U.S. 80 SOLO: Nebraska

In 1976, while driving on Interstate 80 from Salt Lake City to New York, Nancy Holt recorded U.S. 80 SOLO, an audio work intended for radio broadcast. I-80 is the second-longest interstate highway, spanning the entire country from west to east, beginning in San Francisco, California, and ending in Teaneck, New Jersey. At the time, the presence of recently constructed interstate highways (the result of the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956) and an increasingly car-centered population made long-distance journeys to destinations around the country more common.

In a steady, progressive narration, Holt describes the towns and sites that appear as her car rolls along the highway. She does not emphasize special destinations or major events, but rather the linear, cinematic unfolding of time as the car glides through space. The work captures the unique mental and physical space of being in a car alone and the ever-in-betweenness of the mind as it identifies, free-associates, and meanders through its own thoughts. In 1979, the Nebraska section of the work was broadcast on the radio by Fine Art Broadcast Service for A Space, Toronto, as part of the series Radio by Artists curated by artist/producer Ian Murray.

U.S. 80 SOLO was presented in the exhibition Sound as Sculpture at The Warehouse in Dallas, curated by Thomas Feulmer, accompanied by a publication available from our bookshop. Here it was presented as a radio broadcast in the parking lot.