Nancy Holt

Sun Tunnels

Sun Tunnels documents the making of Holt's major site-specific sculptural work. Completed in 1976, the sculpture features a configuration of four concrete "tunnels" 8 feet long and 9 feet in diameter.

Utah Sequences

The film explores the environment—manmade and natural—at Rozel Point on the north arm of Great Salt Lake. The film captures wood cabins, an amphibious vehicle, and remnants of oil drilling that have largely disappeared from the site today, but the tar seeps and salt-encrusted pelicans so present in this film remain a constant at the site.

Swamp

The action of the film is direct: Holt walks through the tall grasses of a swamp while filming with her Bolex camera, guided only by what she can see through the camera lens and by Smithson's verbal instructions. The viewer experiences the walk from Holt's point of view, seeing through her camera lens and hearing Smithson's spoken directions. Vision is obstructed and perception distorted as they stumble through the swamp grasses.

Zeroing In

Positioned in an elevated vantage point, Holt uses five apertures in a black board set before the camera to slowly reveal a controlled, abstracted view of an urban landscape. Discussing this New York vista with Ted Castle, Holt strategically transforms passive reception into an interactive exchange.

Underscan

In Underscan, time and the visual image are compressed. A series of photographs of my Aunt Ethel's home in New Bedford, MA had been videotaped, and re-videotaped while being underscanned. (The underscanning device is a structural framework particular only to video; it compresses the picture so that the edges can be seen precisely; it does away with the variation that occurs between monitors in the amount of the image which is visible.) Because of this underscanning process, each static photo image, as it appears, changes from regular to elongated to compressed or vice versa. Excerpts from letters from my aunt spanning 10 years are condensed into 8 minutes of my voice-over audio. Certain yearly occurrences repeat in an auditory rhythm, coinciding with the cycle of yearly changes.

Boomerang

Originally broadcast on public television in Amarillo, TX, Richard Serra’s BOOMERANG features Nancy Holt framed in a medium shot with a pair of headphones on her ears. We observe her as she speaks and then hears her words relayed back to her through a delayed transmission. Remarkably eloquent for one caught in such a feedback loop, Holt provides a monologue on experiencing time, thought, and oneself through technology. She remarks, “I have a double take on myself. I am once removed from myself … we are hearing and seeing a world of double reflections and double refractions.”

Pine Barrens

Pine Barrens is concerned with evoking through film a barren wilderness in south-central New Jersey. The camera is always in motion — tracking, pivoting, and walking through the landscape. Though they are never seen in the film, the voices of the local people, the 'Pineys,' are heard relating their feelings about the land, their attitudes about city life, their myths of the area, etc. their voices and the music of 'Bill Patton's Pine Barrens Trio' add a psychological dimension to the landscape.

Mangrove Ring

Mangrove Ring features a sculpture Smithson created in the ocean using mangrove seedlings while traveling in Florida. Off the coast of Summerland Key Smithson planted a ring of mangroves with the intent to grow an island over a three-year period.