Document Type
Article
Abstract
This paper frames the idea of "location" as a social construction and uses the concepts of nowhere, anywhere, and everywhere to throw into relief the mediated ideologies that come to us through various institutions, such as museums and the media. The artists I focus on expose these ideologies through their use of fictional, narrative interventions into locations and conflate them with notions of place.
I propose that 'the real' itself is a social construction which is made actual through mots d'ordre (order words) as defined by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. These words serve to create realities, declaring a change of state, and are most frequently used by 'the state.' This paper forms a shifting image of location citing examples from the worlds of art, religion, and the military-industrial complex. It further shows that location is always a more complex notion when interrogated. The artists cited here present location as something of a dream, a nightmare, a memory, or a joke. Ultimately, my interest in location relates to my own artistic practice, and I find this topic and these artists critical to understanding contemporary art practice and its social and ethical complexity as it relates to power.
Repository Citation
Farrow, Jonny. "Nowhere, Anywhere, Everywhere: Location as Fiction and Function." Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture vol. 15, no. 3, 2015, pp. 1–12. https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/reconstruction/vol15/iss3/6