Connor Fitzgerald and Fred Small in reflection

Towards the Sun is a film by Connor Fitzgerald.
The film's score was made by Fred Small. 

1 hour 10 minutes, etc.

Connor Fitzgerald, page from Tilt Towards the Sun, 2021.

Connor Fitzgerald, Towards the Sun, digital film, 1:10 minutes, 2021. Installation view, play_station, November 2021.

Fred Small: I started creating the audio for this project after reading your book Tilt Towards the Sun. It simultaneously tore my heart out and promised me a new one. There’s a constant back and forth throughout, switching between violence and peace. Flowers and fire. Rain and glass. A book promising sun after it rains. 

I have loved the back and forth we’ve had in this project, too, as I imagined what your drawings and poems might sound like. The pieces I produced are centred in the process of opening up as they change and grow. You’ve taught me how to hold on to a moment, how to draw out and slow down time. I’d make a piece two minutes long and you’d say make it ten. In that way we get to live in this filmic world for longer, we get to watch the sun linger on the horizon and never set.

Connor Fitzgerald: I felt vulnerable with this writing. It was completed over a period of such emotional turbulence. I haven't really shared it with anyone, which was one of the reasons I wanted to make this film. To be able to make something out of this work—to use the making of it as a tool to process—to acknowledge that time, and move through it. In some parts of the film there are direct references to images and poems from the book to try to keep a connection. 

Whilst I wrote this book, I was going through heartbreak in a way I had never really felt before. I was going through a breakup with someone that I had been with since I was a boy. I was dealing with betrayal, loss and the reality of dating as a trans person for the first time, which at times can be disgusting. I feel like these themes seep through the writing and inevitably into the film. 

Connor Fitzgerald, Tilt Towards the Sun [quote from Princess Mononoke], digital book, 2021.

In the film though I didn’t really want to directly touch on the specifics of the pain I felt, and more so focus on the hope that can come from intense heartbreak, sun after the rain. Transferring pain into hope. I’m very over highlighting trauma and very personal information for the sake of art, lol. 

I have worked with turning writing into a moving image work before. In 2020 I made my film CLOSE UR EYES, MAKE A WISH where I used a poem with the same title as a script. In quite a broadened way, I used the text as inspiration but even the emojis I scattered throughout the piece was a major inspiration. I really enjoyed this method of making and wanted to continue with it with Tilt Towards the Sun, using drawings, images and other sourced material as inspiration such as song lyrics and quotes.

Connor Fitzgerald, Towards the Sun (still), digital film, 1:10 minutes, 2021.

Connor Fitzgerald, page from Tilt Towards the Sun, 2021.

At uni I would always hear about your work but rarely see it; CLOSE UR EYES, MAKE A WISH reaffirmed the mystery of you. We have gotten to know each other through this process of making. I don’t think either of us would have realised how much the work would change, inform, and challenge us. 

Yeah, collaboration always shocks me. How informative and life changing those periods of time can be. Creating magic with someone always feels a bit more special than alone. It feels good that there is someone to rely on, to bounce ideas off. Someone else who has a stake in the work, so I feel more of a responsibility to make it as good as I possibly can. 

While working on CLOSE UR EYES, I realised how important sound could be to my filmmaking process. I edited an existing piece of music which felt a bit weird to me, I think because I like to have more control over what I create, yet I don’t have any experience in sound making. The sound piece worked well for that film, but I knew with my next work I wanted to collaborate with someone and built it together. 

The first work of yours I saw was Inter. It was a two-channel video installation with a sound piece to accompany it. At the time I heard it I was struggling with how to pair sound and video together in an effective way, but you managed to capture this really successfully.  Which is what led me to drunkenly ask you in the smoking area of a bar if you wanted to work together. 

The audio for Inter made me realise my love for, and the power of, sound in art. I’ve been pleasantly surprised by how organic this process has been, especially since this was my first collaboration and we didn’t know each other well. Listening back to some of the first pieces I made and then seeing the work now, I can hear little moments, instruments and chords that have been with us since the start.

You could describe your films as visual poems, and in some ways I think of my audio and installations along the same vein. They’re alternate spaces we can inhabit momentarily, and I think that’s what this film does so well—making a space for reflection, pain, and growth. Pain, or hurt, has come to be quite a prominent feeling, at least for me. One piece in the film I titled “Tear me apart” because it builds from a single violin. A second violin track starts to pull away from that note, and you get these awful clashes until it eventually rests on the next pitch. Through all of it though, you are held by that single violin note that begins and ends the piece. Beauty and pain are undeniably intertwined. 

I feel like this piece in particular holds the work together. I cry every time I hear it and I'm not really sure why. It provokes a feeling of dread, or pain, but I'm never truly feeling that whilst experiencing this piece. It's almost a simulation of these feelings. There’s the original reasons, ideas and writings, where this film and sound came from—but they feel distant. I am just present in this moment. 

I remember the first time I heard this piece, I was in your living room and you played it really loud and I was moved by how good it was, how perfectly you were able to encapsulate the random and sporadic requests for pacing, notes and vibes I wanted. It feels beautiful to have created something together that transcends a tied-down narrative and can make more space for feeling rather than solid reason. 

I love that. To make for a feeling, rather than solid reason, is definitely how I try and work. I want to create a feeling with sound, or to prompt someone to imagine or believe in something and while I love pushing my knowledge and skills of sound production, the technical processes are secondary. 

I started making audio works a couple of years ago, the most recent of which have become quite experimental, drawing on electronic, classical, ambient and club references. Towards the Sun is the most musical work I’ve made, the first half of the film being minimal and laying the groundwork for what comes. The second half expands on the instrumentation and soundscapes to create a feeling of opening up or growing. We discussed the importance of the pacing of this work quite a lot, by having the slow beginning we were able to make the intensity of the later scenes pay off, as it has been worked up to and worked through. 

I think my favourite thing about working on longer video work is the ability to immerse someone into whatever you're trying to say. Video is very captivating, it really pulls people in. The sound in TOWARDS THE SUN is so important—special, and integral. I wanted to play with traditional film structures.

I find the start of films to be such an interesting space. You're laying the ground to be stood on and none of it really makes sense yet. Once you're inside, and you rip the door away, then it's more like a vortex. You're thrown up again. It's nice to feel on the edge of your seat. 

I find it important that there are elements of surprise in all of my work, whether it's in the sound, the visuals, the pacing. In TOWARDS THE SUN, I wanted people to teeter on the edge of a feeling and then, just as they were settling into it, almost bored of what they were experiencing, the film shifts.

People said the film felt meditative, or it gave them the opportunity and space to let their mind wander. I think I choose to work with time-based media because the ideas are as fleeting and moving as the media itself. The second the image is in front of you, or the sound is in your ears, it's gone as quickly as it was there. Things colliding together visually and emotionally. Love and heartbreak renewing each other. 

This is evident in the sound when the trees are passing by. This shot is paired with the most emotional part of the score. The sound teases you with what's to come, it's really stressful and beautiful. This moment makes me cry every time. The trees are maybe hopeful? A journey? One place to the next—I'm looking up, finally out of the flames; and as the sound peaks, you’re thrown straight back into the fire. It feels heartbreaking but very alive.

I love surprises! As you say, those moments shift your thoughts and body, moving you into new territory. Such elements have been occurring more in my work, my most recent audio installation was quite slow but then, at the end, club music starts blasting for 8 beats. I wanted to take the listener out of that lived moment and into the imaginative. I am much more interested in the journey than the destination.

I think we’ve created a space that provides the means for change, transformation and growth. One that we can inhabit together. One that we have inhabited through collaborating…

<3

Connor Fitzgerald, Towards the Sun (still), digital film, 1:10 minutes, 2021.

Connor Fitzgerald is an artist and writer based in Te Whanganui-a-Tara, with a multi-disciplinary practice in video and writing. She is currently interested in poetic storytelling through cinematic film making. A constant within their practice is themself, her transness, and their body. Centering herself within the wider context of their surroundings opens the opportunity for her creative output to be a process for grounding.

Recent exhibitions include: Cruel Optimism: New Artists Show 2021, at Art Space Aotearoa (2021), TOWARDS THE SUN, at play_station (2021) there’s dirt under my freshly finished set, at Window Gallery (2021). THE DOLLS are gods, Te Tuhi (2021), GLOSSY LEAF kiss, with Louie Zalk-Neale, Blue Oyster Art Project Space (2021).

Fred Small is an artist exploring themes of technological change, queerness, post-humanism and landscape in an installation-based practice. He examines such subjects through sonic sculptures, film and light works, responding to installation sites and their histories. He is interested in audio-visual relationships and the development of experimental electronic sound production in a fine arts context. By engaging in poetic narratives he hopes to question time & lived experience.

Towards the Sun was originally exhibited at play_station and is currently on view at Artspace Aotearoa as part of Cruel Optimism: New Artists Show 2021, through 19 February 2022.

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