Kristian King

Bringing together the salvaged remnants of an unrecoverable part-installation, part-improvised narrative film project, 'Soup' (2017), 'Empty Feet and Fireflies' is the result of an assemblage of images; portraits of real people living in different places and time-zones, filmed over a year of study in the UK, Oceania and South-East Asia. The film travels through interconnecting streams of memory, exploring the balance between the industrial, electrical whirrings and waste cycles of our consumer-driven modern world, alongside the more essential pulses, textures and rhythms of nature. From cityscapes to tiny bugs, in discord and harmony; we navigate through the residual static left somewhere in-between.

Two strangers find a romantic connection and talk about their memories together over a night. Their conversation plays back in real-time, intermittently threaded over memory sequences; sensory patches that dip into their personal histories and childhood lives. We listen to the varying relationships they have with these past experiences, and how this continues to shape their outlook. Beyond this, we observe the simplicity and wholeness that is possible between two individuals in a fleeting moment; paths that have aligned and will leave a lasting imprint.