a group of people standing inside a circle

Nancy Holt's "Going Around in Circles" featured in e-flux Film Staff Picks

We are happy to announce that e-flux Film has selected Nancy Holt’s Going Around in Circles (1973)  as the June 2024 edition of their monthly online series Staff Picks.

Going Around in Circles is an early video experiment by Nancy Holt. It explores focused perception, a central interest for Holt.  Holt worked on this video with curator and art critic Bruce Kurtz and his students, and the video was shot at Hartwick College in Oneonta, New York. Like Zeroing In, made the same year, Going Around in Circles developed from Holt’s Locators—sculptures she started making in 1971. Comprising industrial piping welded into a T-shape, the Locators are made to be viewed through with one eye to direct attention to the time-bound processes of vision to the limitations and manipulations and vision.

A board perforated with five circular holes was placed in front of the camera. These apertures are variously covered and uncovered and through the circle five subjects are seen moving between five points, following instructions to turn in circles. This recording was then watched by Holt, Kurtz, and the students. Their discussion of the experience of the performance, sharing how it is perceived on the ground and through the playback monitor, forms the soundtrack. 

Going Around in Circles will be available to stream via e-flux Film Staff Picks from June 1–30. Watch the film here.

Nancy Holt, Going Around in Circles [still] (1973)
Video
Black and white, sound
Duration: 15 minutes, 19 seconds
© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York
Distributed by Electronic Arts Intermix, New York and Video Data Bank, Chicago

Archived News

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Nancy Holt’s Project Files Digitized at the Archives of American Art

The papers of Nancy Holt and Robert Smithson are held at the Smithsonian Institution's Archives of American Art. This series documents more than 50 projects developed by Holt from the late 1970s to the late 1990s, offering insights into her working processes and the development of her ideas from initial conception through to completion.

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Soft Network Benefit Auction

We are pleased to participate in the Soft Network Benefit Auction, open on Artsy from September 23 until October 7, 2026. The auction brings together works in support of Soft Network and the Artist Foundations and Estate Leaders List (AFELL), an international network for artists and stewards of artists’ estates and legacies. Holt/Smithson Foundation has donated two rare works of art by Nancy Holt and Robert Smithson to the auction to help further this goal.