Hondartza Fraga

Today I have spent the day looking at footage I’ve collected over the last year. Last summer in Santander: planes, clouds, lighting storm, New York last month: more planes, trains, busy streets, and Granada last week: swallows, mountains, wind turbines… and also some tests I did in my studio at Bloc with some family photographs…which I will return to later.

When you look at so much material, it is difficult to make decisions, to stop looking and start selecting, editing, cutting. In a very long take I filmed a seagull standing on a roof opposite my parents house in Santander. It just stayed there, looking over the city, contemplating, not able to decide on which direction to take off.

Today, I feel like that seagull, from this little white room, revising, looking and wondering, hoping for concrete ideas to take flight at any point…

so here is a little clip of the seagull…

Today I have started my one-month residency at Occursus (in Site Gallery, Sheffield). Here I will be updating a journal with thoughts and images of my progress. I have various plans for my time at Site but I will mainly be working on a new piece of video work.

My recent work revolves around ideas of travel and home and the relationship between the two. I work with footage that I collect from different places I have visited, or with found footage that I re-edit. The new work I will be working on will be written in collaboration with artist Markus Lantto, with whom I have previously collaborated during my residency in Norway. We will be working long-distance and I feel this will become an integral part of the work as this new work will revolve around ideas of distant observation, travel, exploration and maps. I am interested in dysfunctional maps, imaginary or obsolete maps. I have been fascinated by the history of Percival Lowell’s misinterpretations of Martian Canals. Link to article on Percival Lowell

These are some subjects which I will develop during this residency. I am very much looking forward to start working…