Nancy Holt’s Sun Tunnels • Sam Dunscombe Performance
April 10th, 2022, at Bread & Salt
1955 Julian Ave., San Diego, CA 92113
Doors: 7:30pm, Screening: 8pm
$10 Admission / Members Free / $5 Beers / Cash + Venmo
Space Time is pleased to present an evening that draws from the majesty and scale of the desert, with a screening documenting the creation of Nancy Holt's Sun Tunnels and a performance of new music from Sam Dunscombe which incorporates tape and field recordings from the Mojave Desert. The evening will begin with an introduction of Sun Tunnels from PhD candidate Allison Evans.
Sun Tunnels
Nancy Holt
(1978, 26:31 min, color, sound, 16 mm film on HD video)
Sun Tunnels documents the making of Holt's major site-specific sculptural work in the northwest Utah desert. Completed in 1976, the sculpture features a configuration of four concrete tubes or "tunnels" that are eight feet long and nine feet in diameter. The tubes are positioned to align with the sunrise and sunset of the summer and winter solstices, and are also pierced by holes that allow light to be cast in patterns of constellations. A kind of American Stonehenge, Sun Tunnels charts the yearly and daily cycles of the sun, and calls attention to human scale and perception within the vast desert landscape. This document includes stunning footage of the changing sun and light as framed by the tunnels on the solstices.
Editorial Assistance: Dee Dee Halleck, Aline Lillie Mayer, Laurel Siebert, Howard Silver. Camera Assistance: Sidney Crandall, Trent Harris, Richard Menzies, Dennis Wheeler. Sound Assistance: Dee Dee Halleck, Judith Hallet, Hass Murphy, Susan Penner-Wheeler.
Courtesy Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), New York, NY.
Nancy Holt
(1978, 26:31 min, color, sound, 16 mm film on HD video)
Sun Tunnels documents the making of Holt's major site-specific sculptural work in the northwest Utah desert. Completed in 1976, the sculpture features a configuration of four concrete tubes or "tunnels" that are eight feet long and nine feet in diameter. The tubes are positioned to align with the sunrise and sunset of the summer and winter solstices, and are also pierced by holes that allow light to be cast in patterns of constellations. A kind of American Stonehenge, Sun Tunnels charts the yearly and daily cycles of the sun, and calls attention to human scale and perception within the vast desert landscape. This document includes stunning footage of the changing sun and light as framed by the tunnels on the solstices.
Editorial Assistance: Dee Dee Halleck, Aline Lillie Mayer, Laurel Siebert, Howard Silver. Camera Assistance: Sidney Crandall, Trent Harris, Richard Menzies, Dennis Wheeler. Sound Assistance: Dee Dee Halleck, Judith Hallet, Hass Murphy, Susan Penner-Wheeler.
Courtesy Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), New York, NY.
Outside Ludlow / Desert Disco is the first major solo release from Australian performer-composer Sam Dunscombe, now based in Berlin after residing for the past decade in San Diego and Tokyo. A virtuoso clarinettist who has performed in composed and improvised settings with artists such as Cat Lamb, Klaus Lang, Pierluigi Billone, and Taku Sugimoto, Sam’s practice also embraces computer music, lo-fi electronics and field recordings, in addition to her long-term commitment to archiving, studying and performing the work of Romanian spectralist composer Horatiu Radulescu.
This long-form work began with a chance encounter in a specific geographic location: exploring California’s Mojave desert with a friend, Sam made the unlikely discovery of a tangle of quarter-inch tape snared on a cactus. The digitised version of this tape, variously edited and processed, forms the structural core of this performance, together with Sam’s own transcription and embellished performance of some of its material on Hammond organ. To this, Sam adds synthesis both analogue and digital (employing a digital synthesis technique of her own devising, “mass plasma synthesis,” based on the theoretical writings of Horatiu Radulescu). Far from any kind of documentary approach, this composition rather poses an open commentary on the violent processes of mining, militarism, and manifest destiny that have moulded and scarred the deserts of Southern California over the past 150 years.
This long-form work began with a chance encounter in a specific geographic location: exploring California’s Mojave desert with a friend, Sam made the unlikely discovery of a tangle of quarter-inch tape snared on a cactus. The digitised version of this tape, variously edited and processed, forms the structural core of this performance, together with Sam’s own transcription and embellished performance of some of its material on Hammond organ. To this, Sam adds synthesis both analogue and digital (employing a digital synthesis technique of her own devising, “mass plasma synthesis,” based on the theoretical writings of Horatiu Radulescu). Far from any kind of documentary approach, this composition rather poses an open commentary on the violent processes of mining, militarism, and manifest destiny that have moulded and scarred the deserts of Southern California over the past 150 years.
Allison Olivia Evans is an artist and theorist in the Art History, Theory, Criticism and Art Practice Ph.D. program at UCSD. She graduated with her MFA in Studio Art from the University of Notre Dame in 2015. Researching the phenomenology of light, vitalist thought, New Materialism, and photographic histories, Evans generates experiential works that stress both the importance of embodiment and of nonhuman vitalities.
She has received awards and scholarships including the Redux Contemporary Art Center’s Award for Photography, the ISLA Graduate Student Research Award and the University of Notre Dame’s Outstanding Graduate Student Teaching Award. She has presented her research internationally and was named the Philip C. Curtis Artist-in-Residence at Albion College in 2017. In the winter of 2019, she was invited to participate in the Nancy Holt Scholar’s Day at Dia Art Foundation. Most recently, her work was featured in HereIn.
She has received awards and scholarships including the Redux Contemporary Art Center’s Award for Photography, the ISLA Graduate Student Research Award and the University of Notre Dame’s Outstanding Graduate Student Teaching Award. She has presented her research internationally and was named the Philip C. Curtis Artist-in-Residence at Albion College in 2017. In the winter of 2019, she was invited to participate in the Nancy Holt Scholar’s Day at Dia Art Foundation. Most recently, her work was featured in HereIn.