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# Konrad Welz

Art and Experimentation

## Sitemaps

- [XML Sitemap](https://www.konradwelz.com/sitemap.xml): Contains all public & indexable URLs for this website.

## Posts

- [Ontope - A Definition](https://www.konradwelz.com/ontope/) - Since I coined the word - Ontope - combining ontos (being) and topos (place) - I thought I’ll define it as I understand it.
- [Curated Videos](https://www.konradwelz.com/curated-videos/) - When coming into contact with an unknown body of work, it can be helpful to be eased into it by first watching shorter, more widely known, less polemical or intense works. Here are my recommendations for first-timers.

## Pages

- [Home](https://www.konradwelz.com/) - Art and Experimentation by South African artist Konrad Welz. A growing archive of 40 years of film, video, objects, installations, performances and texts.
- [Videos](https://www.konradwelz.com/videos/) - Films & Videos I have been making films and videos for forty years. From angst-ridden films made in late-eighties, Apartheid South Africa; to recordings of insignificant places, to heavy-metal videos. They vary greatly in form - from glacially-slow, "like watching paint dry" observational videos, to bone-dry formal experiments, to audio-visual poetry, to hallucinogenic trips, to
- [About](https://www.konradwelz.com/about/) - An Informal Introduction Music & Performance Art In 1985, in my first-year electrical engineering class at the University of the Witwatersrand, I befriended a fellow student - Tony Burton - a friendship that changed all my plans. Innocuously enough, Tony and I started a band.However - between 1986 and 1992 - it became a collective
- [Photos](https://www.konradwelz.com/photos/) - Photography Even though I've been photographing for my entire adult life, I started seriously experimenting with photo books in 2012. Recently, I finally found a way to present the photo books online in a way that more corresponds with the printed versions. Apropos the printed versions... These are signed and numbered, hard-cover books, printed professionally
- [Vache Noire](https://www.konradwelz.com/vache-noire/) - Vache Noire This page is a growing, informal archive of artefacts and documents related to the South African performance group - Vache Noire / Inkomo Mnyama - which was active in Johannesburg between 1986 and 1992. For more in-depth information and context, I refer you to my comments written to my film - I love
- [Graphics](https://www.konradwelz.com/graphics/)
- [Other](https://www.konradwelz.com/other/)
- [Objects & Installations](https://www.konradwelz.com/objects-installations/)
- [Music](https://www.konradwelz.com/music/)
- [Performances](https://www.konradwelz.com/performances/)
- [Objects](https://www.konradwelz.com/objects/)
- [Search](https://www.konradwelz.com/search/)
- [Video Archive](https://www.konradwelz.com/video-archive/)
- [Documentation](https://www.konradwelz.com/documentation/)

## Documentation

- [PAIN](https://www.konradwelz.com/document/pain/) - /

## Photos

- [Minigolf Archeology - 2017](https://www.konradwelz.com/photo/minigolf-archeology/) - Introduction On the 13th of June, 2017, I took these photographs at the deserted Murmelbachtal minigolf complex in Wuppertal, Germany. I discovered the site after deciding to follow a road - intriguingly named - Zur Konradswüste - To Konrad's desert. The road meanders through a landscape which is correctly described by the name Murmelbachtal -
- [Minigolf Epistemology - 2024](https://www.konradwelz.com/photo/photo-books/)
- [Figures in a Garden - 2026](https://www.konradwelz.com/photo/figures-in-a-garden/)
- [At the End of the Forest - 2021](https://www.konradwelz.com/photo/at-the-end-of-the-forest/)
- [München 2012.08.25](https://www.konradwelz.com/photo/munchen-2012-08-25/) - Recorded at the wonderful Munich Glyptothek. While I was studying at the Royal Danish Art Academy in Copenhagen, the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek was a favourite haunt of mine

## Vache Noire Documents

- [Vache Noire Graphic Identities](https://www.konradwelz.com/vache-noire-doc/vache-noire-identities/) - Between 1986 and 1988 I designed three different identities. The Vache Noire typeface changed slightly, but this was the final version. The Holy Cow design came next, followed by the Inkomo Mnyama design. For later performances they were used interchangeably.

## Videos

- [Plant Station Arcs](https://www.konradwelz.com/video/plant-station-arcs/) - Our Self, and all other notions we have, seem to bleed out into the totality surrounding us - like ink on blotting paper. We get absorbed by the specificities of our surroundings - objects, sights, sounds, colours, movements, smells, touch - contact. We share the air, the light, with everything around us.
- [Remain in Light](https://www.konradwelz.com/video/remain-in-light/) - This is a very personal video exploring experiences we have, that are so beautiful or spectacular that we lose ourselves in wonder.
- [Sunset](https://www.konradwelz.com/video/sunset/) - With this video I tried to recreate the incredible solemnity of sunsets, and the enormity of being in this world.
- [Image and Pilgrimage](https://www.konradwelz.com/video/image-and-pilgrimage/) - Some comments Let’s say you dream of going to Rome. You know, those four letters R-O-M-E and the dot, halfway up the boot of Italy. You know, the Colosseum, Romulus and Remus, the Vatican, La Dolce Vita, the Trevi Fountain… And then you actually go there… During June, 1995; my wife Angelika and I went
- [Six Persimmons, a Robin, and a Dreaming Dog](https://www.konradwelz.com/video/six-persimmons-a-robin-and-a-dreaming-dog/) - Inspired by the 13th-century masterpiece Six Persimmons by the Ch'an artist monk Muqi (牧谿) - also known as Fachang (法常).
- [Summoning](https://www.konradwelz.com/video/summoning/) - 26 June 2000, Delhi, India. Image and audio recorded simultaneously - no overdubs.
- [Three Turf Pieces](https://www.konradwelz.com/video/three-turf-pieces/) - Like most of my video work, I am interested in creating a one-take, audio-visual entity - in an attempt to share pre-lingual, pre-cognitive experience; and convey the simple wonder or resonance of that experience.
- [Tropical Zoom Study](https://www.konradwelz.com/video/tropical-zoom-study/) - Does zooming into an object bring us any closer to it? Does zooming out make the objects in view any less inscrutable to us and to each other?
- [Two Attempts at Phlebotany](https://www.konradwelz.com/video/two-attempts-at-phlebotany/) - A punny title for a video which addresses a few of my interests.
- [Waiting for the Monsoon](https://www.konradwelz.com/video/waiting-for-the-monsoon/) - Believe me, these aren't arbitrary - random - recordings. Well, actually they are! As arbitrary or random as the world around us. But then, the world around us is also totally magical - if we bother to observe quietly - without any preconceptions or expectations.
- [Cemetery Symmetry](https://www.konradwelz.com/video/cemetery-symmetry/) - Filmed at the massive Verdun war cemetery just after a total solar eclipse on the 11th of August, 1999.
- [Helicopter Relevation](https://www.konradwelz.com/video/helicopter-relevation/) - Part of a series of experiments I made around the mid-nineties experimenting with focus, and the meaning of blurred images and the sensations they trigger.
- [Chromacandy](https://www.konradwelz.com/video/chromacandy/) - A freestyle analogue synth improvisation - channeling the Jesus & Mary Chain, 808 State, and the euphoria of early nineties rave culture. I've remastered the video on its thirtieth anniversary.
- [Seagull](https://www.konradwelz.com/video/seagull/) - These things delineate our selves – like an animator – constantly drawing, erasing, and redrawing; and make us cast our shadows on the world.
- [Pagan Paean](https://www.konradwelz.com/video/pagan-paean/) - We need to be very aware of the effect that a technology itself - not just the content - has on us. Just like a simple road, or power-line, causes profound and far-reaching changes to the societies and landscape where they are built.
- [I love the smell of burning dust](https://www.konradwelz.com/video/i-love-the-smell-of-burning-dust/) - When I started my first experiments with 8mm film in 1986; it was the smell of the film running past the hot halogen lamp of the projector that instantly took me back to childhood home-movie nights of the 70's. And I then realised it was the smell of burning dust.
- [L21ST](https://www.konradwelz.com/video/l21st/) - Both the video and audio components of L21ST are improvisations - created in one take without edits or revisions. In this formal purity, I discovered a simplicity I had been yearning for, for years, and a possible solution to the conclusion I had reached in the museum, months before...
- [Contact](https://www.konradwelz.com/video/contact/) - Inspired by Ch’an or Zen brushwork, I've long been interested in the idea of using my video camera as ’seeing paintbrush’. A gestural interaction with the camera and the world around me.
- [Throwing Stones at the Sun](https://www.konradwelz.com/video/throwing-stones-at-the-sun/) - Why not chuck a stone into a pond? Why not poke a stick at a wasps nest? Why not jump off a garage roof? Let’s see what happens…
- [Shooting Pigeons](https://www.konradwelz.com/video/shooting-pigeons/) - I wanted to capture the lyricism of birds in flight. Instead, I ran headlong into the matter-of-factness of birds as they physically appear to me.
- [Concrete Painting](https://www.konradwelz.com/video/concrete-painting/) - Some comments Imagine looking over someone’s shoulder as they use a brush with ink on paper - or spray paint on concrete. Whether it’s for calligraphy, graffiti, delineating a mist-shrouded pine bough, or a Twomblyesque doodle. Now imagine being at the tip of the brush - or nozzle of a can of spray paint -
- [Dust Anthology](https://www.konradwelz.com/video/dust-anthology/) - “In sum, there are no complete shapes of any sort. They are dissolved into shreds of visible matter”. Like some sort of hyper drum-and-bass, flailing hi-hats and cymbals splashing colours into existence.
- [Kites](https://www.konradwelz.com/video/kites/) - Flying kites from rooftops at sunset. Agra, India, 21 May 1996. Absolute Thusness.
- [In visible Silence](https://www.konradwelz.com/video/in-visible-silence/) - Please turn on the closed caption transcription or English translation. Note: The audio mutes near the end of the video. This is intentional.
- [Invisibilities](https://www.konradwelz.com/video/invisibilities/) - Shot in the dead of night in a Malaysian village, this video is an exploration of perception and consciousness. While the people sleep, their village is owned and roamed by the creatures of the night - existing on the edges of (and beyond) human perception. By slowing down the footage, the ultrasonic sounds of some
- [Bachelor Machines](https://www.konradwelz.com/video/bachelor-machines/) - Quoting Ronald Reagan and Francisco Goya; based on readily available internet video footage of modern tech weaponry; this video confronts the viewer with the inherently dehumanising and misanthropic nature of technology and modern visual media.
- [Lot 22](https://www.konradwelz.com/video/lot-22/) - Driving along a nondescript road along the Hawkesbury river, I noticed an electrical box with Lot 22 painted on it. In my youth I had read Thomas Pynchon's classic - The Crying of Lot 49 - and felt compelled to stop. With the car engine switched off, it takes a while for the droning numbness of driving to slowly give way. The silence of this completely arbitrary place in the Australian landscape descends.
- [Electro Nosebleed](https://www.konradwelz.com/video/electro-nosebleed/) - Using a flashlight in a darkened room and a video feedback loop; I set out to create a synaesthetic, electric stream of calligraphy - some sort of 'direct expression'. The title was inspired by the trance-induced, bleeding noses of shamans and dying animals in Khoisan rock paintings. Direct, corporeal expression and communication.
- [Nike](https://www.konradwelz.com/video/nike/) - Four minutes in the Louvre, observing the famous Winged Victory of Samothrace - and everything that happens around it. Recorded on 19 May 1996. Ars longa, Vita brevis.
- [A.R.T.](https://www.konradwelz.com/video/a-r-t/) - Over the second half of the 1990's, I became interested in making angular, visceral, ‘short-circuiting’ videos. As part of this process, I sampled diverse music genres to create raw, polyrhythmic music tracks which I rehearsed, and then played and recorded straight onto DAT.
- [River Mantra](https://www.konradwelz.com/video/river-mantra/) - A meditative, observational video from the banks of the mighty Ganges river at Varanasi, India. Recorded in June, 1996. Because one sequence features a floating, wrapped, corpse; this video is recommended for mature viewers only. I have made many videos of this genre because it is my total conviction that quiet, observation of the world
- [Rock Metal Scissors](https://www.konradwelz.com/video/rock-metal-scissors/) - The immediacy, and overwhelming sensory experience of a basement metal gig. From Botch to Norma Jean, Converge and Dillinger Escape Plan; I have always had a soft spot for Metal. Not least because its adrenaline-inducing intensity always seems to send the courtiers and courtesans of courteous society scurrying away.
- [The Large Grass](https://www.konradwelz.com/video/the-large-grass/) - Part of my 'Curing Concrete' series towards a New Realism. References to, and resonances with, Duchamp, Dürer and Wyeth are acknowledged. Memories of summer camping trips are encouraged.
- [The one where a scooter clips a dog whose yelping then triggers feedback in a temple](https://www.konradwelz.com/video/the-one-where-a-scooter-clips-a-dog-whose-yelping-then-triggers-feedback-in-a-temple/) - A recording of the Taj Mahal in the early morning on the 21st of May 1996 in Agra, India. One take - no effects or overdubs.
- [Bhumisparsa](https://www.konradwelz.com/video/bhumisparsa/) - All of these Buddhas have the same pose - the so-called Bhumisparsa Mudra - or Earth-touching Gesture - which is one of Buddhist iconography’s most important hand gestures - or Mudras. In this gesture, the Buddha is seated in meditation while his right hand - with outstretched fingers - is touching the earth.
- [N/Ontope](https://www.konradwelz.com/video/n-ontope/) - On the odd occasion when you spend a longer time at an airport, the strangeness of this ‘habitat-simulation’ becomes more and more apparent. During the night of the 19th to 20th of July 2000, I ended up on a five-hour layover at Dubai airport.
- [10K Ugly Pixels](https://www.konradwelz.com/video/10k-ugly-pixels/) - The title of this video refers to the iconic work Ten Thousand Ugly Ink Blots by the Chinese, artist-monk Shitao (石涛) who lived between 1642 and 1707. This video was originally titled Landscape #1 and completed in 1996. The source S-VHS tape was digitised in 2021 and then de-interlaced and upscaled using software based on machine learning. This algorithmic transformation from analog, Standard Definition, to digital, High Definition images, created a look - essentially, painterly digital artefacts - which resonated with many of my motivations for the original video.
- [Against](https://www.konradwelz.com/video/against/) - "Hier stehe ich, ich kann nicht anders." - "Here I stand, I can't do anything else." - are reportedly the words of Martin Luther as he refused to retract his statements in front of the Diet of Worms on that fateful day in April 1521. For various reasons, this video is very close to my
- [The Photographer](https://www.konradwelz.com/video/the-photographer/) - Part of a series of video experiments I made during the mid-nineties under the heading: Focus Improvisations. This was a completely un-staged, spontaneous, straight-to-tape recording. By pure coincidence, as I was recording random focus changes, a fellow tourist with a camera walked into frame. Since I wasn't looking through my viewfinder, he must have assumed
- [Thunderstorm at Wat Phra Mahathat Woramahawihan](https://www.konradwelz.com/video/thunderstorm-at-wat-phra-mahathat-woramahawihan/) - Recorded on Tuesday, 7 May 1996, Nakhon Si Thammarat, Southern Thailand. We are so conditioned to approach a film or video as a kind of text which is to be read - rather than really looked at and listened to. In this convention, the shots in the edited sequence are all subservient to the script
- [Being in Thailand](https://www.konradwelz.com/video/being-in-thailand/) - During March and April 2000, I travelled around the south of Thailand. I spent many hours trying to record the Being of my tranquil surroundings. As with most of my recordings, I would lock the camera on a tripod, and then record between two and five minutes of whatever happens in front of the lens
- [A silent video of hands playing dominoes](https://www.konradwelz.com/video/a-silent-video-of-hands-playing-dominoes/) - In late July 1995, we ended up in Manzanillo, Costa Rica. We had no intention of even overnighting, yet ended up staying for a life-changing week. I knew the stars were aligning when I walked into Maxie's for a beer, only to be greeted by the music of South African reggae star Lucky Dube. It
- [Late at night when the malls are closed](https://www.konradwelz.com/video/late-at-night-when-the-malls-are-closed/) - Giant grids of television beam God's exile The surgeon of the nightsky restores dead things by the power of sound From the Whole Megillah by Ira Cohen It was after 2 a.m on a windy night in January 1997 that I stepped onto a 15th-floor balcony in Braamfontein, Johannesburg and started recording the deserted city
- [Including two pans and an ice-cream van](https://www.konradwelz.com/video/including-two-pans-and-an-ice-cream-van/) - Also includes the sky and various types of cloud, frogs, pinkish flowers, the shadow of an ice-cream seller, the hum of the camcorder mechanism, a few static shots, a tropical house, three barking dogs, rusty cars and a caterpillar, a dirt road, banana plants, telephone lines, a catchy tune, an inquisitive van driver, numerous trees,
- [Distance and Existence](https://www.konradwelz.com/video/distance-and-existence/) - For a week around the Northern winter solstice 2010, I trawled the web for webcam feeds. Webcams typically have low frame-rates - resulting in very 'staccato' image sequences. By dissolving between the successive frames, I tried to re-create the lost continuity or 'flow'. The resulting sequences, actually reveal interesting visual aspects of the entire process
- [Circling the Square](https://www.konradwelz.com/video/circling-the-square/) - Recording the world with the detachment of a meditating monk - with a so-called Mirror Mind - viewing things as they are, with no personal emotions or desires projected onto them. This video explores the complex relationships between looking and listening - the seen, and the heard. It tries to record Being - or even
- [Crossing Paths at the Edge of Emptiness](https://www.konradwelz.com/video/crossing-paths-at-the-edge-of-emptiness/) - Recorded in Darjeeling on the 3rd of June, 1996. Inspired by Ch'an Buddhist paintings and the plenitude of emptiness.
- [Empire](https://www.konradwelz.com/video/empire/) - Welcome to the empire where the death-ray of vision and its image-making machines are always on. Where seeing is believing. Collected over four years and two continents, the footage used for empire was filmed entirely from television. With watching television now making up for almost a third (1) of the average person’s waking life, those
- [Dreams of Forgotten Memories](https://www.konradwelz.com/video/dreams-of-forgotten-memories/) - Part of my work - February: A Quartet of Videos - first exhibited at Warren Siebrits Modern and Contemporary Art, Johannesburg, 2004. Original master format: PAL SD 576i Remastered with slight graphic changes to UHD in 2023.
- [Boxing Day](https://www.konradwelz.com/video/boxing-day/) - These recordings were made on 26 December 1999 in Coober Pedy, South Australia.This video is an excerpt - a chapter - from my long-form video The Bodies of Nobodies which I completed in 2022.
- [Torresian Imperial Pigeon](https://www.konradwelz.com/video/torresian-imperial-pigeon/) - Darwin, Australia, 13 December 1999 This video is an excerpt from my long-form video The Bodies of Nobodies.
- [In a Room, in the Monsoon](https://www.konradwelz.com/video/in-a-room-in-the-monsoon/) - Thursday, 6 June, 1996. Hotel Garib Nawaz, Calcutta

## Categories

- [Uncategorized](https://www.konradwelz.com/category/uncategorized/)

## Tags

- [Wat Phra Mahathat Woramahawihan](https://www.konradwelz.com/tag/wat-phra-mahathat-woramahawihan/)
- [George Zelenz](https://www.konradwelz.com/tag/george-zelenz/)
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- [Monsoon](https://www.konradwelz.com/tag/monsoon/)
- [Bhumisparsa](https://www.konradwelz.com/tag/bhumisparsa/)
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