NATAŠA PROSENC STEARNS: MED TELESOM IN PROSTOROM IIII /

Nataša Prosenc Stearns: Med telesom in prostorom III

Nataša Prosenc Stearns is a filmmaker and video artist who works with a wide range of moving image production and presentation, from scriptwriting, filming and editing to spatial installations, video objects and prints. The exhibition of Nataša Prosenc Stearns' film and video oeuvre, entitled Between Body and Space, is a selection of her works comprising four programmes, and at the V-F-X Ljubljana festival, we will present the third one, Vertical Horizon. This series presents works that live double lives, as gallery installations and as film or video objects, with the dramaturgy in the installation happening through the visitor's movement through the space. Her works in the Vertical Horizon pro- gramme focus on the body's materiality, which begins to disintegrate into parts, merge with other bodies into indistinct masses through the multilayering of images, and dissolve into basic elements, with water predominating in her oeuvre.

Alongside the Cinematheque screening, a parallel programme of her works will be available online at the Slovenian Film Database (BSF, bsf.si), complementing the first three programmes.

Curated by: Vesna Bukovec, Robert Kuret

Crossing

Nataša Prosenc Stearns, USA/Slovenia, 2005, HD video, 16:9, colour, 5', no dialogue

A close-up of a face is covered with a layer of tracks of fire and water.

Subsurface

Nataša Prosenc Stearns, USA, 2016, HD video, 16:9, colour, 2', no dialogue

The mouth turns into a volcano/ crater, which in turn turns the whole body into an earth/planet.

Wishing Well

Nataša Prosenc Stearns, USA, 2015, HD video, 16:9, colour, 3', no dialogue

Wishing Well and Night Spring are video installations that show images of the human body's exterior and interior. They are beaming with a variety of pains and pleasures and walk the line between the real and the imaginary.

Night Spring

Nataša Prosenc Stearns, USA, 2015, HD video, 16:9, colour, 3', no dialogue

Wishing Well and Night Spring are video installations that show images of the human body's exterior and interior. They are beaming with a variety of pains and pleasures and walk the line between the real and the imaginary.

Border

Nataša Prosenc Stearns, Slovenia, 1996, Betacam video, 3:4, colour, 5',

no dialogue

The video focuses on the concept of skin, which is the borderline between the body and its surroundings.

Untitled/Torso

Nataša Prosenc Stearns, USA, 2016, HD video, 16:9, colouri, 3', no dialogue

Isolated from the rest of the body, several torso layers travel over the screen.

Torso: Place of the Game

Nataša Prosenc Stearns, Slovenia, 1994, video Betacam, 3:4, colour, 3', no dialogue

The back of a butoh dancer. We observe the movement of the human body, which transforms into a moving muscular mass, suggesting skeleton and tissue, playing with the sculptural model, with the organic and holistic quality of the human body and moving into the very structure of the skin and showing the exact structure of the body as a kind of ripple.

Methuselah and the Wooden Sky

Nataša Prosenc Stearns, USA, 2015, HD video, 16:9, colour, 3', no dialogue

Methuselah is one of the oldest living trees and grows 9800 ft above sea level in Bristlecone Pine Forrest in the Californian White Mountains. Together with other ancient pines in the forest, Methuselah survived over 4000 years. As centuries pass and the elements batter the trees, they become sculpted into astonishing shapes.

Misericorde

Nataša Prosenc Stearns, USA, 2023, HD video, 16:9, colour, 10', no dialogue

In the Middle Ages, a misericorde was a weapon to put a wounded knight out of his misery. As a theological term, it refers to forgiveness and compassion. The film inhabits the dreamscape of an insomniac, moving through a land of distorted mirrors, fluctuating boundaries, and uncertain identities.

Red Carpet

Nataša Prosenc Stearns, USA, 2015, HD video, 16:9, colour, 3', no dialogue

A Hollywood star poses for her fans – on a red carpet of her own making.

Disc

Nataša Prosenc Stearns, Slovenia, 1995, video Betacam, 3:4, colour, 3', no dialogue

People participate in mass rituals, primarily wars and the glorification of leaders, which are constant and universal documents of the world.

Going Where

Nataša Prosenc Stearns, USA, 2010, HD video, 16:9, colour, 2', no dialogue

The constant flow of travel.

The Noise Factor

Nataša Prosenc Stearns, USA, 2013, HD video, 16:9, colour, 3', no dialogue

In a way, the noise is produced in a physical ratio, created between intimate and public or closed and open spaces.

One Way

Nataša Prosenc Stearns, Slovenia, 1995, Betacam video, 3:4, 6', no dialogue

A man and a woman aim to fulfil their desire for power, beauty, supremacy and other similar human attributes.

Vertical Horizon

Nataša Prosenc Stearns, Slovenia, 1994, Betacam video, 3:4, black-white, 3', no dialogue

The figures never come from 'behind the walls' of the labyrinth; we can only hear the sound of their fleeting steps.

Run City

Nataša Prosenc Stearns, USA, 2017, HD video, 16:9, colour, 3', no dialogue

The silhouette of the male figure is in the rhythm of a steady stream.

Nightmares of the New World

Nataša Prosenc Stearns, USA, 2017, HD video, 16:9, colour, 8', no dialogue

The rising and ever-migrating population on a progressively more damaged and claustrophobic planet.

Finitor Rex

Nataša Prosenc Stearns, USA, 2024, HD video, 16:9, colour, 1', no dialogue

Haiku video from the Horizons series.

Screening in the presence of the author.

Projection of the film Torso: Place of the game with courtesy of Umetnostna galerija Maribor.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Visual artist and filmmaker Nataša Prosenc Stearns (1966) earned her BA at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Ljubljana. She moved to Los Angeles on a Fulbright Grant for her MFA at California Institute of the Arts. Her body of work ranges from single-channel videos, video installations, short and feature films to photo-collage prints. She explores innovative strategies in storytelling and visual expression and is known for creative use of non-gallery spaces and large multi-channel installations. Her areas of artistic exploration include alienation and identity, movement and metamorphosis. Transition is organic to her own life, as she has been crossing the Atlantic Ocean from her home in Slovenia to her other home in the United States for the last 25 years. The various abstractions of the body imply a struggle against masculinist presuppositions, orders, and hierarchies. She has developed a visual language that integrates seemingly unrelated spaces and figures. This allows her to address another of her chosen topics – the interconnectedness and unity of all things. Her works seek wholeness or fusion, a personal and social identity, that never seems entirely settled, never completely finished.

Her work has been shown internationally, including at the Venice Biennale, the Douloun Museum of Art in Shanghai, ARCO Fair Madrid, Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Circulo de Bellas Artes, Madrid, and others. Her videos and films have been screened at SXSW, Films de femmes Paris, AVIFF Cannes, Brooklyn Film Festival, Chicago Independent Film Festival, Pacific Film Archives Berkeley, RedCat at Disney Music Hall in Los Angeles and other venues. She is a recipient of The Soros Grant, The Durfee Grant and The Prešeren Fund Award – the Slovenian award for outstanding achievement in art. Her videos are also featured in the contemporary opera code L by composer Milko Lazar, who is also the composer of the music for several of her works.