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Rating: 
Summary: one contention after another
Review: I find Kwon's book informative and insightful, especially as a practitioner working with installation and context-specific project, and with current development of contemporary theories particularly in mind. Kwon's geneological approach towards reading the development of site-specific work is impressive, obviously overlaid with cultural theory in her analysis. Although she has focused mainly on the perplexity of community-charged art projects at the later chapter, her delivery on spatial politics and the many other facets of the production of site-specific art is most valuable, especially with some useful terminology and concepts (in reading the progress of these practice). Reading the text in conjunction with few other similar books on the issue of space, site and art production, one could discern some of the common notions of criticality and urgency in addressing the unscrupulous co-option of mainstream institutional forces. No doubt, the text could post as both informative and also a challenge towards artistic production, itself in turn becomes a site of intervention as it suggest (and aim) for communal praxis in an (politically correct) age of 'glocalisation'.
Rating: 
Summary: One obscure word after another is more like it
Review: Miwon Kwon's writing is extremely wordy and very hard to grasp. You'll inevitably spend more time looking up her obscure vocabulary than actual reading. I found her writing hard to comprehend even after reading chapters multiple times. I'm a college level reader, and have experienced few problems understanding other art related readings. Her sentences are incredibly redundant and very hard to understand. Honestly, I would ONLY recommend this book to College Professors or anyone with a PHD; otherwise save your self the time and pass this one up. You'll be happy you did.
Rating: 
Summary: useful addition to the literature
Review: This book is a useful addition to the literature--a more comprehensive book that also looked at practices outside the USA is what is really needed. That's one of the major drawbacks of this book, it doesn't clearly indicate that it is tracing an American history of the idea of site-specificity. The first chapter provides a short history of site specificity from an American point of view (minimalism, conceptual art's critique of institutions) and draws heavily on James Meyer's idea of the functional site to think about the present, after that the book is a series of case studies. A better book for considering the range and history of site specific practices (which includes this book's first chapter and Meyer's essay) is Erika Suderburg's Space Site Intervention.
Rating: 
Summary: Art History for People Who Shop at Banana Republic
Review: UCLA Assistant Professor Miwon Kwon's scholarship is substandard and banal. She uses the same old art historians -- in fact, she seems to obsess over the (banal) writings of Hal Foster (her mentor/art-historical lover?); thus, she keeps her argument and book in a very closed circle (jerk), which is typical of her clique of art-historical friends and mentors.
Now, though the book may seem smart when one skims the pages of this well-designed book, on a closer/deeper reading, the book comes off as intellectually dull. It makes one wonder: Is this all the "second-wave Octoberists" have to offer -- talking to themselves and performing themselves as important and interesting figures within the field of art history?
So, to the reader reading this review, I would say ... buy the book if you want (it wont kill you and you may even disagree with me), but I would not expect anything exciting to come out of the reading, which good art-hitorical writing is supposed to do.
Indeed, for me, reading Kwon's first book is like shopping at Banana Republic ... everything looks and feels the same even though it's supposed to be new and different.
Well, welcome to an era of dull and repetitive art history where everything exciting is dumped out for a re-articulation of the same (Indeed, one place after another!).
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