Set in hybrid spaces between nature and the city, in North East London, “Hollow Pond” explores the tensions between the indexical nature of the film medium and its possibility to articulate fictional narratives; and how these can help us reflect on, and interrogate, the depicted reality.
Hollow Pond (2024) film still
Image Description: a scene of nature: medium shot showing a river and some plants reflecting on the water.
Following his ongoing interest on the relations between nature and culture – and between reality and its representation – David Ferrando Giraut takes on the task of documenting liminal spaces in his close environment, equipped with a super8 camera and a surround sound recording set.
Through a process of attentive observation, both to the locations and to the recorded material, relations between different images, sounds and places are drawn, as well as the history of those places – the pond to which the title refers to occurred spontaneously, circa 1905, when gravel was extracted to build the surrounding North Circular Road. These relations act as knots in a narrative thread, which springs from the editing process.
Hollow Pond (2024) film still
Image Description: a close shot focus on hands typing on a small laptop on top of another closed laptop. the hands and part of the scene is lit by a beam of warm sunlight.
The subversion of the conventional filmmaking workflow (preproduction-production- postproduction, or “planning-recording-editing”), in favour of a more organic process – which embraces the way artist filmmakers tend to work – is central to the project. Here, the three traditional stages of film production are interwoven, they go back and forth, influencing each other and avoiding a linear order. The narrative springs from the encounter with a given location, or reality, rather than being a pre-existing idea which is imposed onto its representation. The project reclaims this notion – a consequence of the unconventional production process of artist films – as one of their potential strengths.
Hollow Pond (2024) film still
Image Description: A group of cars is parked, surrounded by trees in the background. The scene captures a natural outdoor setting with grass and plants, highlighting the vehicles in an open landscape.
The use of super8 is partly inspired by the amateur films Ferrando’s late father shot, as a migrant in Venezuela in the 1960s, documenting his surroundings. But it is also related to its analogue nature – photographic, chemical; its limited, scarce, character, which fosters a selective way of filming; and its “vagueness”, or indefinition. Here, the focus on light, and the way this reflects on different surfaces and is captured by the film, is somehow redolent of Impressionist painting. In juxtaposition with the detailed, crisp and spatially plausible audio capture and display, this results in an “incomplete” sort of image, a representation which questions itself as such.
Hollow Pond, installation view at Chemist Gallery, 2024
Image Description: In a dark room a film is projected in front of black curtains. There are two speakers on stands on the sides of the screen and one rests bellow, in the centre. Four dark benches create two rows for the public to sit.
David Ferrando Giraut is a Time-based Media Tutor in the Art Department, lives and works between London and Gijón ES. His practice mainly includes video, installation and sound, and focuses on the hybridisation of natural elements, technology and sociopolitical organisation. He holds a MFA from Goldsmiths College, London, and was selected for the LUX Associate Programme, London, in 2010.
Selected solo exhibitions in gallery and institutions include at the Tenderpixel, London, and vdrome.org (2017); Galeria Luis Adelantado, Valencia ES (2018); Galería Bacelos, Madrid ES (2015) and Centro Párraga, Murcia ES (2016); ARTBO Solo Projects, Bogotá CO (2015); CCCB, Barcelona ES (2015); LABoral Centro de Arte y Creación Industrial, Gijón ES (2014); The Green Parrot, Barcelona ES (2014); ARCO Galería Bacelos, Madrid ES (2013); Galería Bacelos, Madrid and Vigo ES (2012); MACUF, A Coruña ES (2011); Galería Visor, Valencia ES (2010).
Giraut participated in group shows and screenings in institutions, festivals and galleries including the Centro de Cultura Contemporánea Condeduque, Madrid (2022); Centre del Carme, Valencia ES (2017); Fundacion BBVA, Madrid ES (2016); Tenderpixel, London (2016); MARCO, Vigo ES (2015); Impakt Festival, Utrecht NL (2014); Danielle Arnaud Gallery, London; The Bluecoat, Liverpool and Spacex, Exeter UK (2012); 41 International Film Festival, Rotterdam NL (2012) and ICA, London (2010).
The project was presented in an exhibition at
Chemist Gallery, London, in January 2024
