Friday Film Screening on Sep 6—Robert Smithson's "Spiral Jetty"

In celebration of the upcoming livestream event From Dawn till Dusk:an online encounter between two earthworks by Robert Smithson on September 10th, we are hosting two special Friday Film screenings.

We begin on Friday September 6 with an online screening of Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty (1970), which will be available to stream online for 24 hours starting at 12pm Mountain Time (8:00pm Central European Time).

Smithson described the thirty-five-minute film as “a set of disconnections, a bramble of stabilized fragments taken from things obscure and fluid, ingredients trapped in a succession of frames, a stream of viscosities both still and moving.”  The original 16mm film of Spiral Jetty was recently re-digitized by The Museum of Modern Art, New York in partnership with Holt/Smithson Foundation; this will be the first digital screening of this beautiful new 2024 scan.

The Friday Films will be made available through Holt/Smithson Foundation’s Vimeo—the link will be made available on this page starting at 12pm Mountain Time on Friday September 6.

From Dawn till Dusk will present a special livestream conversation on Tuesday September 10 between two iconic earthworks by Robert Smithson: from first light at Spiral Jetty, located  at the Great Salt Lake in the state of Utah, and concluding with last light at Broken Circle/Spiral Hill located in Emmen in Netherlands. Learn more on our website.

We will continue on Friday the 13th with Nancy Holt’s film Breaking Ground: Broken Circle/Spiral Hill (1971/2011), which combines 16mm footage Holt shot with Smithson during the construction of the earthwork with material gathered for the 40th anniversary of the earthwork in 2011 to create a portrait of Broken Circle/Spiral Hill and its unique surroundings.

Robert Smithson, Spiral Jetty [still] (1970)
16mm film
Color, sound
Duration: 35 minutes
© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York
Distributed by Electronic Arts Intermix, New York

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Films by Holt and Smithson on view at The Museum of Modern Art

Three films by Nancy Holt and Robert Smithson are currently on view at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, in collection gallery 411 of the David Geffen Wing. This presentation focuses on Spiral Jetty (1970), Swamp (1971), and Sun Tunnels (1978). Newly restored scans of the first two works are presented as part of a collaboration between Holt/Smithson Foundation and MoMA to preserve their moving-image work.