Phyllis Baldino’s Sun Tunnels: May 19, 2007 is an intimate, unscripted document of artist Nancy Holt’s return to her earthwork Sun Tunnels (1973–76) in the Great Basin Desert of northwestern Utah, made on a trip organized by art historian Alena J. Williams while she was writing Sightlines, her book-length study of Holt’s work. Shot entirely off the cuff, with no advance planning, sparked by Holt’s immediate assent in the van en route, the tape stands as a rare primary record of Holt revisiting and reflecting on the sculpture more than thirty years after its completion. Comprising four concrete cylinders arranged in an X-formation and aligned with the sunrise and sunset of the summer and winter solstices, Sun Tunnels remains one of the most enduring works of 1970s land art. Baldino’s camera stays close as Holt describes the perfect circle of light formed when the sun lines up with one of the apertures. At one point, an inscription at the site is pointed out: the work is “more effective than all of NASA’s technology put together.” Holt appears here as both witness and subject, an artist reflecting on her own work, decades after making it.

Nancy Holt