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Chalk-Mirror Displacement was made to appear in two sites concurrently
for
the exhibition when "Attitude Becomes Form" held at the Institute of
Contemporary Art,
London, September 26-October 27, 1969. This double nonsite amplifies
Smithson's idea
regarding his nonsites. Smithson has stated "What you are really
confronted
with in a Nonsite is the absence of the Site.. a ponderous and weighty
absence". The nonsite becomes an abstraction, a mapping source, which
references the real/actual site from which materials are taken.
Smithson
further states ".. I created a dialectic of site and nonsite. The
nonsite exists as a kind of deep three-dimensional abstract map that
points
to a specific site on the surface of the earth...designated by a kind of
mapping procedure". The indoor nonsite is a reflection of the
uncontrolled, uncontained outdoor site from which materials are
gathered.
The nonsite symbolically and physically reflects containment, order out
of
chaos, and a geographite place. In the instance of Chalk-Mirror
Displacement, by exibiting both works simultaneously they become a
double
reflection without hierarchy, which reinforces for the viewer notions of
displacement, place and time.
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