Archives: Videos

Pagan Paean

Year:

1991

Duration:

12:43

Recorded:

1990/1991

Pagan Paean 35 years later…

“Hey Chuck, we got some non-believers out there.”

Flavor Flav – Public Enemy – Timebomb (1987)

I started filming Pagan Paean in July 1990 and finished it about a year later.

This text is an edited and extended version of the text which I wrote for the catalogue of my exhibition – ∞ : a Selection of 8 Videos – at Warren Siebrits Modern and Contemporary Art in Johannesburg in 2004.

Pagan

The etymology of the word – pagan – is of key importance to the main thrust of this film.

It is derived from the Latin word paganus – originally meaning – villager or rural person.

In Roman military jargon, paganus also meant – civilian – in the sense of – non-soldier, or incompetent soldier; which early Christian authors like Tertullian and Augustine used to metaphorically contrast with the word – milites – soldier – as in “soldier of Christ”.

To summarise – pagans were rural people, or those who weren’t “soldiers of Christ”.

In Victorian times, philologers such as Richard Trench held the view that since Christianity had first found a foothold in towns and cities – while rural people clung to the old religions – they called non-Christians – pagans.

In my view, this is justified, because the word – heathen – is also thought to be derived from the German word Heiden – which could mean – one living on the heath ie: uncultivated land.

So, we have a dichotomy between the ‘modern’, ‘true believer’, city slickers – versus – the ‘old school’, country bumpkins . ¹

But what belief – am I talking about?

Twenty-one years ago, when I first wrote this text, I said that this film is about systems of power – both visible and invisible – and the influence they have on a landscape and its inhabitants.

Looking at it now, I would say that this film is more specifically about knowledge- and belief systems, and the power imbalances between the adherents of those systems.

Certainly religion is one manifestation of a belief system, but I also include science and socio-political dogma – from the point when people start believing in the infallibility of a system.

Human cognitive processes, and our various languages, are all abstract constructions of signs and symbols, which allow us to analyse, evaluate, and reframe situations. They allow us to gain insights, and to build the complex and powerful tools and systems that we use.

But it is important to realise that – inherently – all such symbolic systems ² , or models, are based on the simplification of fantastically complex natural processes.

Nonetheless, they often magically seem to work. And often these simplified, idealised models become so reassuring, that we start believing that they represent Reality.

Opening with a shot of a telephone mast and cables, followed by electricity pylons – part of the country’s power grid – the film also features a road, a railway crossing and fences – all the classic tools for ‘civilising’ ³ an ‘untamed’ land.
While superficially quite benign or beneficial, the introduction of any one of these elements has far-reaching – often unintended – consequences on the existing social and natural landscape.

On a more abstract level, but equally important to the world-view which has subjected most of the world using the above-mentioned infrastructure; is the superimposition of a linear ⁴ , ever-ticking, Time – referred to by the use of time-lapse recording and the ‘speaking clock’ in the soundtrack.
This particular conception of time is often imbued with a pernicious combination of Darwinism and technological development: The notion that, with every technological development, we are one step further away from our ‘primitive’ origins – that we are becoming cleverer and cleverer.
It is impossible for this world-view not to view with disdain, or smug paternalism, cultures with different attitudes towards technology and time – even our own ancestors.

This is a culture which takes its clever maps and models of the world, to be the world.
A culture which has relativised or idealised to abstraction, every Thing, every Truth.
Where people have become statistical composites and the body is viewed as an unfortunate glitch, or remnant, as the age of enlightenment reaches light-speed.
This makes it possible for the crew of an Apache helicopter gunship, surveying the landscape through infra-red sensors, to laughingly follow the little human figures scurrying around on (the dead blackness of) their screens, train green crosshairs on them, and “spray and slay” them with all the detachment of a computer game. The Desert Storm ⁵ smart-bomb images in the film now look positively ‘old-school’, FPV Drones are the current new thing apparently.

Opposed to this worldview, there are those figures in the landscape – the pagans – the man patiently collecting maize kernels and cobs missed by the combine harvester – to plant them on a small patch of land, graciously allowed by the land-owner. The boy and his three dogs, hunting hares for the pot – eking out an existence. The grieving farmers, living near Chernobyl ⁶ , mourning the radiation death of their daughter – both of them probably long-dead by now. The dachas and villages deserted by the same nuclear apocalypse…
And as the Roentgen count increases, the stag turns away from camera to face death in an unmediated forest at the end of the world…

This was the end of my previous text, written in 2004.

Figures in a landscape revisited:

In the text above I mention the two figures ⁷ whom I filmed as they crossed my path in the expansive landscape. I paint them with a political, Marxist brush – which certainly – in the context of South Africa in 1990 – is a valid approach.
However, considering the videos I’ve subsequently made; and insights I’ve gained during the intervening thirty-four years; I would like to offer another view.

I have always loved generic descriptions of paintings, like: Still-life with Flowers, View from a Window, Interior with Figure, or indeed – Figures in a Landscape.
This happens either because little is known about the work or the artist – with little provenance or biography to assist the historian… or because it is simply a generic – everyday – scene . ⁸

This is definitely not a “Napoleon crossing the Alps” – there is no drama, no heroes, no grand narratives, no historic triumphs… just everyday scenes like: Man collecting Maize Cobs, or Boy with Dogs Hunting Rabbits; or Hunter standing by Pond… quaint – or rural – as they might sound.

But there is nothing sexy about these scenes. They present the polar opposite of our modern, technology-saturated lives – drowned and distracted by the sensational, clamouring, over-hyped flim-flam media machine – where everything is beautiful, superficial or artificial, and nothing is real.

Small wonder we begin to lose all empathy, our “humanness” – our humanity – despite spending all our time on “social” media – sharing pet videos, ever-so-witty memes, and being whipped into frenzies by all kinds of injustices – apparently perpetrated in far-flung corners of the world where we have never actually been.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not some technology-hating luddite.
But I do feel we need to be very, very aware of the effect that the technology itself – not just the content – has on us.
As Marshal McLuhan used to say: The Medium is the Message.
Just like a simple road, or power-line, causes profound and far-reaching changes to the societies and landscape where they are built.
For every new technological tool we acquire, we lose a skill, or power we have in ourselves – we become weaker.
We might now be able to do something quicker, or faster, or more powerfully; but we fundamentally start losing, or forgetting the original ability or skill we had.
It is a zero sum game – you gain one, you lose the other.
This seemingly unstoppable process is currently reflected in the insane clamouring for so-called – Artifical Intelligence – where people are seemingly yearning to relinquish the last thing which defines Homo Sapiens – our ability to reason – to the machine.

We live in a world where governments are being swept up by trans-national tech companies, taking over all functions of government and installing all forms of control.
A technology cult of atheist, tech-supremacists, preaching trans-humanism – the absolute height of misanthropy.

But the day will come ⁹ . The day the much-vaunted techno miracle machine grinds to a halt. And we end up with empty shelves and empty selves – because we have relinquished all natural abilities, externalised everything – given everything – even our memories and reasoning for the machines to look after, or to do.

As some character in an imaginary Ridley Scott movie might say: “You use a droid, you become a droid.”

In contrast to all of this – paraphrasing Matthew 5:5 – “Blessed are the pagans, for they will inherit the earth.”

Because the despised pagans – with anti-hubristic humility – will be singing: “Lord have mercy on me” – acknowledging that they are not masters of the universe – not wise guys – and sing paeans by firelight.

Anecdotes and Comments on the Making of Pagan Paean:

All the landscape scenes in this film were shot in the Southern winter of 1990, near a place called Boons, in – what was then called – the western Transvaal, South Africa. I had first discovered this landscape the year before, on a shoot with Reinhold Cassirer. ¹⁰

When we came back the following year, I brought my 8mm camera with me. Driving back to Johannesburg in the late afternoon, Reinhold saw a pond with tall trees growing next to it. He suggested we stop to see if there were any ducks around. He walked over to the pond with his beloved Weimaraner – Bodo – and his trusty Purdey shotgun in hand. I started filming the scene as dusk approached. All the shots around the pond lined with tall trees including the boy and his dogs, were filmed that afternoon. When I received the newly scanned 4K file of the film in early 2025, I was totally blown away to discover that I had actually recorded Reinhold and his dog Bodo standing under the trees by the pond. It was the first time I had ever noticed him because of the size and quality of the scan. He thus became the third Figure in a Landscape.

Inspired by the stark beauty of highveld winter landscape; I returned the next weekend for more filming – this time with my friend Warren Siebrits to keep me company. All the remaining landscape shots – including the fire scenes – were filmed on that day.

All the television images were filmed from VHS recordings that I had made following the Chernobyl disaster and the Gulf War which started at that time.

In those days, there was no possibility for me to add a soundtrack to the edited 8mm film master. The only affordable option was to have the film copied onto VHS and then to dub the soundtrack onto the tape. The dub was done by Vijay Ramnundlall in Johannesburg.

Pagan Paean turned out to be the last film I ever made. Around the end of 1991 I bought by first S-VHS camcorder, and embraced video.

Footnotes:

1: The late Bruce Chatwin saw in the story of Cain and Abel, the story of the Settler, or City Dweller, killing the Nomad, or Itinerant, living off the land. A notion certainly germane to this train of thought. (return)

2: Which are essentially analogies, metaphors or symbols representing relationships. (return)

3: Please note that the word civilise is related to the word city. (return)

4: It is important to note that there are two broad conceptions of time, adhered to by different cultures and traditions. On the one hand we have a linear, ever-extending, ‘arrow’ of time – where you start at point A on a straight line, and end at point B – further along that line.
On the other hand, we have an ever-repeating, ‘wheel’ of time – where you start at point A, and after a certain while, come past point A again – an endless cycle. This idea certainly doesn’t fit notions of ‘progress’. It’s also worth considering that farmers and those living closer to the land, are much more aware of the annual cycle of seasons… that ever-turning wheel. While on the subject of time; I must say that: Real, lived time, is also much slower than the “reel” time of mediated, edited, virtual life. (return)

5: The 2nd of August 1990 saw the start of Operation Desert Storm. An important catalyst in the creation of this film. (return)

6: While on the subject of catalytic events which engendered this film, I must mention the nuclear reactor meltdown at the Chernobyl power station on the 26 of April 1986. It was an event that shook to the core, my youthful, naïve, positivist believe in technology and the promised benefits of science. (return)

7: To my astonishment and great happiness, I discovered a third figure in the landscape after I had the film scanned in 4K resolution. More about this later. (return)

8: There are certainly beautiful exceptions to generic descriptions. My favourite being: Landscape with Man Killed by Snake. (return)

9: When fire, or earthquake, or sequence of unforseen events brings the house of cards tumbling down. In the Greek myths, the gods always mercilessly punish hubris – like Icarus, Arachne, Sisyphus, Phaeton… the list is long. (return)

10: I had known Reinhold Cassirer and his wife – Nadine Gordimer – since my early teens. We had gone on many shoots over the years; spending weekends on farms all over the Western Transvaal – as it was then called. He was a supremely cultured man who had a big influence on my life. (return)

Post Script

This film was the fourth in series of films that I made between 1986 and 1991. Their DNA is very similar in the sense that they were created during a very intense period of South Africa’s recent history. To date, my first film is also available in this archive. In case you’re interested, follow the following link:

I love the smell of burning dust (1986)

Like Pagan Paean, another work of mine which addresses the dehumanising, misanthropic nature of technology is:

Bachelor Machines (2010)
I love the smell of burning dust

Year:

1986

Duration:

5:12

Recorded:

1986

Context and Comments

This film is a bit of an art-historical curiosity – at least from a South African perspective.

In 1986, South Africa was in the grip of late-stage Apartheid. ¹

Against this backdrop, my friend – Tony Burton – and I spontaneously founded a band called – Vache Noire. ²

Vache Noire was active between 1986 to 1992. We did about a dozen performances centred around the campus of the University of the Witwatersrand ³ and surrounding city of Johannesburg.

Our multi-media performances were most often collaborations between ourselves, a loose constellation of artists, actors, sympathetic musicians, and the audiences.

Our performance posters and flyers were mostly cryptic. Every performance included illegal or dangerous elements – or both ⁴. Nonetheless, we had a small, but loyal, following.

Musically, our influences were extremely varied.
Some random examples would range from Run DMC, Steve Reich, Hildegard von Bingen, Laurie Anderson, Japan, Edgard Varése; to Psychic TV, Bauhaus, Cabaret Voltaire, John Cage, Jesus and Mary Chain, to traditional Zulu and Tsonga drumming… and any combination of those. ⁵

Conceptually, we were obsessed with systems – social and scientific – and taking them to their logical, absurd extremes. Or, finding interesting similarities or syntheses between totally unrelated systems, or fields, of knowledge.

Musically this manifested itself in us combining disparate musical genres. But we also experimented seriously with minimalist, pattern-based musical lines.

One can argue that all music is based on pattern, but our patterns weren’t based on musical keys.

We were into playing evolving patterns, following certain rules, on the “matrices” of our guitar and bass fretboards – almost like primitive cellular automata. ⁶

I was mostly responsible for the “concrete”, repetitive patterns; while Tony did the “plastic” improvisations around them.

This approach also broadly defined our instrumental preferences. While Tony did most of the percussion and improvised solo instruments, I mostly made the backing tape recordings and loops, computer programming ⁷ as well as film recording and editing.

The films were designed as back-projections during the performance of certain songs – like I love the smell of burning dust. ⁸

Being children of the seventies and eighties, we had grown up in the pre-internet, analogue age; which included – the now almost impossible to relate to – rituals of watching 8mm home-movies and slide shows.

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 us back to those childhood home-movie nights.

It was then that we realised that what we were smelling, was the smell of burning dust – the smell of nostalgia. This is what inspired us to create this song.

Nearly forty years after those traumatic yet creative experiences in late-eighties South-Africa, it has been an incredible journey for me to digitise our extant performance films and audio recordings; and attempt to reconstruct this film as is was played live. Projecting the films repeatedly in less-than-ideal situations damaged them with burns, tears and breakages.

In many respects, the footage has come to embody the smell of burning dust; and I decided to let that aspect creatively flow into this edit. During live accompaniment of a film playing back, sync was not tight. Now I had a single version of the song ⁹ to which I could cut a more refined edit. So, consider this version a “director’s cut” if you will.

Before I finally swapped to video in 1992; I made three more 8mm short-films. But this was my raw first attempt – as twenty-year-old member of Vache Noire – in that violent, but strangely forgotten decade of South-African history.

Post Script:

Viewers interested in seeing the last film I made in this series – even though very different in theme – I recommend:
Pagan Paean (1991)

Footnotes:

1: In July 1985, a State of Emergency was declared. It lasted for five years, and saw incredible violence, repression and censorship. Five years which ended with the release of Nelson Mandela from prison. (return)

2: The choice of name was in itself absurd. Neither of us spoke French – nor anyone but a small handful of people in South Africa for that matter. We were familiar with the slogan – Mort aux Vaches – and joked about being the black cow of the family; but at heart, I think the foreign name represented our yearning for an – “Anywhere out of the world” – that we were living in.

Later, we did some performances under the Zulu version of the name – Nkomo Mnyama – and eventually we settled on a stylised industrial graphic of a cow.

In fact, the notion of a secret language; or of some sort of encoded communication was something that we were definitely interested in. I see it as an attempt to create a parallel culture to the status quo in which we were living. I guess that’s what defines the notion of sub-culture or Underground. The morse code – S.O.S. – that I had ‘hidden’ in the film is one example of a coded message. (return)

3: Tony and I had actually become friends as first-year students in the Electrical Engineering faculty in 1985. Conveniently for us, Tony became the manager of The Box theatre on the university campus. A small space which we could book for some of our shows. (return)

4: An audience member told us the amusing story of her well-to-do father forbidding her to come to our performance with the words: “I will not allow my daughter to leave the house with a hammer in her handbag”. (return)

5: I cannot stress enough how conservative and repressive the South-African system was. The artists just mentioned were as far from mainstream as you could possibly imagine – I guess they still are. One could only get hold of such recordings via special order through a few independent record shops. As regards the Zulu and Tsonga drumming; we had made some visits to mine hostel compounds around Johannesburg. There mine workers would perform traditional drumming and dancing on weekends. It was through this that we invited them to some of our performances. (return)

6: The concepts of Cellular Automata and related fields such as Chaos Theory were in many ways critical to Vache Noire’s thinking and experimentation.
Coming from a background of mathematics, engineering and programming, we were both very interested in algorithms and patterns.
For viewers unfamiliar with the concept, I simply have to recommend a few videos on the subject, since it is so interesting.
There are of course many more to explore:

The Edge of Chaos – and overview of fields related to Cellular Automata,
Game of Life – A classic Cellular Automaton, no need to watch beyond 3:10,
Game of Life in-depth has excellent philosophical rumination at the end. (return)

7: Since 1982, I had been using a Sinclair ZX81 and later a ZX Spectrum. I had taught myself programming and was experimenting with rudimentary image- and sound-generating programmes. These results were used in our performances and my films. (return)

8: At the time, it was actually physically impossible for me to add soundtracks to my 8mm films. The only affordable solution I later found, was to copy the films onto VHS video and then to add the soundtrack.
During the live performances, whoever was responsible for film playback cueing, would sometimes resort to slowing the projector speed down or even using two projectors.
I love the smell of burning dust was first screened in the performance Methods of Dehumanisation – performed at The Box theatre in 1986. (return)

9: Recorded during a clandestine session on the 7th of August 1986 at the studios of Radio 702 in Johannesburg by Russell Hutton. (return)
Dust Anthology

Year:

2025

Duration:

2:06

Recorded:

1995

Ingvil

In 1995, I recorded some video footage of grave flowers in a New Orleans cemetery.¹
At the time, I was a student at the Royal Danish Art Academy in Copenhagen. It was there, in a 1992, where I first met and befriended Ingvil Aarbakke – a Norwegian fellow art student. We both graduated in 1997.

In 2005, I was shocked by the news that Ingvil – whom I hadn’t seen for a few years – had died at the age of thirty-five.

In reaction to the news, I created a video called – Dust Anthology – using the above-mentioned footage. However, I was unhappy with the result, and abandoned the video – considering it to be too maudlin compared to my bright memories of Ingvil.
Nonetheless, I had become familiar with the footage, and had a title I liked.
I must point out that the word – Anthology – is derived from the Greek word – Anthos – meaning Flower. An anthology is therefore a metaphoric collection of flowers. While on the subject of the title, the Dust refers to Genesis 3:19: “for dust you are and to dust you shall return”.

Nothing is as beautiful – and as sad – as a vase of flowers. It embodies the essence of our earthly existence.

Of course, each of the ten thousand things around us – including ourselves – shares the same destiny. That awareness, is the origin of the Japanese phrase – Mono No Aware – the pathos of things – or the Virgillian – Lacrimae rerum – the tears of things. To name but a few.

But here we must ask ourselves: Is the cup half empty, or is it half full?
Are we going to mope around feeling sorry for ourselves? Or are we going to look and listen and reach out to the world around us and enjoy the stunning spectacle? Of course, I’m not advocating some sort of hedonistic, superficial, pleasure-seeking either. Instead, there is also the Middle Way, or The Way – key concepts in Buddhism and Taoism.

The Tao – a short summary

The Tao is both infinitely abundant and pure emptiness. It is the source of all existence from which everything springs and to which everything returns. It is the underlying process of Nature, of Reality. It’s energy – the Qi (Chi) – symbolised by the dragon – is the energy force which flows through all things. By letting go of extremes – finding balance between opposing forces – one can tap into this energy of the Present – the Now – and go with the flow.

For the past few years, I’ve been exploring and discovering Chinese painting². I realised that most – if not all – Chinese art, is imbued with the spirit and concepts of Taoism or Buddhism.
For example. In all those magnificent paintings of mist-shrouded bamboo branches, mountain peaks, or landscapes – created by strokes, dabs, and washes of ink on the white, empty surface of paper; it is indeed the misty emptiness of the paper which represents the Tao – from which things appear and into which things disappear.
Emptiness, in this conception, is not some sort of nihilistic, anti-matter. It is the generative substrate, or matrix – from which everything emerges, and – at the end of physical manifestation – that things return to again. It is, to quote Helmut Brinker’s marvellous phrase – the Plenitude of Emptiness.

I have found that visual metaphor very useful in understanding the co-existence of being, and non-being – life, and death.

Of course, in the European painting tradition, the works of many great artists are also imbued with the awareness of the tenuous hold that we have on existence.³

One can only marvel at the miraculous transformations of objects, say – leaves, stems and petals – into brush strokes, dabs and smears. Seemingly insignificant layerings and clusterings of paint – literally creating something out of nothing – appearing out of the blank canvas like Jenga constructions of tone and colour – like the house of cards in the painting by Chardin. ⁴

Some weeks ago, I came across a sublime facsimile edition of William Turner’s last sketchbook. I found his absolutely economical use of watercolour strokes and washes in his sketches totally breathtaking. It reminded me again of the contemporary critic of Turner’s – John Hazlitt – who disparagingly described his work as: “Without form and void… Pictures of nothing, and very like”. ⁵

Describing masterpieces by the 13th century Chinese painter monks – Muqi, and Yujian – Max Loehr describes them thus: “In sum, there are no complete shapes of any sort. They are dissolved into shreds of visible matter”.

Inspired to create a graphic video, based on these ideas, I started searching my archive for potential material. By pure serendipity, I discovered the original version of Dust Anthology again.
Upon watching it, I was shocked to discover that the twentieth anniversary of Ingvil’s death was fast approaching. How could that possibly be? In, what felt like the blink of an eye, twenty years have passed.

In the blink of an eye – In Ictu Oculi – is another phrase, like Memento Mori – which has death looming large over it.

Thinking about video as medium, a single video frame lasts a fraction of a second – literally for the blink of an eye. What could be more ephemeral?  Yet, one frame is replaced by the next, and the next, and the next, and the next – an almost unstoppable, bountiful surge of images with an electric energy akin to the Tao.

I constructed the music out of fragments from a series of audio experiments I made in 2014. Like some sort of hyper drum-and-bass, with thrashing, flailing hi-hats and cymbals splashing colours into existence. With incessant pulses of bass drums and cascading waves of snare rises. Burgeoning forth with the energy dragon flow of Qi. Something good to remember Ingvil by.

Konrad Welz
Bracknell, 16 November 2025

Footnotes

1: Some of this footage also appears in my video Image and Pilgrimage

2: For readers interested in learning more about Chinese painting, I can wholeheartedly recommend the monumental series of videos which James Cahill recorded before his passing.

3: But, more often than not, it tends towards a negatively-charged, memento mori trope.

4: Having mentioned Chardin, some of my other favourite artists in who’s work I recognise this awareness more in the Taoist sense, are: Morandi, Twombly, and of course Cezanne. However, in the context of images of flowers and still lifes which ultimately inspired this video, the list is almost endless. Stretching from Anna Atkins to Francisco de Zurbaran, by way of Blackadder, Claesz, Corinth, Courbet, Dürer, Fantin-Latour (through Peter Saville), Manet, Schuch, etc. etc. etc.

5: A form I’ve aspired toward ever since I first heard Luc Ferrari’s – Presque Rien No.1 and John Cage’s – 4’33” as an eighteen-year-old.
L21ST

Year:

1993

Duration:

13:21

Recorded:

1993

Surfing on Sine Waves

“In the night of Brahma, Nature is inert and cannot dance till Shiva wills it. He rises from his rapture and – dancing – sends through inert matter pulsing waves of awakening sound, and lo! matter also dances, appearing as a glory around him. Dancing, he sustains its manifold phenomena. In the fullness of time, still dancing, he destroys all forms and names by fire and gives new rest. This is poetry; but none the less, science” – Ananda Coomeraswamy.

An Anecdote

In August 1992 I arrived in Copenhagen to start my studies at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts. Despite the hospitality of my hosts, and the excitement of getting to know the country, I experienced the difficulties faced by every immigrant – when one’s language, cultural references and practical knowledge, suddenly become obsolete.

During my second month there, I visited the Danish National Museum, where I saw Scandinavian rock art for the first time. The experience struck me like a bolt of lightning.

I had for a long time been interested in Southern African rock art through the incredible work of David Lewis-Williams. An important take-away from his various books, was his connecting certain archaic graphic designs or glyphs to entoptic phenomena.
As a long-time sufferer of Tinnitus, I appreciate how even the sober human body self-generates visual and auditory phenomena. ¹

What struck me, that autumn day in Copenhagen, were the similarities between the pictographs of the seemingly diverse Southern African and Scandinavian cultures.
It was a revelation to appreciate the true universality of archaic glyphs and patterns; and to realise that the one thing all humanity shared, was the same nervous and sensory system which inspired them.

From my very first experiments with generating and modulating sound waves using analogue synthesisers; and creating video feedback; I instinctively felt that these processes tapped into the same, self-generating, “live-wire” of the human sensory and nervous system.
Both the video and audio components of L21ST are improvisations – created in one take without edits or revisions. Improvising in this way, is almost like being at the threshold – the fountainhead – of the Cosmic matrix – taking part in Shiva’s dance.

Video Feedback

For the catalogue to AIDS: The Exhibition ² in 1992, I had made a photocopy work called The Anarchists.
Basically I had, using a photocopier, enlarged a photo of some anarchist squatters. In its turn, the resulting photocopy was then enlarged again, and again, until – after many generations of “zooming in” – the sheet was either pure black or pure white.
This is essentially the same looping, scaling algorithm seen in video or audio feedback ³.
One can experience this process In daily life when stepping into an elevator – or room – with mirrors on opposing walls – where you find yourself in an endless loop of reflections – in this case, getting smaller and smaller.

In most video feedback, each image is an enlargement of its predecessor – and at 25 frames per second, the resulting visual surge is often like a headlong rush into the whiteout/blackout void of chaos.
In fact, fractal-like images, familiar from the study of chaos theory, spontaneously appear. There is even a moment reminiscent of Hokusai’s The Great Wave off Kanagawa. This is unsurprising since most natural processes are based on recurring or feedback algorithms. Timelapse recordings of clouds – for example – can look remarkably similar.
And just like like any ‘overheated’ or chaotic system, total annihilation of the status quo could set in at any moment.
In his book Chaos, James Gleick describes a waterwheel, turning slowly in a steady flow of water. As the water-flow increases, the wheel spins faster and faster and faster until, at an unpredictable moment, the wheel suddenly starts turning against the rush of water.
Similarly, if left to continue uninfluenced, the visual surge of video feedback could either stop, blackout, or whiteout at any moment.
In the case of L21st, I was actively ‘steering’ (by panning and tilting) the camera through the feedback vortices – surfing on the cusp of chaos.

L21ST isn’t a “pure” feedback recording. In addition to me adding simple in-camera graphic overlays – like the “Swiss cheese holes” – the camera output went through a video mixer before going to the monitor. This meant that I could spontaneously change the colour and add simple effects – like mosaic blocks – to the image. In addition, I could combine two differently-processed channels of the stream using simply picture-in-picture or dissolve transitions. This visual electronic flux was recorded straight onto tape.

Sound Wave Generators & Oscillators

Two weeks after recording the visuals, my old Yamaha CS-30 analogue synthesiser arrived from Johannesburg.
While the principles of sound wave generation and modulation are relatively simple, the variables determining aspects of a sound soon add up – creating incredibly complex systems. Systems so complex in fact, that a seemingly insignificant change to a minor variable could lead to unpredictable, catastrophic changes in the overall sound. The famous butterfly flapping its wings in Bejing analogy from chaos theory becomes incredibly tangible.
This makes twiddling knobs on an analogue synthesiser a very ‘fragile’ affair.

Having unpacked the synth, I switched it on, and to my amazement, it was emitting a low, throbbing sound. I instinctively started recording the output, and started carefully twiddling the knobs. What followed can only be described as sonic surfing… riding the generators, oscillators and filters as far as the waves would take me – praying that I don’t get engulfed by noise – or silence.

In this dance of lucid awareness and spontaneous expression, I found the bodily resonance I had sensed that day – months before, on seeing the stone-age pictographs in Copenhagen.

One Last Thing

For those wondering about the title of this video.
L21ST is the title track of Cabaret Voltaire’s 1985 album – The Covenant, The Sword & The Arm Of The Lord
I cannot overstate the importance that bands like Cabaret Voltaire had in inspiring me to start experimenting with film and video.
An enormous amount of my creative output has references to music tracks. I will write more about that at some point.

Konrad Welz 2004 – expanded and revised in 2025

Footnotes

1: In his book – Silence – John Cage describes his becoming aware of this while visiting an anechoic chamber. He realised that we – as humans – can never hear complete silence, because the sounds produced by our functioning bodies – heartbeat, blood-flow, breathing, nervous system etc. – will always be audible. For me, this is similar to the ‘hum’ produced by any electrical machine which is switched on.
In all my video recordings, I love that fact that – in addition to recording the external sounds around it – the camera also records the sounds of its own functioning – its own existence. Not to mention the inevitable grainy noise or visual artefacts added to the images it records due to the physical nature of its sensor and the recording process.
On a deeper level, I view this as resonating with, or an analogy to, the Cosmos as a self-generating matrix – like Shiva’s dance mentioned above… or like the Tao or ch’i.
This is one of the prime reasons I love to watch and record this Becoming and Flow all around us – ourselves included. Return

2: Curated by Kendell Geers. Return

3: For those who haven’t tried it, video feedback is generated by connecting a video camera to a screen and then pointing the camera at the screen. Likewise, the piercing howls and screeches of audio feedback are caused by a microphone connected to a speaker and bringing them close together – the microphone sends the sounds it picks up to the speaker which then sends those sounds back to the microphone – just like the mythical Ouroboros snake swallowing its tail. Return

Post Script

If you enjoy this video, I can recommend similar videos based on feedback techniques or soundtracks generated in a similar way:

Electro Nosebleed Length: 2:54
Bhumisparsa Length: 1:16
Chromacandy Length: 3:23
Seagull

Year:

2001

Duration:

1:34

Recorded:

2001

“What we observe is not nature in itself but nature exposed to our method of questioning” – Werner Heisenberg

“What is divine escapes men’s notice because of their incredulity” – Heraclitus

On a winter afternoon, in February 2001, on Brighton pier, I photographed some seagulls hovering and scavenging around.
The fact that the Lomo camera had no viewfinder meant that I could literally “shoot from the hip” – a very intuitive, eye-hand interaction with the birds around me – reaching out towards them, and tracing their flight – Hand and arm movements that I consciously equate to a sort of abstract Zenga (Zen painting). In total I shot 18 photos – 72 moments¹.

Looking at the frozen movement of a film or video still, I always wonder what lies hidden in the interstices. And don’t all photographs, apart from showing the richness of the moment, also have that holographic quality of pointing to the invisible, irretrievably lost preceding and following moments – creating the melancholia of evanescence. A mood that became all the more pervasive when I re-animated the 72 stills at roughly 4 stills per second. The fragmentary, re-animated movement on video, and the inherent temporal fragility of the still combine to highlight the beauty of the momentariness of existence.

Following the doctrine of universal momentariness (ksanikavada) and the concept of the point-instant (svalaksana) the Buddhist understanding of the instant is so thoroughgoing, that it leaves no room for any category of existence that is not instantaneous.

Universal time is rejected, and only the instant is real. Nothing endures, at every instant, an entity causes, and is replaced by, another. The conception of time as instant at once implies the notion of being as instantaneous; in fact, being and time are viewed as ontologically inseparable following the conclusion that time is never empty and being never un-temporal.

Within this universe – “Movement consists of moments, it is a staccato movement, momentary flashes of a stream of energy.”²

For me, there is a strong analogy between the above-mentioned paradigm, and the mechanics of film or video³. Each frame contains a complete world – only to be replaced, a moment later – by the complete world of the following frame. There is however a major difference between the mechanics of film and the Buddhist paradigm, in the fact that one film-frame-world does not cause the next – contrary to their theory of causality (pratityasamutpada).⁴

Nevertheless I find the Buddhist Moment, and the analogy to film or video, very worthwhile exploring. An interesting question is, “If existence is only momentary, how long is the moment?” In “film reality” the answer is 1/24^th of a second⁵.
The history of Buddhist philosophy has seen people trying to establish a temporal value for the Moment. In the Abhidharmakasabhasya, for example, it is stated that there are more than 65 moments in the time it takes a strong man to snap his fingers⁶. Even though Stcherbatsky describes these undertakings as, “mere attempts to seize the infinitesimal”⁷, I am tempted to search through neurophysiological literature to find this momentary reality – my layman’s theory being that: The duration of the shortest perceivable (auditory, visual, tactile etc.) impulse, would in theory constitute the Buddhist Moment – the logic being that if something can’t be sensed, it can’t be experienced, and therefore can’t exist – at least not for humans⁸.

The seagull, as arbitrary and insignificant, as it is an eternal and spectacular experience. It may seem strange calling a seagull an “experience”, but I do so to highlight the tangential, selective nature of perception and language.
Even a brief exploration of the question, “What is, defines, or constitutes a seagull?”, dilutes the definitions and makes us realise that it is (but) an aggregate of ever-fluctuating, sensory-and memory-based “aspects” – which creates our perception and conception of a seagull.
Fr. Pavel Florensky describes the problem thus: “Let us repeat: the window in itself is not a window – because the very idea of window (like any culturally constructed thing) possesses a “carrying-over” or transference, for if it did not, it would not be a thing fashioned within a culture. Thus, a window is either light or else mere wood and glass, but never simply a window.”⁹
What Florensky doesn’t say is that every percept, every referent, is culturally “constructed” or at least modulated, and that therefore no thing is simply a thing. To paraphrase Magritte – Not even a real pipe is a “pipe”.

But, SO WHAT?
Aren’t these just hollow, semiotic, pseudo-intellectual games that erode and deny the richness of experience and our relationship to the earth? Just another symptom of the artificiality of modern life?
That is certainly the case in a society, with science as religion, where our anthropocentricity has been banished from our knowledge of the world.

Nonetheless, contemplation – whether spiritual, or philosophical – does reveal contradictions and inconsistencies in our reality. But that doesn’t need do detract from, or contradict our corporeal experience. In fact, it only confirms the endless potential of our world of the ten-thousand things – to generate seemingly endless aspects to enjoy and ponder – including ourselves.
“Things are not what they seem, nor are they otherwise” – says one of the most profound Buddhist statements.

Despite being momentary, mortal, and evanescent; experiences like a seagull, putting on a coat, biting into a ripe apple, watching waves breaking on a shore, or running for a bus… These things delineate our selves – like an animator – constantly drawing, erasing, and redrawing; and make us cast our shadows on the world.

Postscript:

I have long been exploring the differences between a still image, and a static video recording.

If you enjoyed this video, I could recommend the following videos which are all based on stills: N|Ontope and Sunset. If you’re feeling bold, I can recommend the short and intense Bhumisparsa

On the other hand, you might enjoy the following short static videos:
Nike and Summoning

Footnotes

1: A Lomo ActionSampler camera that, on shutter-release, takes four, 1/100th of a second exposures at roughly 1/4 second intervals, as four mini images on one 35mm film negative.

2: Th. Stcherbatsky, Buddhist Logic Vol.1, Dover Publications, New York. Quoted in, Anindita Niyogi Balslev, A Study of Time in Indian Philosophy, Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers, New Dehli, 1999.

3: And more broadly – all digital technology – where analogue flux is converted to discrete, sampled, digital units – very much resembling Stcherbatsky’s “staccato” description of movement.

4: “The criterion that distinguishes the real from the fictitious, the Buddhist argues, is causal efficiency. In other words, that which is real is essentially of the nature of a cause, i.e. it gives rise to effects.” – Balslev, A Study of Time in Indian Philosophy p.82

5: The fact that there are actually various film- and video frame-rate standards hints at the can of worms which such an inquiry opens.

6: Quoted in Paul J. Griffiths, On Being Mindless – Buddhist Meditation and the Mind-Body Problem, Sri Satguru Publications, Delhi, 1999.

7: Quoted by Griffiths, see above.

8: This reasoning of course ignores issues relating to memory, inward vision, and the imagination; and their contributions to our reality.

9: Pavel Florensky, Iconostasis, 1922, translated by Donald Sheehan and Olga Andrejev, SVS Press, 1996.

Quotes at start:

Werner Heisenberg, Physics + Philosophy, Harper + Row, 1962, p.58

Heraclitus, The Cosmic Fragments, quoted in Jacob Needleman +David Appelbaum, Real Philosophy, Arkana 1990
Chromacandy

Year:

1995

Duration:

3:23

Recorded:

1995

The result of a visit to the Copenhagen aquarium and 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.

An anecdote

I made this video while a student at the Royal Danish Art Academy in Copenhagen.
One day, I walked into the video editing suite to find a fellow student working on a new video. She had gone to the Copenhagen aquarium and filmed an exquisite octopus which was perched – perfectly camouflaged – on its underwater rocky surroundings. I was spellbound by the shot, which was a symphony of browns, whites and greys – truly a sight to behold.
However, as I stood there watching her work, she turned the image black-and-white, and overlayed a dense philosophical text over the entire image.

Now, I love philosophy and very conceptual art.
However, having my child-like joy of seeing the beautiful octopus marred by words and thoughts, made me bolt out of the studio and head straight to the aquarium – I had to rehabilitate the beauty I had seen marred.

More text to follow…
Helicopter Relevation

Year:

2025

Duration:

1:52

Recorded:

1996

Recorded in the garden of the National Museum, Songkhla, Southern Thailand on the 5th of May 1996.
Part of a series of experiments I made around the mid-nineties experimenting with focus¹, and the meaning of blurred images and the sensations they trigger. I have written about this elsewhere.

Incidentally, this video was made during the same journey which also led to my video Thunderstorm at Wat Phra Mahathat Woramahawihan which shares similar themes.

1: Another video which exemplifies this approach, is The Photographer
Cemetery Symmetry

Year:

2002

Duration:

4:49

Recorded:

1999

Filmed at the massive Verdun war cemetery just after a total solar eclipse on the 11th of August, 1999; this is an uncanny video, exploring the fine line between the Here and the Hereafter, Being and Non-being. Never were parallel universes, roving event horizons and fearful symmetries made more visible.
Waiting for the Monsoon

Year:

2022

Duration:

7:06

Recorded:

2000

This video is one of the chapters from my long-form video – The Bodies of Nobodies – which was recorded all over the world during 1999 and 2000.
It took me more than twenty years to complete the final edit – not because of the complexity of the edit – but because of me coming to grips with the implications, complexity, and sheer impenetrability of the footage and the way I had recorded it.
Between 1990 and 2000, my style of video recording and choice of subject matter, had become increasingly reduced. This video is an example of this distillation process.

Like most of my videos in this style, it is definitely not an easy video to watch.
It requires a strong commitment from the viewer to give it time… to watch and listen with a calm, receptive, concentrated mind.
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.
From many hours of recording, I anguished over every second of my selection of these images and sounds.
I never add, or overdub any audio – sound and picture were recorded simultaneously onto tape.

This has become one of my favourite videos which achieves exactly what I set out to achieve or share.
It was recorded on the 31st of May 2000 in an austere hotel complex in Kamalapura, Karnataka, India. It was incredibly hot – as India always is before the monsoon finally arrives and drenches the land.
My working title for this video was – Waiting for the Cows to come Home.
One of my favourite moments in the video is indeed when they finally make their appearance.
For me, the appearance of the second calf truly has a Groundhog Day feeling to it. Another favourite moment is when the crow responds to the muezzin’s call to prayer; and also, how the call is carried by the wind.
Of course, there are many more reasons why I make these videos; but for now I’ll leave it here.
Two Attempts at Phlebotany

Year:

2023

Duration:

4:19

Recorded:

2010

A punny title for a video which addresses a few of my interests.
Tropical Zoom Study

Year:

2022

Duration:

4:39

Recorded:

2000

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?

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 also explores the complex relationships between looking and listening. Trying to record Being – or even – the act of recording… perception.

Recorded in 2000 on Ko Pha-ngan in southern Thailand. Initially, my idea was to have the incidental, off-camera dialogue snippets transcribed and translated.
However, I learned that the Thai language is fantastically ‘open-ended’ as regards verb inflection – which made translation into English subtitles almost impossible.
Since this difficulty of translation resonates well with the intention of the video, I decided to make the Thai subtitles part of the image.
This video is a chapter of a larger work called – The Bodies of Nobodies.

PS: As the camera zooms out, it reveals / sees its own (tripod)leg. This reminded me of Douglas Harding’s classic book – On Having no Head.
Three Turf Pieces

Year:

2023

Duration:

7:53

Recorded:

2010

In the late spring of 2010, I set out to record a series of audio-visual explorations of the undergrowth.

I simply attached the camera to a tripod and then inverted the tripod with legs folded flat to allow me to record a few centimetres from the ground. I used a lens with wide aperture and fixed focus. I had limited visual feedback through a small flip-screen on the camera.

I thought it would be interesting to explore the vegetal world no higher than a foot from the ground – a world completely overlooked.

The simultaneously recorded soundtrack of sublime springtime birdsong and ambience, I slowed down to slightly surreal effect – like some sort of heightened awareness.

Like most of my video work, I am interested in creating a one-take, audio-visual entity – as an attempt to share pre-lingual, pre-cognitive experience; and convey the simple wonder or resonance of that experience.

Some viewers might note in the title a reference to Albrecht Dürer

Postscript

If you enjoy this video, I can recommend another video recorded around the same time. It’s called Two Attempts at Phlebotany.
The one where a scooter clips a dog whose yelping then triggers feedback in a temple

Year:

2022

Duration:

3:28

Recorded:

1996

Recorded in the early morning on the 21st of May 1996 in Agra, India. One take – no effects or overdubs.
The Large Grass

Year:

2023

Duration:

3:28

Recorded:

2023

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.
Sunset

Year:

2004

Duration:

5:00

Recorded:

2003

On the 24th of October 2003, I ended up at Kimmeridge bay on the Dorset coast. I took these photos during the last half hour before sunset.

With this video I tried to recreate the incredible solemnity of sunsets, and the enormity of being in this world.

This video is part of a larger work called – February: A Quartet of Videos – first exhibited at Warren Siebrits Modern and Contemporary Art, Johannesburg, 2004.

Postscript

If you enjoy this video, I can recommend two other videos also based on photographs. Seagull and N/Ontope
Summoning

Year:

2022

Duration:

2:27

Recorded:

2000

26 June 2000, Delhi, India. Image and audio recorded simultaneously – no overdubs.
Six Persimmons, a Robin, and a Dreaming Dog

Year:

2021

Duration:

5:49

Recorded:

2021

Inspired by the 13th-century masterpiece Six Persimmons by the Ch’an artist monk Muqi (牧谿) – also known as Fachang (法常).
Rock Metal Scissors

Year:

2024

Duration:

6:54

Recorded:

2010

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.

Many years ago, I was therefore very pleased to discover that my neighbour at the time – Matt Wakefield – was member of a local metal band called Mia Hope.

I recorded this performance at their We are just Satellites album launch gig in 2010. After the same gig, I did actually make a ‘proper music video’ of their track Filmed like a Modern Day Noir. However, fourteen years later, I reviewed my footage of the gig and my favourite track of theirs – 50 Year Storm. Rather than just edit together a rough, live, music video; I decided to explore the concrete intensity of the music and raw footage. I pulled the footage backwards through a digital hedge, cutting it up and looping certain riffs and passages which define the vernacular of the genre – and Rock in general.

I was always intrigued by the genre names Rock, and Metal – because they connote such elemental, concrete, materiality.

Before we – as humans – think a single thought, we are physical entities made of flesh and bone – able to see, smell, hear and feel. We exist in the physical, objective world, and interact with other physical entities – objects – from the Latin meaning – ‘thrown up in front of, or – against, us’. These primal interactions and experiences – the physical contact, the touch, the colours, textures, smells and sounds – exist before a single name, word, or thought. Likewise, we can roar, scream, moan, laugh, jump, run, smash, slash, embrace – without knowing a single name or word.

The immediacy, and overwhelming sensory experience of a basement metal gig, exemplifies this pre-verbal, pre-cognitive, physical interaction – a welcome, OBJECTIVE reset in an often virtual, ideologised world. I therefore found it fitting to derive the title from that most immediate, engaging example of human play – Rock Paper Scissors.

Konrad Welz, 1 September 2024

* Technically, these bands fall under the generic umbrellas of Metalcore and/or Mathcore; however I’ll stick to the term Metal. For the record – I love a very wide range of music.
River Mantra

Year:

1997

Duration:

6:27

Recorded:

1996

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 around us, offers a powerful antidote to the superficial, distracting, misanthropic everyday we find ourselves in. More on this later…

Postscript

If you enjoy this video, there are plenty of others which I can recommend:

Boxing Day – filmed in Coober Pedy in the Australian desert.
Including Two Pans and an Ice-cream Van – Filmed in Borneo.
Lot 22 – filmed in Australia.
Kites – also filmed in India.
Crossing Paths at the Edge of Emptiness – filmed in India.
Nike – filmed in Paris, France.
Plant Station Arcs

Year:

2022

Duration:

8:53

Recorded:

1999

Recorded on 5 December 1999, Kinabatangan, Sabah, Borneo.
This is a chapter from my long-form video The Bodies of Nobodies