Commemorating Nancy Holt: The Swift, Swallow and Martin Tunnels

 The Swift, Swallow and Martin Tunnels

While visiting Amarillo, Texas, in 1973 Nancy Holt conceived the idea of an artwork which became known as the Sun Tunnels. Buying land in the Great Basin Desert, Utah, just a few miles from the Bonneville Salt Flats, she proceeded to flesh out her ideas and eventually create this crucial addition to Land Art. Northamptonshire wished to commemorate the 50^th anniversary of the creation by Nancy Holt of her Sun Tunnels and so commissioned a team of local artists to work with the academic and sciolist Buil de Onplezierig.

In selecting the land that she eventually bought, Nancy Holt was looking for an area of flat desert ringed by low mountains, obviously topographical features not readily available in Britain. Buil de Onplezierig therefore selected a site on a gently sloping field, typical of the English midlands.

To Holt the desert is an archetypal pared-down landscape projecting a sense of profound antiquity.  She writes about camping alone in the desert and sensing the passage of time, feeling the age of the site with the sun rising and setting for thousands of years over this same landscape. The Sun Tunnels were therefore aligned with the angles of the rising and setting of the sun on the days of the solstices, events that occur annually and eternally. Without the wide, open spaces available to Nancy Holt and uncertain weather conditions where the sun might be obscured on solstice days, Buil de Onplezierig considered alternative metaphors for the passage of time and chose to explore the movements of birds, more specifically, the wheel of annual avian migration. Considering a range of summer visitors such as warblers, flycatchers, nightjars and turtle doves, Buil de Onplezierig and the team selected Swifts, Swallows and Martins as quintessential summer visitors to this country. Spring marks the arrival of these birds and late summer their departure, and so it’s been for time immemorial.

There are many studies that test and prove the hypothesis that migratory birds use the earth’s electromagnetic field to navigate during their journeys in spring and autumn. This is no longer in doubt. Studies also suggest what the mechanisms are within the birds’ bodies that interpret the magnetic field and enable them to use it as a compass in their flight. In the study, “The importance of time of day for magnetic body alignment in songbirds”, printed in the Journal of Comparative Physiology and published on the 7^th January 2022, the researchers, Giuseppe Bianco, Robin Clemens Köhler, Mihaela Ilieva and Susanne Åkesson, conclude that, “- - results show that magnetic body alignment occurs prior to sunset, but shifts to a more northeast–southwest alignment afterwards.”

Based on this study and allowing that it is the biannual migration of birds that is being used to illustrate the passage of time, Buil de Onplezierig and the artistic team working on this project decide that the appropriate alignment for the Tunnels commemorating Nancy Holt’s Sun Tunnels should be northeast–southwest, and so this is how they have been laid out on site.

Northamptonshire has thus commemorated the 50^th anniversary of the genesis of the thinking that led Nancy Holt to create the Sun Tunnels. The official opening ceremony will be celebrated with wine and canapés when the first Swifts, Swallows or Martins arrive in the spring. Please contact the organisers for your invitation.