The piece was inspired by the recent excavation of a castle’s bastion that had been backfilled in the 16th Century to protect the city against Turkish invasions. Originally projected onto three walls of once buried chambers, the video shows super close-up images of sand, rocks and other particulates falling and tumbling into striated formations. In the gallery, the video is presented as a triptych which occupies a twelve foot tall wall, enveloping viewers with the larger than life images and sounds of the falling matter.
As with her other video works, the installation revolves around a narrative that speaks to principles of time and transformation. While it was originally conceptually tied to a specific time and place in Slovenia, in the gallery context, these universal themes are highlighted.
“The installation walks the line between anxiety and fear on one side and calmness and inevitability of change on the other,” the artist states. “Projections transform the space into constantly changing interplay of ever-mounting piles of rocks. Backfill does not just establish a plain correlation with today’s hostilities and crisis; I am interested in a trail. Sediment that is present here and now as a reminder of necessity for a change. Moving images of falling rocks and sand, creating layers, infinitely piling and disappearing, stir the thoughts about inevitable sediment-ing of not only matter, but of memories, experiences, time.”
Nataša Prosenc-Stearns earned her BA at Academy of Fine Arts in Ljubljana, Slovenia, where she began making her first video pieces, gradually expanding her practice towards installations, prints and films. In 1997 Nataša traveled to Los Angeles on a Fulbright Grant for her MFA in Film and Video at Cal Arts. She is a recipient of the Soros Grant and Durffee Foundation Grant; her work was shown at the 48th Venice Biennale, ARCO Fair in Madrid, Douloun Museum of Art in Shanghai, Tel Aviv Museum of Art in Israel, as part of the program of European Capital of Culture and in numerous venues and festivals in USA.