Service Station
Director’s Statement
I wanted to explore the loneliness, futility and liminality of an invisible occupation, non-place and, more broadly, the idea of service within our commodified society.
Free Parking
Director’s Statement
Free Parking develops ideas found in Service Station, shifting toward a stronger focus on dialogue and character interaction while continuing to examine the stasis that emerges within ordinary public spaces.
Jackie is Lost
Director’s Statement
Being my first larger production, I wanted to create a disorientating story structure, framed simplistically in order to handle a subject matter which can't be resolved. I wanted it to be both cinematic and intimate. I learnt so much during this process and continue to do so. I feel very fortunate and grateful to have been able to complete the film independently and I hope I get the opportunity to make more work. It was a pleasure to learn from and work with James, Dominic and the entire team.
Maximillian King is an artist and filmmaker working across film, moving image, and installation.
Drawing on a background in literature, theatre and production, King’s work moves between narrative and installation, combining practical structures with open-ended processes. Across films, mixed-media works and texts, his practice returns to questions of labour, isolation, reciprocity, non-places, and the tension between permanence and impermanence. It also considers the relationship between structure and contingency, and what lies beyond probability.
I’m interested in contingency, narrative determinism, masculinity, loneliness, ignorance, which is often exposed by tragedy and comedy. Working with moving image, text, found materials, performers and sculptural forms, I explore how small situations, overlooked systems and contingent environments or occupations can hold psychological, social and mythic weight. I strive to make things that put the self elsewhere in an experience.
I’m interested in contingency, narrative determinism, masculinity, loneliness, ignorance, which is often exposed by tragedy and comedy. Working with moving image, text, found materials, performers and sculptural forms, I explore how small situations, overlooked systems and contingent environments or occupations can hold psychological, social and mythic weight. I strive to make things that put the self elsewhere in an experience.
In Certain Times
In Certain Times attempts to resonate with the anonomous natural and unnatural forces from contemporary experience. The peices together aim to create a set or stage in which ‘nothing’ might emerge. Dream Catcher is the first “work” that deals with the idea of contingecy directly. The interior of the bag remains unknown and immeaterial, the exterior only recognizable, the title acts as a bridge.
All That Man Is: In Response To Time
What began as a response to Christian Marclay’s The Clock has become an exploration of masculinity andnarrative determinism. Although not exclusively, it is largely men we see here who ask a coin to direct theirfate in the same way the audience enters into an agreement. Consciously and unconsciously, we ask to bedirected; we suspend our disbelief and give over our emotional autonomy. By knowing the boundaries, wepermit the narrative system to take control without ever needing to question our role within it perhaps forliberation.
This reflects our society at a fundamental level. There are structures and systems we place our faith in thatare themselves contingent, subject to a chaos beneath their order. Each is held up by nothing more than avalue we agree to place within it: a meme, a coin, a pension, a customer, a stock, a person. Roland Barthes,writing of the photograph, names the punctum as the unplanned, contingent detail that pierces the viewer,that “rises from the scene, shoots out of it like an arrow.” The coin toss is such a detail: a contingent key,hidden in plain sight inside stories but narratively inevitable.
What began as a response to Christian Marclay’s The Clock has become an exploration of masculinity andnarrative determinism. Although not exclusively, it is largely men we see here who ask a coin to direct theirfate in the same way the audience enters into an agreement. Consciously and unconsciously, we ask to bedirected; we suspend our disbelief and give over our emotional autonomy. By knowing the boundaries, wepermit the narrative system to take control without ever needing to question our role within it perhaps forliberation.
This reflects our society at a fundamental level. There are structures and systems we place our faith in thatare themselves contingent, subject to a chaos beneath their order. Each is held up by nothing more than avalue we agree to place within it: a meme, a coin, a pension, a customer, a stock, a person. Roland Barthes,writing of the photograph, names the punctum as the unplanned, contingent detail that pierces the viewer,that “rises from the scene, shoots out of it like an arrow.” The coin toss is such a detail: a contingent key,hidden in plain sight inside stories but narratively inevitable.
Situation Analogies
Situation Analogies continues ideas developed from In Certain Times, using Puddle as a starting point. The work projects two fish circling one another within a resin puddle, looping endlessly in a contained system of movement. Through repetition and containment, this piece attemps to capture how minor situations can reflect wider patterns of experience.
Situation Analogies continues ideas developed from In Certain Times, using Puddle as a starting point. The work projects two fish circling one another within a resin puddle, looping endlessly in a contained system of movement. Through repetition and containment, this piece attemps to capture how minor situations can reflect wider patterns of experience.
Beautiful Place
Beautiful Place: After Probability Manual is an installation and publication. This work follows upon ideas found within Situation Analogies. Beautiful Place is a site specfic response to a location that matches the notions of contingency expored within the After Probability Manual. Beautiful Place is a maleable work that attempts to communicate contingency throughout any location.