jamin j.

doyle Professor Mikulay HER V214 February 1, 2010

Spaces and Places;

Galleries and Museums etc.

Any given situation you are in is a sort of constructed reality, one such that has been created for you or rather you create for yourself. In reality it is all an allusion, or otherwise the practice of making references to the individuals past present and future. Some might argue that this is an illusion, what is reality if each of our own individual perspectives are, in fact, invariably di!erent. In the end it comes down to an internal hegemony or perhaps a hierarchy of morals, values, inuences and agendas that determine our outlook on life. In truth, these are an ever so elusive allusion to illusions; a set of illusions we subscribe to that construct our own individual separate reality. Were it not for art, how else would we challenge the heretical hegemony in the social milieu without art as a means to generate these societal memes? In the book titled Situation a series of collected works documenting contemporary art edited by Claire Doherty, we see a variety of published authors notes that speculate as to what concepts they feel constitute space, place, situation, gallery and museums in terms of art. The topics range from how to write about art in context, "site-writing" as well as dilemmas concerning, installation, limitation, site, non-site, and alternative space. In the rst chapter, artists and authors Robert Morris, Robert Smithson, Francis Als and Robert Irwin all discuss the physical, ephemeral, momentous, temporal state of art, being, and situation. Similarly, art and the making of it in situ plays a signicant role in dening space, place, situation and circumstance in our culture and the history of it in our society. If space is: a continuous area or expanse that is free, available, or unoccupied, a place is: a particular position or point in space, and a situation is: a set of circumstances in which one nds one self; a state of a!airs, whereas a circumstance is: a fact or condition connected with or relevant to an event or action, then what is an environment to museum and likewise, atmosphere to a gallery? It seems as though words like these give a particular meaning to places and certain situations that describe these set of circumstances. In the same way, when we are in these particular places we are expected either to behave or interact in kind. How then do we expect to think and act independently or as one cohesive whole if all our perspectives are invariably di!erent? Perhaps it might be that it is in these places where we are meant to explore our metaphysical limitations and breach the boundaries of the reality we construct for ourselves versus our naturally constructed reality. Space is to place what situation is to circumstance and museum is to gallery what environment is to atmosphere. Space is indicative of something public, and place is indicative of something private or personal; both have potential for the sacred and the profane. Although in certain circumstances there are clear distinctions between the two, however, in some other situations they are indenite. Robert Smithson names a few in his Dialetic of Site and Non-Site, open limits/closed limits; outer coordinates/inner coordinates; indeterminant certainty/ determinant certainty; reection/mirror; some place/ no place. Where as with Robert Irwin, he denes Being and Circumstance as Site Dominant, Site Adjusted, Site Specic and Site Conditioned/Determined. It seems as though Francis Als is more interested in memes and the milieu made from public action taken part in making a local history. On the other hand, Robert Morris is just as concerned with behavior in many di!erent situations if not under the same circumstances. In the same way as certain buildings are constructed for a particular purpose and people are to behave in them, likewise with many an installation or site creates history.