objectivity with specificity and autonomy of the object begins embodiment. All the while, she with a literal movement to does not give up the idea of the periphery. In order to objectivity, even when there is bring about an idea of art no more “outside” perspective that includes “nature” in all from which the world is its discursive and material “observable.” Her concept can pervasiveness, he had to be understood rather as a plea abandon the city for places for a different understanding like deserts and salt lakes,

5 von Hantelmann ——— From Exhibiting... which he calls sites, where his containers in a sense, in works are able to enter into which the works have a non- total correspondence. In this embedded existence. way, Smithson situates his For Daniel Buren, work. The permanence of their by contrast, the museum is connection to these places anything but a non-site. For removed from civilization him, the museum is the primary annuls, at the same time place where art meets society, however, something of their and where a debate on the character as a work of art—at public realm can take place. “I least, if one understands work don’t think,” he writes, “I would in a modern sense as a distinct, be interested by the prospect mobile, and flexible entity, of heading off into the desert made accessible to a public. to do a piece, as so many This inseparable merging of artists did back in the 60s. [...] work and place is expressed I might go to look around, but by Michael Heizer as “the work not to work. Because at that is not put in a place, it is that point, one finds oneself in place” (1970)—a phrase that places where human beings Smithson quotes repeatedly in are merely visitors and no his texts. longer social beings.”3 Buren’s These embedded problem is not the museum works can be seen in contrast per se, but the modality of to other works that Smithson the exhibited, in the sense realized for the art context—for of an exhibited, exposed, museums and exhibitions. out-of-its-place work. For him, These works conform relatively to produce an artwork in the seamlessly to the modern studio that points to a reality concept of the artwork. They (the planned, later existence are non-embedded, mobile, in an exhibition, in a museum and flexible. The dichotomy collection) without really being between these two modalities able to take this reality into is mirrored in Smithson’s account, to incorporate and contrasting of the two terms configure it (even though it site and non-site. The salt is a crucial determinant in lake in Utah is a site, “the the experience of the work), physical raw reality,” as he says. expresses an inconsistency Museums and exhibitions are through which an artwork loses non-sites, non-places, neutral an essential part of its energy,

6 its power. This is why he, rather binds itself with the place, than exhibit, wants to embed. unfolds itself from the place, For this reason, he creates is pervaded by it through to its artworks that are, in a way, core, but it is not this place. situated in a constant exchange It situates itself, but it does between a place and its artistic not become this place (the transformation. work is not that place). For it Buren realizes this belongs to its concept—namely, pervasiveness of place and to be situated—but is not for artwork by means of the object- this place alone. Untilled is as-decor: the decorative object rooted, situated, but remains does not draw the gaze like a a structural entity that could magnet and attempt to hold take place somewhere else in it, but directs it to the context, a changed form—which it to the situation. The form that indeed does, for instance this his turn to the decorative took summer at the Art Gallery of proved a strong impulse for our Ontario in Toronto. Decor exhibition. But because In light of these three the artistic forms and media artistic positions, the concept that he works with stem from of a “situated artwork” can painting, there is no permeation be grasped more precisely. with natural processes, with the The situated artwork realizes organic and crystalline, as we itself in a distinct, peculiar have with Smithson. double-structure of being on Pierre Huyghe, who one hand situated, and on studied with Buren and the other also a work of art has engaged strongly with in the sense of the modern, Smithson’s work, represents flexible, and mobile concept of a kind of synthesis between an artwork. Precisely because these two positions. His the defining concept of the documenta work Untilled is artwork in modernism is based on one hand literally rooted essentially on the paradigm in its surroundings while it of autonomy (and thus the continues to spread roots at opposite of situatedness), its every moment of its existence, connection to processes of and on the other hand remains situating requires fundamental an artwork in a public art work into art’s way of being, on exhibition (and does not the ontology of art. Situating occur in the desert). The work art cannot happen on the level

7 von Hantelmann ——— From Exhibiting... of content or form. It requires innermost structure. Huyghe’s literally foundational, or better, method becomes clear when foundation-changing work to one compares it to other works be done on the ontology of the that are referred to as Earth artwork. One could list a whole Art, such as Walter de Maria’s series of artistic positions over Earth Room (1977). De Maria the last 50 years that cast a takes the earth into the New searching eye in this direction. York gallery space, with which Buren and Huyghe manifest it stays unconnected. Huyghe, two significant positions in this on the other hand, starts each process that are both at work work with an inventory of what on a changed ontology of the is already there. It can be the artwork, even though they have roofing of the museum (as in entirely different means: Buren his recent work for the New the operating principle of York Metropolitan Museum) decor, Huyghe the exploration or, as in Kassel, the local of a method that lets the work plants. The starting point is the develop organically from a situation of a place, to which place, thus being situated his works literally enter into a there. In their work, both rooted connection. succeed in evoking the feeling From an art historical of somehow relating differently perspective, the concept of to the idea of art—even though the “situated artwork” can be one cannot put one’s finger on pinned down in three historical this relation. Therein lies their steps: The pre-modern, non- risk, one could say, and their autonomous artwork exists aesthetic quality. embedded in architecture, in Untilled is the first ritual and in ceremonies. It is work from Huyghe in which situated, but in a rigid and fixed this situatedness of the artwork manner. Like the altarpiece, is fully formed and hints at say, which has a fixed and the ontological level—in the unalterable place in the altar sense of an artwork in which or in an established religious artistic and organic/biological ceremony. In contrast, the processes of giving shape modern, autonomous artwork are so interlocked that it is mobile and flexible. The remains a work of art without forms of its inclusion (such as a stable form, and is pervaded in a museum) are structurally by contingency down to its open and variable, and will become—as we see from itself, and the key driver is looking at the development of separation from handed-down, museum and exhibition spaces fixed, and rigid ties. The in the nineteenth and twentieth paradigm of the autonomy of centuries—more and more the artwork reflects a belief variable. The museum of the in the productivity of these nineteenth century presents dynamics of separation—just itself as a decorated space as the whole history of that is densely filled with tightly individualization could be hung paintings. The white cube told by way of the steadily of the late-twentieth century increasing distance between appears in comparison as an the artworks in the museum. emptied, quasi-disconnected If one describes the “situated space, in which the artworks artwork“ as an attempt can be put, almost free- to develop an ontology floating, into new, always of art of the twenty-first changing interrelations. century (prefigured in some These processes do artistic tendencies of the not take place independently twentieth), as a concept of of societal developments. work that integrates both On the contrary: the elements—embeddedness historic moment in which and flexibility—in its distinct the altarpiece leaves the double structure (on one context of the altar and the hand, situated, on the other, church in order to become also being work), it could an exhibited artwork in a also produce a relationship museum corresponds to the to societal processes. Here, transition from pre-modern, we would look for situated feudal-aristocratic societies ties that are not rigid. Without into structurally more open it ever becoming an explicit and liberal social orders. theme, a search for balance is Exaggerating somewhat, inscribed in these works that one could say that the aims to connect the displaced, change to the altarpiece—its the more flexible—thus a disconnection from a closed formative individual and cosmology and insertion collective experience of the into a structurally more twentieth century—with new open one—carries the whole forms of contextualization and modern paradigm within integration without lapsing

9 von Hantelmann ——— From Exhibiting... into rigid modalities that, increasingly also as both in a sense, fall behind the an individual and societal achievements of modernism problem, throws up—probably and modernity. The liberties for each of us—very practical that modernity brought with it questions of how to establish go along with the dissolution ties that are lasting but not of ties in all areas of life. rigid. To arrive, aesthetically, at That this has for some time a calibration, a balance—that is been seen and experienced the search that is inscribed in not only as liberating, but the “situated artwork.”

1 For a detailed Egenhofer, Inge Hinter- Clarendon Press, 1975), analysis see Michael waldner and Christian p. 807. Lüthy, “Das falsche Spies, Paderborn 2012, 3 Daniel Buren in Bild. Robert Smithsons pp. 279-281. conversation with verworfene Erstversion 2 Georg Wilhelm , in: der Spiral Jetty”, in: Friedrich Hegel, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Was ist ein Bild? Aesthetics: Lectures on Interviews, Milan 2003, Antworten in Bildern, Fine Art, vol. 2 (Oxford: p. 130. ed. by Sebastian

10 11 von Hantelmann ——— From Exhibiting... Dorothea von Hantelmann is an exhibitions as ritual spaces in which art historian and curator, based in fundamental values and categories Berlin. She was documenta Professor of modern, liberal and market based at the Art Academy/University of societies historically have been, Kassel where she lectured on the and continue to be practised and history and meaning of documenta. reflected. She is author of How Her main fields of research are to Do Things with Art, a book on contemporary art and theory as performativity within contemporary well as the history and theory art and co-editor of Die Ausstellung. of exhibitions. She is currently Politik eines Rituals [The Exhibition. working on a book that explores art Politics of a Ritual].

12 13 von Hantelmann ——— From Exhibiting... November 16 ––‑–‑––18 2016 Institute of Contemporary Art Miami Free and open to the public 4040 NE 2nd Ave, Miami, FL 33137 City’s incubators Written by the body: on body, gesture, marks, and space Let’s get deep: the space of the systemic Imaging me and you: on image and performativity Intimacy with the cosmos: on ecologies of the non-body Bi-annual series of public conversations and written contributions

Fall Semester Odalis Valdivieso, Angela Valella, Felice Grodin, Antonia Wright, Marcos Valella Edition/Translation Yamilet Ramírez Artistic Director Andreas Töpfer www.fallsemester.org