Nancy Holt

EAI paid tribute to artist Nancy Holt (1938-2014) with a daylong celebration of her extraordinary film and video works. EAI screened twelve of Holt's moving-image pieces, which span the years 1968 to 2013, honoring her life through a daylong immersion in her work.

A pioneer of earthworks and land art, Holt is perhaps best known for her large-scale environmental sculptures and public art projects. Beginning in the late 1960s, Holt created a significant body of film and video works that explore perception and memory through experiments with point of view and process. Holt's early videos include some of the most important and iconic works in the medium. Among the pieces that were screened were pivotal videos such as Underscan (1976) and Revolve (1977), the evocative landscape film Pine Barrens (1975), and several key collaborations with Robert Smithson, including Swamp (1971) and East Coast West Coast (1969). Covering a span of forty-five years, the screening will include Holt's Mono Lake, which she originally recorded in 1968, as well as her final piece, the 2013 The Making of Amarillo Ramp.

ESSAY
CHECKLIST
EXHIBITION BROCHURE
INSTALLATION VIEWS
CONVERSATIONS AT DIA:BEACON: Nancy Holt, Joan Jonas, Anthony Ramos, and Paul Ryan with Lori Zippay
PRESS: New York Times, Frieze Magazine, Bullett
PHOTOS: Circa 1971 Gallery Talk with Lori Zippay, February 2012

Dia Art Foundation presented Circa 1971: Early Video & Film from the EAI Archive at Dia:Beacon, Riggio Galleries. Circa 1971 brought together 20 moving image works from EAI's collection of over 3,500 media artworks. Celebrating EAI's 40th anniversary, the exhibition was organized by guest curator Lori Zippay, Executive Director of EAI.

Circa 1971 included pieces by Vito Acconci, Eleanor Antin, Ant Farm, John Baldessari, Lynda Benglis, Shirley Clarke, Dan Graham, Nancy Holt and Robert Smithson, Joan Jonas, Gordon Matta-Clark, Nam June Paik, Raindance, Anthony Ramos, Carolee Schneemann, TVTV, Steina and Woody Vasulka, and others.

Taking the year of EAI's founding as its point of departure, the exhibition set in dialogue a series of diverse works created in and around 1971, which are linked by alternative artistic and activist impulses. Circa 1971 exposed the generative encounters among these artists and influences and initiates unexpected correspondences between seemingly disparate works.

Artists Nancy Holt, Joan Jonas, Anthony Ramos, and Paul Ryan joined EAI Executive Director Lori Zippay for a dialogue at Dia:Beacon on the generative artistic and political landscape that influenced the video art scene of the early 1970s. The four artists also discussed their works included in exhibition Circa 1971: Early Video & Film from the EAI Archive.

EAI participated in The NY Art Book Fair at MoMA PS1, organized by Printed Matter. EAI's project space, installed in MoMA PS1's basement vault, featured STAGED DIRECTIONS, a special ongoing program of early and recent videos by artists, including rarely seen works drawn from EAI's extensive archive. STAGED DIRECTIONS featured conceptual videos that involve rules, instructions, or tasks, incorporating the script or the instruction manual into the action and placing the artist's directions on stage and in front of the camera. The screening program included works by Vito Acconci, Cory Arcangel, John Baldessari, Lynda Benglis, Dara Birnbaum, VALIE EXPORT, Nancy Holt and Robert Smithson, Joan Jonas, Mike Kelley, Kristin Lucas, Kalup Linzy, Shana Moulton, Bruce Nauman, Dennis Oppenheim, Seth Price, Anthony Ramos, Martha Rosler, Carolee Schneemann, Stuart Sherman and Lawrence Weiner, among others.

On June 23rd, EAI's project space will launch with Character Witness, a program of videos by artists who take on the role of actor in their own narratives. Featuring a cross-generational group of artists, including Kalup Linzy, Alex Bag, Michael Smith, MICA-TV, William Wegman, Harry Dodge and Stanya Kahn, and Nancy Holt and Robert Smithson, these works also share a focus that resonates in the current economic and cultural climate: The irreverent investigation of the artist in relation to the art world and the art market.

In casting themselves in their own stories, the artists pursue a range of strategies, from playing or voicing a suite of multiple characters to performing alongside an ensemble cast or assuming fictionalized versions of themselves. Blurring the lines between narrative, performance and documentary, the artists take on these roles to critique, question, and satirize the systems around the marketing of the artist and the selling of their art.