Chapter

The Barker Topos

EXCERPT

As I understand it, early site-specific works sought to recuse the conception of the art object as an autonomous unity containing its meaning within its own confines, and therefore disposed to be exhibited in multiple contexts without affecting that meaning. To disrupt this idealism, the site-specific object glues itself to its surroundings, or rather devises a way to manifest its already-effective contextual sitedness, in such a way as to render perceptible the conditions of its making, of its being legitimated as art, and of its exhibition, along with the systems of circulation within which these conditions are effective…