Hollow Ground
animated video essay
Felix Klee (Munich, Germany)
Author about the project

Felix Klee on the work “Hollow Ground”:

“Hollow Ground” is an experimental animated essay about loss. It is a personal account of the end of a family line of farmers, illustrated by the change in garden architecture and the use of space.
It is also a story about the bones that remain, when everything else is gone.

Most of my life I have lived on our farm. It is more than 300 years old. It is surrounded by forests and fields. Its garden is home to a basswood tree we planted and a majestic walnut tree that has been there for over a century.

In 2017 our farm had to be sold. Since then I regularily visit it on google maps. I fly around. I fly through the tree tops that i know so well. One day I noticed something: Google updated the satellite view. It really made me sad. Suddenly the space was different. The farm that I had known for so long suddenly had a secret garden, that I didn´t know. This thought made me sad. Untill I remembered that I knew the true secrets of the garden. The burried stories. The hidden corners. I knew things about the burried dead that the people living there didn’t. And somehow that helped. It made it easier to know the bones would still be there even when their secret garden was long gone.”

About the Artist

Felix Klee (b. 1990, Munich, Germany), artist.

Felix lives and works in Munich, where he currently studies directing for documentary film at the University of Television and Film Munich.
From 2020 – 2022 he serves as an advisory board member at Locarno Film Festival.
He is a graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts Munich, where he studied time-based media under Prof. Julian Rosefeldt and painting under Prof. Pia Fries. He studied painting under Prof. Thomas Hartmann at the Academy of Fine Arts Nuremberg and was a guest student at Universidad de las Artes Aguascalientes Mexico.