Nancy Holt, Time Outs (1985)
Thirty-two inkjet prints on archival rag paper from original 35mm transparencies
18 x 27 in. (45.7 x 68.6 cm) each

images of a broadcast professional football game showing the grain of the television

Nancy Holt, Time Outs (1985)
Thirty-two inkjet prints on archival rag paper from original 35mm transparencies
18 x 27 in. (45.7 x 68.6 cm) each

1984—2014

Time Outs

Nancy Holt

1985

Thirty-two inkjet prints on archival rag paper from original 35mm transparencies

18 x 27 in. (45.7 x 68.6 cm) each

Nancy Holt experimented with many kinds of reproductive imagery and made significant contributions to the emerging realm of video art and photography. In Time Outs Holt brings together her interest in these two media through a photographic series and artist’s book, which captures television broadcasts of professional football games taken on 35mm black-and-white film. Like all games, football is played within a system of rules and actions marked out in space, and its live action is beamed into homes and public places across the globe. Holt’s artistic practice is rooted in conceptual art, which—like football—is based in distributed systems.

In 1985 Nancy Holt published the artist’s book Time Outs with the Visual Studies Workshop, Rochester, New York. The images seen in the photographic series are paired with texts consisting of commentary and interviews with the players in sports publications, which Holt sourced between 1982 and 1984. The closing statement—seen below—provides a personal note that reflects on the biased myths of who should be interested in what. Reading this today shows the changes in society over the past 40 years, while also highlighting the work that still needs to be done.

On a personal, biographical level, this book comes out of my interest as a youngster in watching sports on television. Between the ages of eleven and fourteen I was a TV baseball addict, avidly devouring statistics past and present—batting averages, pitching records, numbers of home runs, etc. Being a good softball player, and being more knowledgeable about baseball than the boys and my father and his friends, caused much confusion, with my parents worrying over the “masculine” direction that their daughter’s life was taking. At that time I was a Yankee fan and lived in northern New Jersey, not so far from Yankee Stadium. But in an effort to save me from my tomboy tendencies, my father refused for years to take me to the ballpark. This, of course, was quite devastating to me, and certainly no cure for my video-sports habit, which was somehow begrudgingly allowed. Years later my father apologized for this, considering it one of his greatest paternal errors. In a way, this book may begin to turn that error around.

Nancy Holt

Time Outs, Visual Studies Workshop, Rochester, New York, 1985.

Time Outs

Related Info

See Also