Sun tunnels, Nancy Holt + Core, June Crespo, Maddi Barber

Dialogues with Larruak eta Izurrak:

• Sun tunnels, Nancy Holt, USA, 1978, 26’
• Core, June Crespo, Maddi Barber, 2022, 21’

We at the Tabakalera cinema wanted to schedule two screenings in dialogue with the exhibition  Larruak eta izurrak (Skins and Folds) curated by Laura Vallés. To do so, we had various conversations with the curator and, after sharing ideas and views, we developed a programme of two sessions comprised of different artists and filmmakers.

On one had is the first session comprised of two short films. The first is Sun tunnels (1978) from American artist Nancy Holt, who is known above all for her LandArt or sculpture work in public spaces, but also worked with other mediums such as film. “My films, videotapes, and book, also conceived of in a perceptual framework, are usually evocations of landscapes or displacements of places. Indications of space (through tracking, pans, aerial, and walking shots) and aspects of nature—sunlight patterns, billowing dust, water reflections—are caught visually and transported elsewhere via film through time, while the psychology of the place is disclosed through the local voices, sounds, and/or music in the sound tracks, or accompanying text.” (The artist’s statement for Video Data Bank, 1988.) 

On the other hand is a piece entitled Core (2022) created by sculptor June Crespo, who participated in the Larruak eta izurrak exhibition, and filmmaker Maddi Barber.

Synopsis:

Someone is sleeping.

A conveyor belt moves rocks in an underground location.

The rocks fall into a mouth-shaped hole.

Hands pierce a piece of cement.

Someone operates a control that grinds the rock.

In Core, we document the different states through which the material passes: rock, dust, liquid, and solid. Advancing between the surface of things and below them, we connect two apparently distant processes: hands that touch and manipulate the cement sculptures, and the rock extraction and transformation process in a quarry. It is the meeting and friction between materials that is in turn the result of the meeting and negotiation of two languages: sculpture and cinematography. 

June Crespo and Maddi Barber will be with us during the session, where we will talk with them about their own work and what happens with their piece when we see it together with the work of Nancy Holt. 

The second session will be held on 16 May, and will be dedicated to the film that Chantal Akerman made on Pina Bausch.