Site-writing

Book excerpt: The prominent cultural critic Mieke Bal defines the new discipline of 'art writing' as a fresh mode of criticism, which aims to 'put the art first'. Following this definition, "Site-Writing: The Architecture of Art Criticism" puts the sites of the critic's engagement with art first. The book puts into shape what happens when discussions concerning situatedness and site-specificity enter the writing of art criticism. The sites explored are the material, emotional, political and conceptual settings of the artwork's construction, exhibition and documentation, as well as those remembered, dreamed and imagined. Through five different spatial configurations - both psychic and architectural - "Site-Writing" explores artworks by artists as diverse as Jananne Al-Ani, Elina Brotherus, Nathan Coley, Tracey Emin, Christina Iglesias and Do-Ho Suh, aiming to adapt such psychoanalytic ways of working as free association and conjectural interpretation to art criticism.