Melanie Smith, Spiral City, 2002. Photo courtesy Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth
Modern TV
Experience the Modern's film and video collection from home with our new program Modern TV, launching May 16. Every other Saturday at 7 pm, free screenings of videos by leading contemporary artists will be linked or livestreamed here. Though our galleries remain temporarily closed, we invite you to stay connected with us through our online resources and special events.
Robert Smithson, Spiral Jetty, 1970 and Melanie Smith, Spiral City, 2002
July 25, 7-10 pm CST
This installment of Modern TV brings together two distinct but connected filmic works in the Modern’s permanent collection: Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty, 1970, and Melanie Smith’s Spiral City, 2002.
Robert Smithson is best recognized for earthworks such as Spiral Jetty, 1970, a swirling 1,500-foot-long landmass comprised of rock, dirt, and salt that juts out from the shore into the Great Salt Lake. Known for disappearing and reappearing as the water level of the lake fluctuates, the work is a testament to the artist’s interest in environmental shifts and unstable situations—ideas that continue to have great urgency today. The film Spiral Jetty, a “portrait” of the monumental earthwork, is an artistic endeavor of its own identity. Featuring voiceovers by Smithson and juxtaposing the industrial violence of Spiral Jetty’s construction with the peaceful beauty of its surroundings, the film provides an ambivalent, disorienting perspective of the artist’s iconic work.
Melanie Smith’s Spiral City, 2002, is a response to Smithson’s Spiral Jetty earthwork and related film. Her video transforms a brief aerial journey above the streets of Mexico City into a meditation on history and modernity, time and space, order and chaos. Founded on an island in Lake Texcoco nearly 700 years ago, Mexico City has grown into one of the world’s most crowded and polluted urban areas. Filmed from a helicopter as it climbs in widening spirals, Spiral City confronts the city’s unending grid of streets and buildings. As Spiral Jetty testifies to the entropic processes of natural materials, Spiral City suggests that the urban environment is subject to crystalline-like patterns of growth and erosion.
Robert Smithson
American, 1938–1973
Spiral Jetty, Great Salt Lake, Utah, 1970
16 mm film on video, color, and sound; 35 minutes
Collection of the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth© Holt/Smithson Foundation, Licensed by VAGA at ARS, New York. Distributed by Electronic Arts Intermix, New York
Melanie Smith
British, born 1965
Spiral City, 2002
Single-channel video, projection; 5 minutes, 50 seconds
Collection of the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Museum purchase, The Friends of Art Endowment Fund
© Melanie Smith