In Site

Some Selected Quotes From One Of Heimo Zobernig’s Little Dictionaries (Ordered Alphabetically By Author)

Radically seen, an artist who works in the public space must aim for the point at which his work as such is no longer noticeable. Jean-Christophe Ammann

In the museum, we are immediately and automatically confronted, spiritually, culturally, and palpably, with beauty. In the street, ugliness lurks at every step. Daniel Buren

Today at any rate, art and architecture could have a critical relationship. The artist comes afterward and starts doing something unforeseen to the building. Hermann Czeck

Does it make sense to go out into public space with art, after the nineteenth-century monument has lost its meaning and abstract modern outdoor sculpture, which arouses the ire of passersby, has been branded as the ‘invasion from the studio’? Walter Grasskamp

Descartes noted that the city in which one lives has grown over history. It is not built according to a unified plan, and therefore is necessarily imperfect; it cannot simply be completely torn down in order to build a new, sensible, perfect, methodically built city on the same location. Boris Groys

The work is not put in a place, it is that place. Michael Heizer

Has public art mutated to a kind of social program? Is it entangled in the business of supporting conservative city policies and helping the real estate market to increase the value of older areas? In the many community-oriented projects of the last few years, aren’t artists finding themselves playing the role of educators again, who as ‘preachers of aesthetics,’ help to hide the real power relations in the social spaces? Miwon Kwon

The very condition that allows art to come into being — the sites of its display, circulation, and social functionality, its address to spectators, its position in systems of exchange and power — are themselves subject to profound historical shifts. W.J.T. Mitchell

Does art that wants to do good do good? Is it fair to expect work to be social work as well as art work? And does art in the public interest really interest the public? Arlene Raven

Actually everything that’s of any importance takes place outside the room. But the room reminds us of the limitations of our condition. Robert Smithson

David Pestorius, TURRBAL–JAGERA: The University of Queensland Art Projects 2006, Brisbane, forthcoming.

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