The tablecloth had been taken out the previous year for a series of photographs, used in the showing at CL2 (see Appendix K). The idea for CL3 of non-siting the cloth was based upon this.
Challenging the ideas
One of three sources for performance in CL3 was intended to be based on Smithson’s
ideas of site and non-site, where something is re-sited away from its environment.
I used the example of Mark Dion who, at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992, transported a
square metre from the Amazon jungle into a gallery non-site, such that the material
of the jungle was re-visioned and perceived differently because of its setting.
Colleague Keith Orton and I asked the group to take the huge red and white tablecloth
plus other icons of our ‘dwelling’ (Ingold, 2000) beyond Caer Llan looking for interesting
sites in which it might be effectively non-sited. Behind this was an interest in how place
might reveal itself through a kind of ‘non-place’ (as in ‘non-site’, not Augé’s supermodern
‘non-place’, 1995). This idea was met with resistance. (Recommended viewing after this:
Dining room: breakfast installation)
(CL3: perfoming place)
