The Functional Site

Meyer, James. “The Functional Site: or, The Transformation of Site-Specificity,” in Space, Site, Intervention: Situating Installation Art, ed. Erika Suderberg, Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis Press, 2000, 23-37.


James Meyer is an Associate Professor of Art History at Emory University in Atlanta. His research interests relate to institutional critique and site-oriented installation. In his essay, “The Functional Site: or, The Transformation of Site-Specificity,” he discusses two notions of site. The ‘literal’ site as described by Joseph Kosuth as ‘insitu; it is an actual location, a singular place.’(1) In contrast the ‘functional’ site that does not privilege place. The ‘functional’ is an informational and allegorical site. Its exploration of the ‘expanded’ site broadens its scope of enquiry. According to Craig Owens, ‘it has a chain of signifiers’ which add meanings or a fabric of illusions.(2) This expanded institutional critique of the ‘functional’ site can be anywhere in culture and can occupy all available space. It is not tied to a particular place. The ‘functional’ site discussed by Meyer makes a connection with Geoff Parks ‘Theatre Country’.(3) Discussion centres on nature as scenery. In art, literature or theatre, the perceptual experience available to the viewer depends upon the preoccupations of the viewer. It relies on construction by the viewer for establishing the way of looking, as discussed by Park, where the landscape becomes art whether framed like a painting or set like a stage. Seeing is not natural, but is a cultural construction from social discourse in the viewer’s memory, imagination and historical experience.

Much contemporary art occupies the ‘functional’ site. Ann Shelton, a New Zealand artist has a series A Kind of Sleep that documents sites of historical significance in the Taranaki region. The Auckland Art Gallery has Sleeper, Lucy’s Gully, Taranaki, 2004 in the current exhibition of Earth Matters. The photographic image and its corresponding title provide a chain of signifiers to events, places and people. The photograph of Lucy’s Gully is a place available only to perception in the viewer. It is set like a colonialist native landscape with a dirt track. Like nineteenth century landscapes it is dark, misty and empty of people so it has a connection to sites elsewhere in art and literature, in the nineteenth century. The title of the work refers not only to a person, Lucy Stevens but also to the Maori land wars in the 1860’s in the region. Lucy Stevens who was born in the area in the 1820’s became known as the ‘Queens Maori’ during the Taranaki Wars as she backed the government against the HauHau.(4) It is now a picnic site where a German tourist was brutally murdered in 2007. Sleeper, Lucy’s Gully, Taranaki, 2004 is an informational and allegorical site that has a chain of signifiers that are dependent on the viewer for construction. Park concludes a scene is never but theatre, making a connection with Meyer and the work of Shelton, that it is about the way we look, and this ‘functional’ site is unique to the viewer and their own historical experience and imagination.

(1) Meyer, James. “The Functional Site: or, The Transformation of Site-Specificity,” in Space, Site, Intervention: Situating Installation Art, ed. Erika Suderberg, Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis Press, 2000, 24.
(2)Meyer, James. “The Functional Site: or, The Transformation of Site-Specificity,” in Space, Site, Intervention: Situating Installation Art, ed. Erika Suderberg, Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis Press, 2000, 30.
(3)Park, Geoff. "Theatre Country", in Theatre Country: Essays on landscape and whenua, Wellington: Victoria Press, 20006, 113-127.
(4)http://www.pukerakiki.com/en/stories/tangataWhenua/lucystevens.htm. Updated 6 June 2008