In this experimental film, Borden explores the dynamics among the members of a woman’s group. As she interviews people who know them, such as Joan Jonas, the group shoots ‘artistic’ scenes of themselves – but Borden feels they aren’t fully grappling with issues of sexuality and politics....
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.
Mono Lake is a document of a unique natural environment, a "home movie" of the artists' 1968 road trip, and an intimate view of three seminal figures in the earth art movement as they interact with the Western landscapes that are so central to their work.
East Coast, West Coast, Holt and Smithson's first collaborative experiment with video, takes the form of a humorous bi-coastal art dialogue. Joined by their friends Joan Jonas and Peter Campus, Holt and Smithson improvise a conversation based on opposing - and stereotypical - positions of East...
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...
Art in the Public Eye: The Making of Dark Star Park
2.51988HD
This piece documents the process behind the creation of Holt's major public art installation, Dark Star Park, in Arlington, Virginia. The park, which features giant concrete spheres and pipes, allows the visitor to reconsider the experience of space, earth and sky within an urban context. It also...
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.
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...
40 years after the completion of the work 'Broken Circle/Spiral Hill', the film that Robert Smithson was never able to finish due to his untimely death has been completed in collaboration between artist Nancy Holt and SKOR.
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...
Going Around in Circles is an early video experiment in which Holt explores perception and point of view. A board in which five circular holes have been cut has been placed in front of the camera. Through the holes, which are covered and uncovered, five subjects are seen moving between five points,...
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...
Shot on the roof of 799 Greenwich St., New York, Bob with Books is a short silent film by Nancy Holt on her husband, artist Robert Smithson, two years before he passed away.
Using multiple camera angles and minimal repetitions to modulate her friend David Wheeler's personal narrative of his battle with leukemia, Holt presents his physical illness as a site for metaphysical and aesthetic reflection. Holt's editing procedure both frees Wheeler's narrative and closes in...
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...
Up and Under is an impressive piece of land art designed by American artist Nancy Holt. Up and Under was completed in 1998. The tunnels included in Up and Under are aligned with the main compass directions, and the pools of water are called “the eyes of the earth” according to a custom of the...
The Making of Amarillo Ramp documents the construction of Robert Smithson's earthwork Amarillo Ramp. At age thirty-five, while photographing the site of the earthwork in progress, Smithson died in a small airplane accident, along with pilot Gale Ray Rogers and photographer Robert E. Curtin....
