The artist goes searching for a man on malta. but What constitutes a search? Who can be looked for, and when is the search successful? Does the one searched for even exist?

This mixed media project follows a real life application of a traditional feature film plot device, coined ‘McGuffin’ by Hitchcock in his analysis of ‘The Maltese Falcon’. A McGuffin can be an object or a person, whose nature and history are irrelevant for the narrative itself, as its only role is to pull characters into action and make them interact with each other. For this project I picked an imaginary person to serve as a McGuffin. I’ve given him a set of biographical details (gender, birthplace, profession, and language proficiency), and a common Maltese surname Falzon (which, incidentally, has nothing to do with falcons, but means simply ‘false, not true’).
On the island of Malta I searched for my imaginary character as if he were real, approaching people on the street, going to the archives and registries, publishing a newspaper ad, and following every ‘lead’, until they stopped leading anywhere.

the maltese falzon

The resulting project, meticulously documenting the search for its non-existent titular subject, can be considered a hybrid between documentary and fiction.

The final presentation relied on a wide range of materials including a series of printed color photographs, enlarged fragments of building plans, a number of found objects, a newspaper clipping, and a selection of interviews shown as a video projection (total length 30min). Leaving the elusive Falzon behind as a point of departure, the video section featured participants talking about their own lives and the history of the island.

The main challenge solved with the choice of the presentation form and
spatial arrangement of the project elements was in turning the artist into a detective-like character and providing structure to the seemingly random glimpses collected on the search-quest, thus creating a consistent image of the island and its people.

‘The Maltese Falzon’ was exhibited as mixed media installation in gallery spaces in Leipzig and Saints-Petersburg.

Exhibition view

The explication text provided in the exhibition catalogue

“While searching for Falzon on Malta were found or produced:
(1) photographs of places, which have no trace of him, (2) plans of houses, where he did not live, (3) interviews with people, who might have known him, but didn’t, (4) newspaper advertisement, which yielded no result whatsoever.
For all we know about him, his very existence is improbable.”