As many of you will know, we spent 2018 as artists-in-residence at Exploding Appendix, for this we embarked on an epic in depth interview about our work, focusing on a different project each month and digging deep into the themes, processes and ideas relating to that particular work. This was an incredible, at times intense, but thoroughly rewarding experience. The first 11 interviews are now complete and available to read online; the 12th instalment, which will cover the two feature films we are currently editing, will be conducted later this year and will be included in a book compiling all the interviews.

For now here’s the 11th interview, in this instalment we discuss the 109 short films we made in 2017/18. Read here

Thank you so much to everyone who has been reading and following our work over the past year and of course many thanks to Exploding Appendix’s Bradley Tuck for his ongoing support and collaboration!

Daniel & Clara
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Here is Part 10 of our year-long interview which is being conducted by Bradley Tuck as a part of our artist residency at Exploding Appendix.

In this instalment we discuss our film Black Sun (2017), an experimental feature exploring a ritual journey through darkness.

“Black Sun is a film about crisis, about facing despair, depression and hopelessness, it’s not about fixing it but entering it, going through it, facing it and seeing what it is. It is a film about descent, and surrendering to a dark unknowing. It relates to all the great night journeys of the human soul, long dark nights, wastelands and experiences of the underworld, which for us are essentially journeys of deep transformation and integration of opposites.”

“We personally wouldn’t classify our work as queer, in a way our films are made for the future, for a time when we no longer require these kinds of labels, we understand that they are important and useful both personally and politically but for us we don’t feel the need to define our work in this way, we try to avoid any label that would hinder the audience confronting the work on its and their own terms. So that is not to say that there isn’t something to gain by looking at our work through a queer lens, to consider how gender is explored throughout our work, but we should leave that for the viewers to reflect upon themselves.”

Read the full text:
An Interview in 12 Parts. Part 10: Black Sun

Many thanks to Exploding Appendix’s Bradley Tuck for his ongoing support and collaboration!

Daniel & Clara
x

Here is Part 9 of our year-long interview which is being conducted by Bradley Tuck as a part of our artist residency at Exploding Appendix.

In this month’s instalment we discuss our feature film The Kingdom Of Shadows (2016), our personal reworking of the Adam & Eve story inspired by dreams, family history & silent movies.

“As this film deals with origins it is on one level a personal exploration of our own origins, our own childhoods and particularly our family history, dealing with the stories of our ancestors and the communities we grew up in, and unpicking how our psychological condition is shaped and influenced by these things. We asked ourselves what do we carry from the past that restricts us in the present and how can we release ourselves from these things, how can we break the curses that cast shadows over our lives.”

“In our film it is almost like every character is simultaneously a ghost and is haunted by something or someone, the house itself is haunted by the family as the family are haunted by the house. Everyone and everything here is possessed by something.”

Read the full text:
An Interview in 12 Parts. Part 9: The Kingdom Of Shadows

Many thanks to Exploding Appendix’s Bradley Tuck for his ongoing support and collaboration!

Daniel & Clara
x