I am really pleased to announce that my new short film, "Sur les Fleurs la Nuit" will premiere at the 34th Festival of Instants Video on the 11th of November

This video was born from a text I had written aged 18 with the idea to initially present it as a two-person play. At the time I had dreamt of having my own tender Vladimir and Estragon duo, in a folly of darkness and surrounded by endless bouquets of flowers. I had written the text in a feverish state of excitement, and sent it as an email to Sam, who at the time was living in Canterbury. He replied later on that same night with "This is really good!!!" and that was enough to fulfil me and have me move on to other things for some 10 years, before I picked it up again last year. While I have not completely ruled out the theatre idea, I moved on to translating the text to French and adapting it as a monologue to accompany a montage of flowers I had shot in the last two years in Malta and France.

The original text was initiated by my night-time walks back home in Marsaskala. The neighbour had a jasmine bush whose perfume would always successfully interrupt my thoughts or mood after whatever activity I was engaged in (whether an exciting or a boring one). The scent served as a form of sensory checkpoint that affirmed my existence at that very moment. I can not help but compare this feeling to falling in love, when one’s thoughts are constantly consumed by an impenetrable feeling of presence, so it was natural for me to articulate my feeling at the scent of the jasmine bush in the same way I articulate the feeling of love: as one laced with equal parts affection and eroticism.

All flowers at night are nothing short of intense or beautiful, and in my attempt to capture them in low-light conditions I am visually isolating them from their surroundings to demand attention from the viewers and remind them of the attractive force and strong effect these flowers have on all living creatures. As Iris Murdoch once said, “People from a planet without flowers would think we must be mad with joy the whole time to have such things around us.”

                                                                                                                                     Instants Video

Make haste, make haste! I could not care less for good introductions, no need, no need! I must write the reportage for this dream down before its memory drains out from me, as is wont with most dreams when met with the dictating auto-compiled schedule of the day, which is more ruthless (yet certainly more rewarding) than any 9-to-5 work plan can ever be. So here we go, and in case it was not clear, I am not even sorry for the effortless introduction as I know it will all be merited once I finish this. 

In my dream my uncle invited me to join him on a space mission as I was the only one in the family without commitments to a “real job” and therefore I could afford to go to space. The last time my uncle and I had spoken was on my birthday, when he wished me a day “devoted to what you love doing- living”. Perhaps it was this devotion he mentioned, matched with my more-than-usual flexible state, thanks to covid, that made me a good space candidate.  I was thrilled at this opportunity, although at the time of the dream the excitement was more akin to a fun road trip rather than a space mission. As my excitement grew I realised that I might have not had enough preparation for this mission, but with everyone around me bearing so much trust in me, I felt in the good hands of fate. The mission was- we would go to space, my uncle and I, and then return soon after. It was straightforward enough. As time neared, I realised that I was growing concerned about one particular aspect of the trip, which was the return. Would it be hard, I wondered? Would the crash be difficult, even dangerous? Would I need to dedicate a long time to recovery from the PTSD that comes with crashing back to planet earth?

In my wakened state I laughed at the reason for my space mission and it made most members of my family laugh too. I kept thinking about the anxiety I had felt at returning to earth, and I linked this fear to birth-both for a mother and for the child. Birth too is a necessity to the mission of life that requires devotion and flexibility from both candidates, yet it is never an easy feat for either. I then thought about the movie we had watched the night before; Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s “Uncle Boonmee who can recall his past lives,” a magical movie with a cave sequence as moving as the one I saw not long ago, from Herzog’s immense documentary poorly named “Cave of forgotten dreams.” In Weerasethakul's cave sequence, the dying man being guided through the cave by the ghost of his deceased wife, calls the cave a uterus and likens it to a distant memory he had in which he did not remember whether he was animal or human, woman or man. As I stem all these thoughts from my dream, it becomes more honest, unlike the usual trashy nightmares I have of having my belongings strewn everywhere and having to pick them all up and pack them before my departure is due. I suppose my writing it all here, and sharing the sequence from "Uncle Boonmee" is a good example of my stubborn enthusiasm to show what I've seen and experienced to an audience that didn't necessarily ask for it. This sums up my image-riddled, story-weighted work and ideas.
From which, emerges the most flaming new ("ġdid fjamant") idea of them all (this is a lie- I have been thinking about it since my visit to the Cosmonaut Museum in Moscow two years ago, but I've only had the headspace to let it ferment as of late) which is a script that indulges completely in equal parts cave and space travel (read, space return).

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oblivious.

Maqluba green (pre-2018 fire)

Perpetual Child (my upcoming short film) green. Cinematographer: Monika Kotecka

Wied tal-qlejgħa 

On Saturday I met you and on Sunday I met you. Both of you are septuagenarians. One of you is a man, the other, a woman. I am related to both of you one way or another. To you by blood, and to you through cinema. There are more justifiable links, between both of you, between myself and both of you, and between my writing and both of you. I am going to find the latter link hopefully in a few more lines.
On Saturday we opened the conversation by briefly speaking of loathsome creatures. You told me that we just cannot help having xitel (weeds) growing out of us, and that it is up to us to decide whether to cultivate good weeds or bad weeds. Your little analogy floored me. Your ecclesiastical career made me expect a more textual response, rather than such a visual one reminiscent of those that dwell in the de Sagazan garden. I left your house with Baudelaire's title "Les Fleurs du Mal" reverberating in my head, and a hope that the kind of weeds I grow benefit bees.
Yes, I can sense that link approaching now. Because on Sunday, after our walk by the flooded bank was cut short by a freak storm (I'm sure I have a couple more past entries which deal with me getting drenched by freak storms), after you waited for us under a tree as we ran and laughed with our soaked scalps to retrieve my car, and right before I dropped you off, you told me of a lover you had in the 90s whose €250,000 ring came into your life on a sink by the soap in a hostel you were staying at, who struck up a conversation soon after, perhaps out of gratitude.
"How are you?" she had asked you.
To which you had replied, "Je suis comme le roi d'un pays pluvieux; riche, mais impuissant, jeune et pourtant tres vieux" which may sound a little too embellished for some but knowing you, no one else is more capable of making those two verses theirs. You were generous to me with your storytelling, as you fed me with details of how you lived your relationship, including the dramatic ending one morning when a dagger flew and landed millimetres away from you and stabbed the wooden table on which you were reading a comic book. 
"It is over," she replied without ever having given you time to ask why. You asked that after, to which she had told you that she really does not like comic books.
As you explained to me this attack of which its cold, violent absurdity did not leave any room for chagrin, you made a motion with your right index finger in front of your face, imitating the rapid movement the other end of the dagger did once it struck the wood. 
With this link, with these images, I seal them both like a spell.

For as long as I can remember I have been fearful for the people in my life whom I immensely love. Fearful of their fragility while forgetting all about my own. This has helped make me hold no grudges against the ones I love, and to paddle towards the road of reconciliation as soon as I am able to, in the likely cases of heated exchanges. I have lately noticed an interesting polarity between my attitude to the ones I love in my life, and my own attitude to the ones I love in the stories I write, that is to say the darling characters I have so much joy conjuring. In the stories I write, my attitude to my characters is that I believe wholeheartedly that they have one long life ahead of them with plenty of time for them to mull over confusion, hurt and love without any fear of their imminent death. The truth is, neither they nor myself believe that they will die after all, and even if they happen to die within my story, their death is a dignified one (whether driven by tragedy or triumph) and renders them eternal.
In my stories, characters do not see each other for twenty, thirty years, for a lifetime, until a last one-minute encounter that is the culmination of the meaning of all the time lost. In real life, these twenty, thirty years, these lifetimes are an absolute waste of time.
My friend, unlike the characters in my films and stories, you nor I are immortal, and I want to squeeze as much out of the orange I was provided to share as much physical joy with you as possible, knowing that in addition to this sweetness there is still yet to be savoured in the every living or dying cells habituated within.

When I wrote my film Perpetual Child two years ago (in two days- I don't say this to brag because this script was a fluke, my other scripts don't share the same fluidity) I knew that I would want to film it in Spring in Malta, which in itself is an ambitious goal seeing how spring in Malta lasts 2 weeks between tempests and gales that burn the flora into brown oblivion for the next eight months of the year. I will shoot the film in two weeks, after nineteen months of hardy administrative complications. After a rather wet winter, I now look beyond the administrative troubles (a coping mechanism, perhaps) and joke to myself that I did not shoot in Spring 2018 because it didn't rain enough, and because at the back of my head I knew that it would rain more in Winter 2018, for a more resilient Spring 2019. 
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Before the full moon in San Marino, seen through the branches of the Conti Family cherry tree.

Trimmings from the tree of the de Sagazans in their beloved garden, with some mimosa.

Another from the de Sagazan garden.

The Hibiscus from the Sultana family garden, that ignores the rules of Springtime and springs at any time it so pleases.

August Spring in Kristenbosch, South Africa 2015

My dear R, thank you for your words. Yes, I will make a Saint Jean bonfire tonight and jump over it for good luck for my 26th year. I have just dreamt of you in my morning sleep. You gave me another birthday card, with an image of "Le Petit Prince".

He was all grown up. He was decked in royal colours of violet and green, and his blond hair grew down over his silver armour. He was holding a sable. He looked very tarot-like. 
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The dream was the right kind of delicious to give an after-taste for the rest of the day, and very fitting to your 'real-life' persona- built on story, history and mysticism in a non-invasive way, but enough to be so touching.

In search of subtle light messages for the reflective mind.

My fireworks view, this time lined with a rosy sunset and the sad cry of flying parakeets. And those mountains. The ones that make a grown man cry.

Heptagons and Eucalyptus

Hundreds of unmarked graves marking a Muslim cemetery 

Buying local perfume to this view.

The brown light and emanates from the silver eucalyptus when specific rays hit it.

The camino to the memory of last year.

All mirrors are the same. It's the lighting that makes one mirror more desirable than the other. And subsequently, its subject. The lighting however is a very trivial tool that assists the power of the mirror. What assists it that creates volumes of difference is time. 
If you spend the right amount of time in front of the mirror, you will finally begin to notice how you do not have eyes, but eyeballs. And from then you will realise how you do not actually have a heart that you sometimes "follow", but a fist-sized muscle that beats at its own will.

I had been meaning to use my last packet of instant film on this ancient olive grove. They are some one thousand years old, a legacy of the Moors' agricultural aid to our semi-deserted Islands. In most of them, their trunk has grown so much that it almost appears as completely hollow despite the green leaves on top. These skeletal foundations perfectly illustrate the paradox of age- they are worn out by the elements but their years of being rooted makes being brittle a part of their strength. My companion and I have dubbed such trees as 'Akira' trees as their carved trunks and chunky roots are reminiscent of that mutation scene. They may not have that air of 'abominable mystery' to them, but they certainly have a monstrosity that is admirable.

Some of my recurring dreams occur within this kitchen in Cannes. Four years ago I slept on the kitchen floor of this flat for five nights and I've since thought this to be the reason why. It's always the same situation of me existing strongly on those black and yellow tiles. While I was there the second time I made my kitchen moments linger, and studied the colours on the walls, on the floors, in the sink change from night until day, in search of some reason why they recur in my subconcious. This image is the view outside the kitchen during daytime. 

Wild Salmon in Cannes.

Beaver on a dam, in Cannes.

Pillow Still

12 Yuccas where the man in the iron mask was allegedly kept

A tender moment with a great piece of driftwood.

Silence that can make a grown man cry.

Lichens that can make a grown man cry

Swimming is the easiest reaction one can have/do to the desire to feel submerged by a 'scape. On land, it is a little more complicated to reach such a submerged feeling, so one has to resort to alternatives, like forming a bouqet, or taking a photo.

Studying planetary formations in mimosas. 

A stream in the woods being signaled by the sun.

More silence

This week, some more images of my trip to South Africa and Swaziland were featured in Platinum Journal. Head over to the website over here.

I also wrote some words and added some photos explaining two prominent exhibitions I participated in this year. The two images below are form my happening and installation The Riddle Riddles- view more about it here.

This close up shot is from my latest installation involving ice for Gustav Metzger's Call for Action- Remember Nature.
​See more here.

Cape of Good Hope
Marveling at the strength and pungent smell of the thousands of algae legs growing in the ocean. They look like they would make a mean pipe.

Communal drinking of brown beer-like liquid at a Zulu village. As per usual, my stomach punished me for this.

In Swaziland, I scooped the rich soil in my hands and applied it to my cheeks like rouge.

The breathtaking scenery and moody weather at Kristenbosch reminded me of the opening scene of Aguirre. We were also lucky enough to witness a tree collapsing. I hadn't experienced a new sound in ages so it was a spectacle. It sounded like crackling thunder with the silent shimmering of a thousand evergreen leaves. We quickly ran to the scene to witness the wounded creature. We were also lucky to not have been close to it when it happened.

In Kirstenbosch the moody weather speckled the many cacti with many diamonds. This particular photo should also be painted by somebody sometime in the near future. 

In Kristenbosch I also came across a pool which reminded me of Aphrodite's pool which I had visited a month earlier in Cyprus. 

The bird of paradise triumphs on the 50c coins but most especially in Kirstenbosch.

In Hluehluwe [ɬuɬuw'e] park I heard another new sound. The sound of the horns of the Kudu colliding during a territorial duel.

We slept in a Lodge somewhere close to Kruger Park and woke up at five in the morning to search for the leopard, but two hours of driving around led to just tracks. We did however come close to a beautiful buffalo.

In Kruger Park gentle families such as this one blended with the bushfields in the freezing cold weather of six in the morning.

In Hout Bay we shared some breakfast with the locals.

I wish making a post on this blog isn't such a big deal each time and would be a more regular thing, but so far my nature dictates that  everything is a big deal and therefore needs time, care and the right state of mind including a post on a blog which is read by one or two people (APPRECIATE IT FOLKS!)
I was lucky to extend my travels past tiny Europe this August and I headed to South Africa and Swaziland for ten days.  
I casually kept my camera around but didn't make a big fuss if I happened to leave it behind as I was happy to walk around lightly and ease my mind of this futile obsession to funnel an image through one's own frame. I wanted to assimilate the new continent, new animals, new people and new environments by myself without any other mechanisms, and without the weight of that black square hanging on my chest.
Of course, such a venture meant I could still not be able to avoid the bizarre behaviour of the expectations of taking photos of well known sights. What disturbed me the most rather than the touristic action (which I am in no way ousting myself out of) is the diction used to accompany the arrival of such a sight, as stated by guides.
'We will soon be approaching the view of [insert historical/cultural landmark here]. We will stop for 15 minutes to take photos, then we will move on." I take images, therefore I was there and had the full experience.
I know I'm saying nothing new, but what I'm expressing is my increased awareness at such absurdities following a year of seminars tackling it at my Photography MA at Central Saint Martins. I must admit, such absurdities do help to be of some form of entertainment besides despair. Especially souvenir shops with their multifaceted replications of humorous, kitsch and solipsism.
Visiting places of historical contexts was incredibly distressing at times, in particular the Hector Pieterson memorial. But such bleak moments of humanity were then balanced out with the incredible pleasure of seeing ELEPHANTS!! LIONS!! GIRAFFES!!! RHINOS!!! HIPPOS!! CROCODILES!!! OSTRICHES!! ZEBRAS!! BUFFALO!! up close.
Back home, I'm enjoying the few images I took, and am editing some, and realising that after a year of seeing and participating in bizarrely absurd works and installations, they still don't match with the absurdity of taking images and taking the time to edit them on photoshop in this day and age.

Here are a few (very) representational images of my trip. More will come.

looking at frogs in Iron Ores

From my little directorial experiences in my short life so far, I realised that I tend to welcome contingency like an old friend. I have welcomed it when I was working with performing artists and rode the situational wave of the aleatory for the image's sake.  I like to view such flexibility as a blessing. I don't let my ego throw a scene when things don't go my way. It's all good- even if it involves 'ruining' my precious medium format film.  Although in all fairness, this time round, mia culpa. Mia maxima culpa. 

It started with a thought. A half-sentence, uttered right before I entered the dark room to blindly mount the floppy Medium Format film to develop it. The thought lingered in my mind as I rummaged around and separated the film from its protective paper, and started to grow into anxiety where my numerous attempts to mount it were futile. Still on the memory of the previous week's smooth darkroom experience, where I mounted the film with ease in a span of half a minute, my frustration quickly merged with the thought, and amidst the darkness I could see my anxiety grow bigger and brighter. I suddenly became aware of the stuffiness of the room, and my hummingbird heart rate soared. Aware of the situation, I tried to calm myself down, in the fashion of various Sin City characters when they were in dire straits, but I also realised that I had become too hot and bothered in the tiny dark room to ever manage to mount the film. My hands were shaking and I knew I had to leave that room fast, so in a hurry, I huffed and roughly rolled the film around the reel, stuffed it into the tank, shut it and fled the dark place.

Upon switching on the light I immediately realised what I had done and scolded myself for not doing a better job at calming myself down. The feeling of failure filled me as I regretfully added the developer and agitated the tank. Gone was the usual feeling of excitement. And yet, at the back of my frustrated mind, I remained rather curious as to how the result would be. From the crackling sounds the film made as I 'loaded' it, I knew that the damage would be very very visible and irreversible, but I wondered how this could go with the portraits of Pearlie. The result is as follows, and dareisay, rather Deleuzean in some regards.

I photographed Celia Hay using the Mamiya RZ 67. See more images from this series here.

Taken in the garden of the place I live in within London.

The neighbourhood park.

Jean illustrating everyone's exhaustion after our dreamy 3 days of filming.

Kids in Gozo

Visiting Robert Burns' home in Scotland

A quarry.  One of many.

Dragonara 01/01/15

yikes, the grain kind of happened.

As per tradition I found myself in the backseat of my parents' car being driven around Gozo on Boxing Day. I found the rain-soaked windows to be the right filter for my pensive image-recording.  Driving through familiar places is like an annual checkpoint to my existence, where I feel realigned into my roots, no matter how far away my feet and thought processes have taken me. 


Qbajjar, Gozo. 
December, 2014

I've also kept busy on my Instagram account this past month.

This is an experiment I did a couple of weeks ago at Central Saint Martins. I was exploring the theme of Duration in the form of my favourite way of life- good ol' ostranenie.  It does go really well with my interest in subtly shrouding the image to reveal new experiences which would have been (ironically) hidden in their own familiarity. The idea led to a Thursday and Friday afternoon of sketching the set up, a Saturday afternoon of filming and a Sunday afternoon of warping Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor. At night I watched films.

Following advice to experiment with duration on the moving image by my tutor, I decided to try it out on sound instead. After 11 years of playing Classical Piano and Harp with a sprinkle of violin and an angsty 2 years of electric guitar, something happened and I switched to visual material at the age of 18. I am still upset at the sudden  swift shift and so I'm full of timid hope that it serves to be my first step back into the world of audio.  In the meantime I'm holding myself back from favouring a midi over a new camera body. 

This video here is rather 'revealing' as I had originally ended up concealing it more during the installation by projecting the video on multiple jagged surfaces such as the door, a corner of the screen and space. This was perceived as a 'tease' by some/many within the class.  At least I assembled the space with comfy cinematic seating for my audience to get absorbed into the visuals and listen to soundscapes at different speeds coming from earphones poking from between the sofa cushions. 

You can listen to the 3 variations of Toccata and Fugue in D Minor here.
I can say much much more about this project and its scope, but I'll stop here for now.