AUSTIN, Texas — After sunset, Austin’s Moody Amphitheater at Waterloo Park is illuminated by a new video from artists Teresa Hubbard and Alexander Birchler. Titled Past Deposits from a Future Yet to Come, the large-scale video work sprawls across the amphitheater’s 16-by-120-foot stage. Over the film’s 27 minutes, a variety of artifacts — buttons, pottery shards, glass bottles, beads, marbles, a notable terracotta frog — come tumbling down the screen.
Although seemingly out of place in the contemporary Waterloo Park, these objects belonged to inhabitants of the area in centuries past. While researching the site, Hubbard and Birchler uncovered a trove of 19th- and 20th-century artifacts that had been excavated from the Waterloo Park area decades ago and preserved in storage at the Texas Archaeological Research Laboratory at University of Texas, Austin. The current site of Waterloo Park along the banks of Waller Creek has long been a contentious space in Austin’s history. Over the past 200 years, communities including Indigenous tribes, formerly enslaved African Americans, and Mexican immigrants have called this area home. A combination of disastrous flooding and segregationist urban policy displaced these communities in turn, and left few physical remnants of their presence. Hubbard/Birchler center the artifacts that remain.
The objects are projected at a vast scale, well beyond life-size, in brilliant technicolor hues, seemingly floating in space. Some rotate slowly, almost in procession, while others quickly rip across the frame. No wind or weather affects the items and, despite their whirling movement, they never touch. Listening through headphones on the paired audio app (or attending a live musical performance, if you were lucky enough to make it to the work’s premiere), viewers can experience Past Deposits with its synchronized score, crafted by composer Alex Weston. While the visuals are mesmerizing on their own, the piece is incomplete without its musical component. Strings, woodwinds, and ethereal vocals offer a distinct tone and character to each “movement” of the grouped objects. A haunting cello, piano, and vocal section orchestrates the dancer-like pirouettes of shimmering buttons. Thrumming strings underly rusted keys, nails, horseshoes, and a speeding bullet.
Like Austin itself, Past Deposits is not stagnant; it is in constant conversation with the pedestrians, roadways, and architecture that surround it. During my visit, an overzealous bagpiper accompanied the score from the park. Cyclists and skateboarders rolled past. Cars honked on nearby I-35. Filmic space blurred with the amphitheater’s architecture and the park as the falling artifacts appeared to dodge concrete columns and absorb the shadows of passing visitors. In a way, the work even seems to respond to the natural world, as the changing seasons determine when and for how long it is visible. The projection I saw on the brink of summer began at 9pm. Visitors in June may only see a few minutes of the projection as days stretch longer and longer.
In the context of Hubbard/Birchler’s larger body of work, Past Deposits continues the artists’ long standing fascination with time, memory, and the elevation of everyday objects. In tandem with Weston’s score, Hubbard and Birchler reanimate the discarded treasures of Austin’s past and encourage viewers’ awareness of the history buried just a few feet below the newfangled condos and highrises of today’s booming city.
Past Deposits from a Future Yet to Come is on view at the Moody Amphitheater at Waterloo Park through March 2029. The project was commissioned by Waterloo Greenway, Austin.
