
Nancy Holt, "Underscan" (1974)
We locate ourselves in various ways: phenomenologically we understand our bodies within our surroundings, cartographically we measure our position on the earth, imaginatively we locate ourselves in relation to places we call home as much as those we have never visited. Much of Nancy Holt’s work pays close attention to these interlinked processes of locating. Holt’s 1974 video Underscan brings to the fore the act of imaginative location, and its ties to family and care. This act of locating had a lasting impact on her practice.
Holt described the complex tape concisely in a short text published in the Autumn 1974 issue of Art-Rite, an art world newspaper published in New York: