From Site Specific To Contextual Art

The twenty-first century has seen a flourishing of different spatial practices emergingfrom various preceding styles of site-specific art.New practices have taken methods fromother discplines including geography,anthropology,architecture and landscape design.Instead of looking towards other disciplines,I attempt to trace the historical evolution ofsite-specific art from minimalism,institutional critique,public art,relational aesthetics:and performance,in order to identify what a type of "situated art." Borrowing the term of"situated" from Donna Harraway,I try to create a set of defining charactersics for this new style of art that seems to be a common trait amongst many artists across varius fields.In this paper I analyze the works of James Turrell,Forensic Architecture,Renzo Martens,Theaster Gates,Tino Sehgal and Janet Cardiff to come up with a set of definingcharacteristics to identity and distinguish "situated art" from other forms of spatial:practice.I argue that projects which create which merges the site of ideation,the site of:production,and the site of exhibition in a physical,conceptual or temporal method can be considered "situated art."...