On choosing a site

"And then I select the site. There's no criteria; just how the material hits my psyche when I'm scanning it. But it's a kind of low level scanning, almost unconscious. When you select, it's fixed so that randomness is then determined. It's determined in uncertainty. At the same time, the fringes or boundaries of the designation are always open. They're only closed on the map, and the map serves as the designation. The map is like a key to where the site is and then you can operate within that sector."

Robert Smithson. 1979.

Originally published: The Writings of Robert Smithson, edited by Nancy Holt, New York, New York University Press, 1979.