Assessing Site-Specific Work When the Site Changes
A student creates a site-specific work for a school courtyard: a series of painted lines on the ground that align with the shadow of a tree at a specific hour. The work is documented in photographs and a short video for assessment. Two weeks before submission, the tree is removed for safety reasons. The shadows no longer fall as documented, and the painted lines now read as arbitrary marks. The student argues the work should be assessed as documented, since the intervention was real and the documentation is accurate. An assessor argues the work no longer exists as art and should be assessed as it currently appears.
1. Analyse how the panel should assess a site-specific work whose site has been altered before assessment.
Read the worked answer
The panel should assess the work as an intervention and its documentation, not as the current state of the site, provided the documentation is faithful.
Reasoning:
- Site-specific work is defined by its relation to a place and time. The student's intervention (lines aligned to a shadow at a specific hour) was real and was the artwork. Its dependence on a transient condition is a deliberate feature, not a defect.
- The removal of the tree is an external event, not an artistic decision by the student. Assessing the work by its current appearance would penalise the student for circumstances outside their control.
- Documentation is a legitimate component of ephemeral and site-specific practice. The photographs and video are the record of the work and should be assessed for their fidelity and their role in communicating the intervention.
- The assessor who says the work no longer exists is applying a medium-specific assumption (that art is a durable object) that does not fit site-specific practice.
Conclusion: assess the documented intervention, including the quality of the documentation as evidence, while noting that the work's transience was intrinsic.
2. The documentation consists of photographs and a short video. Explain what the panel should look for in the documentation to judge whether it faithfully represents the work.
Read the worked answer
The panel should judge the documentation on fidelity, completeness, and whether it communicates the work's relation to site and time.
What to look for:
- Fidelity: do the photographs show the lines and the shadow together, at the stated hour, so the alignment is visible? Are colours and scale accurate?
- Completeness: does the documentation show the work in context (the courtyard, the tree, the viewing position) rather than only close-ups of the lines? Site-specific work requires the site to be legible.
- Time: does the video capture the changing shadow, demonstrating the temporal condition the work depends on? A still photograph alone may not convey the alignment's dependence on a specific hour.
- Authorship: is it clear which decisions were the student's (line placement, colour, hour chosen) rather than incidental?
If the documentation meets these tests, it is a faithful record and can stand in for the work. If it is partial or misleading, the panel should credit the intervention but note the documentation's limits, since the record is what the assessor can actually evaluate.