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

spiral jetty film still

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.

four wooden pillars sticking out of the earth with mountains in the background

Chapter Nine of Tuesday Texts

Throughout February 2026, we are publishing the ninth chapter of our Tuesday Text Series as part of our ongoing Scholarly Text Program, which invites thinkers to focus on a single artwork by Holt and/or Smithson. Developed as a tool for researchers at all stages, the Scholarly Text Program aims to publish two essays on each work, presenting differing opinions and approaches and drawing connections to topics that range from geology and ecology to poetry, architecture, public art, sculpture, drawing, film, philosophy, site, and

signage for an exhibition

"Nancy Holt: Light and Shadow Poetics" at the MAK Center for Art and Architecture, Los Angeles

What does it mean to notice how we see? "Nancy Holt: Light and Shadow Poetics" at the MAK Center at the Schindler House in Los Angeles offers an encounter where art and architecture shape perception together. This exhibition to brings Holt’s work into a responsive dialogue with the Schindler House, inviting visitors to experience art and architecture as partners in seeing.

a short typewritten text within a circle, with Nancy Holt's signature in the bottom right corner

Nancy Holt concrete poem on show in Paris at Centre Wallonie-Bruxelles

Nancy Holt started making art in 1966, and her first works took the form of concrete poems: artworks testing the structure, content, and form of language. A key concrete poem, "The World Though a Circle," from 1972 is currently on show in the exhibition Deep Fields at the Centre Wallonie-Bruxelles in Paris until March 23, 2026.