Some Thoughts, Comments and Anecdotes

Looking at this video, thirty years after I made it; I notice more clearly the aesthetic and philosophical arc on which it lies.
Because this arc connects so many dots on my video journey, I have decided to use this opportunity to explore and describe it in more detail.
I must apologise in advance for this long, rambling text to a short little video; but I feel it must be said.

Let’s see what happens…

I always smile when I read the title of this video.
Such a futile act. So childish… I can almost hear the neighbour’s window shattering.
However, it was my child-like wonder in seeing a frog leap into a pond – causing a shattering of ripples across the reflected sun – that prompted me to spontaneously repeat the action on camera. A corporeal experience of (gestural) action and consequence.

For a 2004 exhibition catalogue ¹  I wrote the following lines regarding this video:

“Every impulse to act causes a bifurcation in the universe. A pulse of energy is gathered and released. It ripples through, and disturbs the existing order.
Planes of potential outcome separate, ending in causation termini like waves washing up on distant shores.”

I now fundamentally disagree with this text; and would restate it as follows:

Every act – every event, has consequences.
Even the decision not to act – to do nothing – has consequences.
While it might be nice to ponder – “What would have happened if I had done this instead of that” – there is no bifurcation in the universe. There are no separating planes of potential outcome.
Every act, every event is essentially irreversible.
What has happened, has happened. ²
The only question now is: How do I react to the new situation?

At this point, I would like to refer the reader to the fantastic allegory of the Chinese Farmer as told by Alan Watts.

We are part of an endless flow of matter and energy which causes endless change. The surges of energy released can indeed reach tsunami-like proportions; and cause changes which ripple through to the most distant shores of our existence – even dissolve our existence itself.

So why not chuck a stone into a sunlit pond, and marvel at the consequences?

Why not poke a stick at a wasps nest? Why not jump off a garage roof? Why not cycle down a playground slide?
Let’s see what happens… That phrase from my childhood that led to many discoveries and much pain. It is these ill-considered actions of children that allow them to come to grips with the physical reality of the world – and whatever consequences that might entail. It is a raw interaction that trumps any parental warnings or teachings. Yet it teaches fundamental truths that no amount of talking about could improve upon.
I’ve mentioned my child-like wonder in watching the water ripples shattering the reflected sun. Even as adults, it is small, everyday experiences like this that can make us rediscover the world in the same fundamental way as a child – if only we are receptive enough – if only we have the spirit to ‘see what happens’.
In fact, Buddhist history is replete with people experiencing sudden enlightenment through similar simple ‘contacts’ with the world. ⁸ This is called Satori.

Klein Karoo

One of the many spectacular drives in South Africa, is the one across the remote Tradouw Pass ³ in the Klein Karoo. At one point along the way, the old road – first opened in 1873 – diverges momentarily from the modern one, and crosses a mountain pool via a small wooden bridge.
It was from this bridge that I looked, one day in January, 1997 – my thirtieth year.

For the 2004 exhibition catalogue  I wrote the following lines regarding this video:

I lean over the bridge railing
a startled frog leaps into the pool below
a splash of water
the ripples cross the sun’s resplendence – I squint

I switch on my camera, adjust the tripod
reach down, pick up a warm stone
I throw the stone at the sun, it explodes in light
I hear swifts and cicadas
everything is shimmering

In their paratactic matter-of-factness, the lines accurately describe my experience and actions leading to – and captured in – this recording.
The two stanzas represent the fundamental shift between an inspirational, direct contact with the world ⁴ ; to an attempt at expressing that experience in another medium or artistic form – in the hope of recreating that experience in the viewer – myself included.

Readers might be familiar with one of the most famous haikus ever by Matsuo Basho – composed in 1686.

The old pond—
A frog jumps in,
Sound of water.

So there I stood, on a bridge in South Africa in 1997, personally experiencing a very similar contact with the world that Basho had had.
Moreover, while he has recreated the experience in text, I have attempted to recreate it with this video.

Just totally Zen man!

In my early teens I discovered Haikus and Zen Koans. Of course, in my youthful rebelliousness, I liked them simply because they were “crazy” and didn’t make any sense – they were “just totally Zen man!”
But even in my youthful naiveté, I sensed what they were doing – turning our regular perception and conception of the world, upside down. And that, in early-eighties South-Africa, was definitely what I was interested in doing. 

Fifty-million Elvis fans can be wrong.

Growing up as a white child in Apartheid South Africa wasn’t always the paradisiacal, sunny experience that detached observers might assume, assert, or even accuse me of.
Unless you grew up in a family of raving bigots, even the naivest white child with the slightest modicum of morals, social justice, or even only intelligence; would sooner or later start experiencing a gnawing sense of cognitive dissonance; as well as developing a definite understanding of the meaning of hypocrisy.
Growing up in a family with liberal values inside a system of extreme conservatism, near religious fundamentalism, and outright racism; was always going to be a tight-rope walk.
When I was ten or so, I discovered a book in our local library that forever changed my world. It was Erich von Däniken’s – Chariots of the Gods.
Laugh out loud if you want, but what made this book so important to my young worldview, is that it offered a radically different narrative, or history of the world – especially regarding the nature of God – to the version that I had been indoctrinated with for my entire school life.
The sudden realisation that there were coherent, alternative ways of looking at the world was totally liberating. As liberating as the anarchic haikus and koans I later came across on my journey of questioning.

Everything you know is hearsay.
Everything you think is heresy.
Or, taking the Pis out of Epistemology.

At school, I observed class-mates and teachers – all self-confessed Christians – justify horrendous attitudes or acts based on tortuous biblical exegeses; or just being plain hypocrites. This made me (unfairly) dismiss all religion or spiritual needs or attitudes.
Being a keen student of mathematics and physics, I placed my wavering trust or quest for Truth on the scientific method. And like a naive positivist, I did it to the point of scientism. ⁵

Nonetheless, my nagging unease remained; and ultimately lead me to a fundamental question:
 

Name a single fact that I haven’t been told, or taught to be true – to exist – by others.
Is there a single thing I know that I can personally confirm or corroborate – that I have personally experienced, experimented with, discovered, calculated or proven beyond doubt? ANYTHING?

Literally EVERYTHING we know is nothing but second-, or third-hand hearsay … accepted as true by pure trust in authority – whether social, scientific, expert or parental. ⁶

We certainly can’t live without the knowledge of reigning consensus, or expert opinion. It is based on the genius, the experiences, experiments and thoughts of those who came before us.
But it is so important to realise that most of that knowledge is pure abstraction – completely irrelevant to, and distracting from, our real lives – a realm of information which ultimately blesses and curses the human animal.

This might sound extreme, but wouldn’t it be nice to go back to basics, to build a life, a world based on a fundamental, physical, corporeality – based on the common sense of your own hard-gained experiences and skills? 

Of course, we can’t expect to re-invent the wheel in everything that we do – we have to rely on the collected knowledge of others – the gigantic pool of information out there.
But change starts by becoming aware of the actual things and people around us, and the things we’re doing. By taking the time to be aware and observe – to lose yourself in the present – and rediscover the world; rediscover truth in the bedrock of physical experience.

This is what I aim to do with most of my videos – using an art form that attempts to recreate in viewers – myself included – the experience of contact with the world. A momentary reprieve from the overwhelming, stifling, suffocating effect of information, group think, and ideological dogma.

Bracknell, 16 June 2026

THE SKULL

for Charles Olson and Jack Kerouac



WE SHALL BE SWIRLS – SWIRLS – SWIRLS
OF EXPANDING STRUCTURE
and make our New Pleistocene
among the STARS!
WE SHALL BE MEN ((MAMMALS!!))
of infinite beauty!
THE SURGE
will
pour
UNSTOPPABLE.


We shall arise like jewelled
CROWNS
from a hurled stone
in a still pool.

…

extract from The Skull by Michael McClure, 1974 ⁷

Post Script

In thinking about our being in the world, or being at a certain place, I’ve developed the idea of the Ontope which definitely has a bearing on this text and my videos in general. That text can be found here.

As regards the idea of contact with the world, I can recommend watching my video Contact

Many of my videos are connected to my above-mentioned approach to the world. Here are a few which may be of interest:

Kites , Three Turf Pieces & Seagull

Footnotes:

1: ∞ : a Selection of 8 Videos – at Warren Siebrits Modern and Contemporary Art in Johannesburg. (return)

2: I sometimes wonder to what extent our universal use of CTRL+Z – the UNDO BUTTON – on our keyboards, has fundamentally degraded our awareness of that fact. Our flippancy and total disregard for the laws of physics – real consequences. (return)

3: I have a deep familial link with the Klein Karoo – and this pass in particular. During the Second World War, it was here that my Austrian grandfather and Danish grandmother lived in abject poverty. They were hiding from the authorities to avoid internment. This was due to him being a de jure German citizen following the Anschluss. 
Later they lived in Barrydale, Montagu and then Worcester. I spent many happy childhood holidays canyoning and exploring in this magnificent landscape. (return)

4: Rather than the word – Experience, I prefer the word – Contact. Contact more closely connotes the two-way process this is. Link to Ontope text and Contact video. (return)

5: After reading Mary Midgley, Thomas Kuhn and Michael Polanyi, I happily lost faith in “Science” as salvation. (return)

6: I always laugh at the pat answers to pat “general knowledge” questions. You know, those things that everyone “should” know… you might not actually have the slightest knowledge or experience of the subject, but you definitely know the answer. Pure conditioning. (return)

7: From September Blackberries published by New Directions Publishing (return)

8: There are many wonderful stories of monks ‘making contact’ with reality.
Lingyun Zhiqin on seeing a peach blossom, Xiangyan Zhixian on hearing a pebble strike a bamboo are two that come to mind.