A city appears, then fractures. Bodies move through it with urgency and grace, vaulting across thresholds between light and shadow, matter and myth. In the Heart of the Flower Citadel unfolds as both a  film and a place, sitting uniquely between cinema, fashion and installation.

Co-created by artist-designer nil00 and director and editor Adam Muscat, the project reflects a convergence of fashion and technology in shaping a distinct visual world. Airbrushed tracksuits become moving canvases, while the film’s wordless language draws on rhythm, movement and atmosphere rather than narrative certainty.

Katie Huelin: In The Heart of the Flower Citadel feels like a place as much as a film, an environment you can walk into, wear, and momentarily inhabit. When you think about the “Citadel” as a world, what was the first image or idea that drew you toward this imagined place?

nil00: I had been drawing these evil mechanical flower cities and I wrote this poem that I sent to Adam before he started making the storyboard, we tried having someone read it out but ultimately it became more background lore to the film:

Everyone in the citadel knew it was evil

They felt it in the air

A hum like music

But it hurt

It hissed and told its story in every ear

Making them remember they were not one

The city needed them divided

It wanted to overuse them

And grow itself

The hares were out in moors playing blindly

Yet the mechanical flowers bloomed

towered until the light was blotted out

Until the sun was broken, the sun was angry

And the tyranny of moonlight resolved the question of whether the mistake was worthwhile

A thousand times over, yes

Though forgotten, the dark memory of that lost lifetime haunted their dreams

told them there was something to pray for

held them in the arms of its invisible promise

Coaxing them  Back together again

Adam Muscat: I wanted to make a film that embodied the atmosphere and mythology of nil00’s designs rather than just showcasing products. My goal was to immerse the viewer in the world of the brand as interpreted through the lens of my own art practice.

KH: Your garments in this project read almost like characters, they carry stories, atmospheres, even geography. How do you conceive of clothing as something that isn’t just worn, but narrates a world?

nil00: When I was a kid I had this imaginary multicoloured rollercoaster sparkly world in my head that was way better than this one and it felt like who I was inside more than what other people thought I was. It frustrated me that it was hidden, I wanted to show that part of myself. Somehow I found my way back to these playground daydreams a few years ago, when I was grieving a friend and all I could manage was drawing dragons. I had a premonition that I would cover clothes with these dragons, and people would want to wear them. I think clothing is always narrating a world, it tells the story of who we are to each other. Clothing can shield, obscure, inflate, distance, hide, emphasise, signal allegiance – I like clothes that tell of that sparkly invisible heaven inside all of us. Over time making them has become a way to express some of my inarticulable awe and my grievances, you could say it’s about wearing my heart on my sleeve.

KH: The clothes exist both on bodies in motion and as part of an installation. How did designing for this expanded context change the way you approached things such as silhouette and wearability?

nil00: I personally love to stay nimble so I’ve been drawn to painting on casual everyday clothing like hoodies and t-shirts more than anything else since I started. I think Adam’s storyboard and his idea to have parkour athletes model the pieces came out of that as much as the other way around. I took the film as a chance to try out some full-outfit ideas that had been brewing around the themes of the poem and these flower cities I’d been imagining, kind of mechanical Thumbelina petal dwellings if they were also a technofortress in a desolate wasteland. And I took extra care on the rhinestones so they’d glimmer in the dark.

KH: There’s a tension in the work between transcendence and the everyday. How do you navigate that space when designing, and where do you see fashion positioned within ideas of ritual or transformation?

nil00:  I read this book as a kid called Scribbleboy, which was about this mysterious graffiti artist whose whirling, colourful Scribbles in the middle of a grey neighbourhood in London have this mystical effect on certain people, this Scribblewonderment that swirls and whirls inside them. The protagonist is having dreams about these Scribbles, him and his best friend are obsessed with finding Scribbleboy. I think I want to be like Scribbleboy, by taking unremarkable second-hand everyday clothes and making them special. Every day actually is special, we just forget that so a ceremonial grade tracksuit feels like a good reminder. Generally I upcycle, but for the looks I airbrushed a few custom skirts made by Gina Corrieri specially for the shoot, I love her work for that as well – she makes really unique clothes but they’re also comfortable so you want to wear them all the time.

There’s also something I like about putting so many hours into these intricate designs that are going to be worn to death and woven into the fabric of someone’s daily life. I put my life force in them and they’re going to get muddy or drinks spilled on them and crumbs, there’s something zen about it that makes me laugh and it means what I’ve made is really getting used. Art has a really practical utility in my life, it keeps me sane because it isn’t rational, and it comes from a place inside us we can’t see. Hopefully some reflection of whatever my work gleans from that unseen realm can be a part of someone’s day to day life, I believe in that and I strive for that, it’s the driving force behind what I do.

KH: The film unfolds without words, asking us as viewers to feel something rather than be told. What do you think silence allows you to do that traditional narrative structures might not?

AM: I didn’t want the film to be consumed quickly or decoded, I wanted it to be experienced physically. I struggle with words; to me they feel limited. If something resists translation, that’s where it feels most honest to me. I have always been drawn to how art can allow people to access emotional states that don’t sit comfortably within language, and much of my earlier work explored alexithymia (the inability to name or express feeling), which I approach through image rather than through explanation.

This film is the first time that practice has crossed fully into cinema. Silence—or rather how a lack of spoken words gives way to musical compositions—creates a different kind of intimacy for me. Or maybe an immediacy? Where music is often enjoyed without explanation, curatorial statement, or socio-historical context, art experiences often rely on framing to bring things into alignment for the viewer. I like my work to be experienced like music. The viewer is left alone with their own response, and that ambiguity is important to me.

KH: Your background in architecture and installation is strongly felt in the way the film inhabits space, especially as it extends into the gallery. How do you think about cinema as something spatial or sculptural rather than purely linear?

AM: When you study architecture, one of the first things you are taught is that space is never neutral. You learn that the experience of space is rooted in subtle codes that unfold in time as you move through it. These codes are etched into the fabric of the building. They are in the materials and the forms, the way light enters, the way sound moves around the space, creating an atmosphere that is felt in the body before it is understood.

Just like how a building and the narrative it tells are made of physical elements (like materials), and ephemeral elements (like light and acoustics), cinema too can be read as such. Through editing, I have come to appreciate time-based media differently, as something dimensional, less like a storyline that moves forward, but as a surround. The pulses and motifs in sound and image almost become like light illuminating a world, giving it shape and revealing its texture.

In this film, sound operates as its own spatial layer. It sculpts the film; it has its own dimension. By which I mean, it carves out transitions, dictates pacing, and gives a spine to emotional shifts. The use of flash cuts articulate the work, lighting it up with red, white, and black silhouettes. This non-linearity allows ideas and moods to creep in pre-verbally, making sound and image mutually constitutive dimensions in revealing the world we built. And it becomes something inhabitable, an atmosphere you enter, not a story you follow.

KH: The film’s figures move with both urgency and grace. How do you approach the tension between control and unpredictability when you’re working with aspects such as motion, light and place?

AM: I’m very drawn to chance. That comes directly from painting, especially abstraction. When I paint, I allow chaos in first. Loose marks, layers that don’t immediately make sense. Only later do I begin to hone in on the final form. The work reveals itself through that tension. The unexpected moments are often where the energy lives.

I treat filmmaking in much the same way. Once I had the technical foundations in place as an editor, I allowed myself to begin breaking images apart, distorting them, layering them, and pushing them beyond realism. There are elements I can control; however, the process always surprises me with chance occurrences, images I find in the material that I wasn’t searching for. Unpredictability is essential to this process; it keeps the work alive. I think that comes from approaching film as an artist rather than from a strictly cinematic vantage. I’m less interested in precision than in allowing the material to misbehave slightly.

Working full-time as an editor over the past few years has also shaped this mindset. I’m used to working with footage that I didn’t personally have a hand in planning or shooting. As such, I have been finding structure and beauty in material that already exists, digging deeply into other people’s work to shape narratives and emotional trajectories. Because of that, I approached this film knowing that the real transformation would happen in post-production. No matter what we captured on set, I trusted the edit to push the imagery further, to open up new possibilities that weren’t visible at the time of filming.