Julian Micallef
- Anna Lilli Garai
- Nov 11
- 6 min read
Julian Micallef is a Maltese artist and filmmaker living between Malta and Cornwall. He works with analogue film, metal, and installation. Many of his works grow out of time spent outdoors, often drawing from what’s already there — a surface, a sound, or a piece of metal. His films focus on rhythm and repetition as part of daily work and movement. He also builds installations and mechanical objects that connect image-making with physical making.
Q: What draws you to these slow, looping ways of working?
A: I understand the loop as a mode of movement oneself adopts and chooses to conform to. However, contrasted with constant looping cycles we are faced with daily, especially in our contemporary society and even more when focusing on the daily structure of working. I attempt to comprehend this loop as the possibility of slowing down time. Whilst we are constantly driven by external forces that make everything feel fast-paced — once there is a moment to focus and be present with the loop, everything becomes slow. Consciousness extends outwards from the internal to our external bodies. Becoming hyper aware of every step, breath and second passed.
In “The Turin Horse” by filmmaker Béla Tarr, we are faced with the slow life and heaviness of existence, present within the characters. Following the daily working lives of both human and horse. Being able to transfix the viewer into a slow loop is extremely difficult and requires full awareness. My work is an exploration into this movement and present state of the loop. I built a machine welded as a horse walker. With two metal arms that, when pushed in a circular route, power the bulb in an 8mm projector. This was my physical attempt at harnessing this loop, combining the physical motion, the mental state and manipulation of time within 8mm film. Fluctuating levels of light projecting a loop.
Q: You often mix the physical and the fictional. Where do those two meet for you?
A: I feel as though for something to be fictional, it needs to stem from a physical place. Or at least be connected to something in the real world to create a kind of rationality between the audience and the film. To allow the viewer to notice something visually and then slowly question where is the threshold between real and none. My film “Y FEU TEWLYS” began from a simple painted black horse that I encountered on a wall.
This figure was essentially already stripped of everything that gives it its purpose and being — due to there being no research or material about it. However, that was its purpose, just an iconographic horse. Everything else was put upon this entity allowing narratives to emerge. However, all these narratives were driven by actual theory and philosophy.
I see film to have this power in capturing real time [because when using analogue 8mm everything in front of the camera was once real], then when captured in frames it becomes a memory that evolves through processes. Mental exercises that draw lines and link thoughts. To comprehend what is being seen, even if there is uncertainty between the physical and fictional. Fixing at the main merging factor the analogue film. The real uncertain and manipulated force here is time.
Q: Your process feels as important as the image itself. What keeps you inside it?
A: The process dictates everything that is seen in the final image. Film processes specifically with alternative and sustainable methods, there is a conscious hold a filmmaker/artist has when being able to touch every element that combines to make a work. It’s a ritual. When the beginning material is something such as horse manure that eventually becomes a moving image — the materiality is completely transfigured.
It also conceptually grounds and emphasises the claims a filmmaker is trying to make.
Allowing such insight into the ways a work is made, not just internally but externally, creates a beautifully combined symphony of the self. What makes a person a person isn’t simply the body — but the stages, events and encounters the body has had throughout its time.
Q: In “Y FEU TEWLYS,” the horse seems to carry part of you. How personal did that work become?
A: This project was done during my final year studying Fine Art at Falmouth University. “Y FEU TEWLYS” was my dissertation work. Going into the final year I was daunted by the personal pressure given to myself to go all out. To create something that felt the most pure to myself. Going to university in the UK was this goal I finally reached, so understanding that this was one of the final things I was going to do was extremely monumental. In that moment I felt as though it was the most important thing ever, when in reality it wasn’t.
However, I felt I owed myself to create “Y FEU TEWLYS” as a testament of my love and dedication to what I was doing in that present moment. It was a way of bridging my two separate lives/homes — Malta and Cornwall. Reflecting one upon the other. A quote I always return to is by filmmaker Agnès Varda: “If we opened people, we’d find landscapes.” This film and project was the initial journey in allowing people into my landscape. Traversing every material, question, thought that makes up my practice. Galloping in time.
Q: “WORKHORSE [MECHANISM OF THE LOOP]” feels caught between labour and ritual. What holds your attention there?
A: As touched upon in question one, this project was a way of understanding loop as a mechanism. Ritual and labour being interchanging terms within the work and its processes. Understanding both the input and output factors present, I had to explore both the physical motions and repetitions — yet also the non-tangible ones.
Harnessing the cinematic abilities present in horse manure and sweat was a ritualistic process allowing me to further push the limits of labour as a ritual. The material that creates the film being something that has passed through or comes from the physical body felt very relevant.
Alongside the films and metal installations I created a 100-card method. This included diagrams, quotes and statements to condense and allow for in-depth understanding into the work. “THE WORKHORSE METHOD OF MACHINE MANOEUVRE” gave the chance for introspection into what conceptually grounds my claims. As if to be receiving a fortune from a card reader — the audience was allowed to take a card and interpret it in an individual personal way. To further extend this labour as ritual, reaching people to involve or understand their own loop and way of working. Continuing the cycle of input and output exchange.
Q: Living between Malta and Cornwall, what do you notice shifting in your sense of place?
A: I found many similarities to the two places. Specifically, the great historic remnants present in the land. Standing stones and temples that situate the landscape and its past. Both being surrounded by water also created a dual sense of home. My recent work was heavily inspired by the Cornish landscape, both the ground and the people traversing it. And then similarly now with my current projects developing in Malta, they take influence more so from the Maltese landscape and presence.
What I find interesting is the possibility of this “shift” to occur. The way film and site-specific installations are heavily revolved around the location they are created in. And also the location they are viewed. Which can be two separate lands. I recently brought “Y FEU TEWLYS” and “WORKHORSE [MECHANISM OF THE LOOP]” to an exhibition at Malta Society of Arts in Valletta, Malta. Which is the same place I encountered the horse one year ago. Bringing it all back to the original landscape offers a new diverse dialogue to emerge. Not just with the audience but myself and the work.
