The city of Guangzhou in China is vast and complex. Busy roads wind around slabs of office and residential buildings. The old is there and the new. All intertwined and happening at once.

People are tiny in comparison to the form of the city, but bring the hum, the chatter, the clatter. Some days the smog was bad and you couldn't see down the end of the road. Then it cleared, revealing gleaming architectural gems. We ate chicken feet, or tried to at least. We went to the district where they sell red things for luck.

In the hotel, which had one of the most decorated Christmas trees I'd ever seen, past the international breakfast buffet, there was a small garden with a koi carp pond. They sucked loudly at the surface of the water, audible over the low constant thrum of the traffic.

As I watched them, I sensed they were an unknowing microcosm at the centre of this maelstrom. A small pond in a massive city, unaware of the complexities and concerns going on around it.

I was inspired to juxtapose these two scales in this work: the pond of fish and the city. We move through the streets, going about our business, just as the fish do. The city feels immense, but it is itself just a small pond in a big country in a bigger world.

The soundtrack is performed by Alex May using his custom MIDI drum plugin for REAPER, available on his GitHub account.

The video was filmed in 2018 and edited together in 2019.