my faux bookclub - the wrong place

Kwon, Miwon. “The Wrong Place”. Contemporary Art: From Studio to Situation. Ed. Claire Doherty. London: Black Dog Publishing. 2004 p. 31 – 41

In her essay, The Wrong Place, Miwon Kwon examines right and wrong place and the ideas of each. Using two projects, “Don DeLillio’s play Valparaiso and Fredrick Jameson’s telling ‘of a deliriously confounding spatial experience at the Westin Bonaventure Hotel in downtown Los Angeles.”(p34) “One could argue that throughout the twentieth century, the history of avant-garde or ‘advanced’ or ‘critical’ art practices can be described as the persistence of a desire to situate art in ‘improper’ or ‘wrong’ places. That is, the avant-garde struggle has in part been a kind of spatial politics, to pressure the definition and legitimation of art by locating it elsewhere, in places other than where it ‘belongs’.”(p40-41)

I like the idea of wrong place being ‘right’ or opening the avenues for self-realization as was the case in the DeLillio play. Putting jewellery in the ‘right place’ on the body, in public has somehow become wrong in the contemporary jewellery world. But large social overtures are also a current fad, literally taking the jewellery bench into the street. I am looking for a happy medium of wearing and experiencing with other people involved.