Arboreal Analysis: Towards a Site-Responsive Approach in Analysing Site-Specific Art

The article proposes a way of ecologising the analytical lens for environmental site-specific artworks by responding more closely to the conditions of their sites. It emerges from the observation that environmental art is often evaluated primarily through the lens of impact, particularly in cultural policy and everyday criticism, thereby reinforcing quantitative evaluative frameworks. The article first critically examines this tendency by mapping two evaluative oppositions, aestheticist and solutionist. The former responds to the idea of art’s intrinsic value, while the latter emphasises its instrumental value. Both, however, tend to separate the artwork from its site. In response, the article proposes an arboreal analysis, inspired by Manuela Infante’s plant-based dramaturgy and developed through an analysis of Neja Tomšič’s storytelling walk, Untangling a Garden III, part of a long-term research on Rafutski Park. Through three analytical categories, rooting, branching and entangling, the approach understands the artwork as deeply conditioned by and intertwined with its site, thereby challenging the dualistic division between artwork and environment as well as drawing on Donna Haraway’s concept of natureculture. The arboreal analysis raises the question of the mobility or transportability of site-specific works through the lens of commodification, highlighting it as a key category for understanding the complex ecological and production conditions in which the artworks operate today.