1. This is another assignment I just want to get submitted before I go on holiday so that I can return to it and reflect further on the themes when I have time. I have not had time to dig as much into ‘Place’ and ‘Politics’ as I would like. But I feel for my progress I need to move on through this quite theoretical module that has had a lot of reading and researching in. I have bought the Tacita Dean book ‘Art works: Place’ to read on my holiday next week. So, I will add more here then.
   
   2. ‘Place is Political’. See forum post

3. Place and Time are related in so many of the works in the course so far. Going back to the Spiral Jetty which I considered earlier on in the course. This is a good example of how time and place are both shown in the piece. The place for the Spiral Jetty was chosen specifically due to its industrial nature. There are constant reminders of the place it is situated in Smithson’s film about the jetty. It brings in the politics of that place too, the politics of human destruction of the planet which seem even more relevant in today’s age.

The time when the Spiral Jetty was created is interesting in terms of a cultural perspective. Mankind was exploring space and 1968 brought the famous Earth Rise photo. The emergence of this photo showed the world in a way it had probably not been viewed previously, like an oasis in a dark place and it inevitably changed humans’ perception of the planet. 1968 was a very turbulent year, it saw the assassinations of both Martin Luther King and Robert F Kennedy which sparked large scale protests. In response to the political activism and alongside the emerging environmental movement, land art sprung into life.

Reflection

Reading back on the post I wrote on the Spiral Jetty as part of this has made me realise how much more I used to write and how excited I was by works of art. When I compare these last two modules I have lost some of that enthusiasm. This is down to being ill and then tiredness and I am hoping a complete week off next week will renew my enthusiasm to complete the course as I still very much want to.