Videos

Over the second half of the nineteen nineties, I became interested in making angular, visceral, ‘short-circuiting’ videos. My videos Electro Nosebleed, Bhumisparsa, Contact and Against are examples of these endeavours. 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…

“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…

WARNING: Viewer discretion advised. Quoting Ronald Reagan and Francisco Goya; based on readily available internet video footage of US Predator drones and Apache gunships in action; this video aims to confront the viewer with the inherently dehumanising and misanthropic nature of technology and modern visual media. This video has been remastered in UHD from the…

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…

Filmed just after a total solar eclipse at a place which saw mass death; 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.

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…

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 – as it…

For about a decade centred around the millennium, I was extremely interested in the idea of using my video camera as ’seeing paintbrush’. For a long time I’ve been interested in Buddhism in general, and Ch’an or Zen brushwork in particular. In this spirit, I was interested in the expressive, gestural, direct interaction with the…

Recorded in Darjeeling on the 3rd of June, 1996. Inspired by Ch’an Buddhist paintings and the plenitude of emptiness.

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…

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.

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.

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…

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 Coliseum, 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 on an…

Please turn on the closed caption transcription or English translation.

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,…

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…

Flying kites from rooftops at sunset. Agra, India, 21 May 1996

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…

25 January 2000, near Wiseman Ferry, New South Wales, Australia. This is an extract from my long-form video The Bodies of Nobodies.

While en route from Calcutta to Frankfurt during the night of the 19th to 20th of July 2000, I ended up on a five-hour layover at Dubai airport. With my Panasonic DV camcorder I started recording stills of the airport. A year later, I finished and exhibited the resulting video – Nontope / Ontope (Angels…

The Winged Victory of Samothrace, The Louvre, Paris, France, 19 May 1994

5 December 1999, Kinabatangan, Sabah, Borneo.This is an extract from my long-form video The Bodies of Nobodies

Recorded in 1996 and first screened in 1997, this is a digital remaster of the original S-VHS production.

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 –…

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

26 June 2000, Delhi, India. Image and audio recorded simultaneously – no overdubs.

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…

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.

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

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…

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? “Nothing is what it seems – nor is it otherwise.” – The Diamond Sutra. “Nothing is stranger than Reality.” – Giorgio Morandi. Recording the world with the…

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

31 May 2000, Kamalapura, Karnataka, India.This is an extract of my long-form video The Bodies of Nobodies.