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Monika Weiss filmed "Arkhe-Lost Canto" on Kanchenjunga Mountain in the Himalayas--potent symbols of power, spiritual presence, and the boundary between the mortal and spirit worlds (edit?)

  • Dec 8, 2025
  • 4 min read

VIDEO


"Arkhe-Lost Canto was filmed on Kanchenjunga Mountain in the Himalayas, where earth and sky, power and spiritual presence, connect with the history of the Kingdom of Sikkim. 

I come from a land where strong connection to nature and a belief in spirits inhabiting natural elements was central to ancient Slavic peoples. Mountains were not just geographical places but potent symbols of power, spiritual presence, and the boundary between the mortal and spirit worlds.


In the Fall of 2017, I was filming on Kanchenjunga Mountain, in the Himalayas. The world's third-highest mountain, Kanchenjunga is part The Kingdom of Sikkim, once an independent monarchy, which was annexed by India in 1975. Many people in Sikkim still feel a sense of loss over their lost independence. The people who live there are mostly Buddhist. Parts of the mountain were not accessible to me, protected by the local army.  [High altitude air ....and how people reacted to her presence] When I returned to my New York home I discovered that my tapes were lost. They were found several years later, in 2024.

[A sentence about their return]


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In the first sequence of the film, we see a close-up view of woman’s face and torso. Wearing black veil and black gown she is almost still, her arms lifted up, her garments undulating in the wind.


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Behind her, we see prayer flags moving in the wind. In the Himalayan region prayer flags are hung in high places such as mountain passes, monasteries, and peaks to create a connection between the Earth and the sky and to allow the wind to carry blessings. Their symbols are released into the universe by the wind for the benefit of all beings.


At some point my drawing made with resin, water and graphite appears montaged into the film. In the second part of the film, we see views of the 2017 Sun Eclipse, which I filmed from a Brooklyn rooftop. In another moment in the film, I am kneeling onto the stones of a shallow creek Upstate New York, in a silent, solitary performance. In the third and last part of the film, the first protagonist reappears. Seen from afar, she kneels on the top of the Kanchenjunga Mountain, surrounded by trees and stones. Holding the black scarf, she is veiling and unveiling her face. She silently, slowly,  bows down, towards the Earth. Subtexts in English and Polish – the two languages I speak daily – appear throughout the film to indicate an inner dialogue, my conversation with the mountain.

[SIMPLIFY? links to your site?] In 2024 the film (Lost Canto) came together with my sound composition (Arkhe) which I just finished at the time. Arkhe is the last and sixth movement of a cycle of music titled Metamorphosis, devoted to the moment in which the mythological nymph Daphne self-transforms into a tree to avoid violence. The title of this sixth movement (Arkhe, Greek: ἀρχή) refers to the beginning, the origins. I wrote this part for two sopranos, to be sang without words, a capella. Each vocalist was recorded alone, with no prior rehearsal. I wanted to preserve the original emotion of the solitude experienced. Separately, I also recorded my bare hands hitting an iron vessel (an instrument I made), sonically resembling ancient drums."


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As a teenager in Warsaw’s School of Music I was practicing Chopin and other Romantics. But secretly, by night, I listened to Keith Jarrett. Trained classically at the time, I fell in love with his layering of piano sounds that at times feel like lava, like a thick beautifully complex sonic matter rather them separate notes.

A few years later I discovered Morton Feldman and the possibility of space - and silence - evoked around each piano key touched, in his amazing piano pieces.

This mediation is dedicated to both of them. This is a brief 5 min 45 sec encounter with the instrument.


Listen to Monika Weiss's music --- link



Maybe also an excerpt of a duo.

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Collect art by Monika Weiss (or other words)

contact: MonikaWeiss....


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MONIKA WEISS


My interdisciplinary work spans across music, film and choreography of slow time. In my time-based art, the biological and spiritual presence becomes a site of potential transformation. In my films and live performances, a protagonist performs silent gestures, sustains vocal sounds, and grounds herself within the Earth. My body and the bodies of others, especially other women, become vehicles of collective memory, in response to sites of trauma, myths, history, and current events.  I compose music for voice, and record ambient sounds, including my own acoustic piano improvisations, to creative immersive environments, inviting my audiences into a shared psycho-somatic space of, what I call, unforgetting. 


Monika Weiss is a New York-based artist and sound composer. Solo exhibitions include Museum of Memory & Human Rights, Santiago, Chile; Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum, Miami; and Centre of Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw, Poland. In 2022, she was included in the historical survey of Polish women artists at A.I.R. Gallery, New York, co-organized with lokal_30 Gallery, Warsaw. In 2016, she was included in a survey of contemporary video art at Stavros Niarchos Foundation, Athens. In 2024, her sound sculpture was acquired into permanent collection of the Centre of Polish Sculpture in Orońsko. 


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Monika Weiss stories and programs at Streaming Museum


2020 - CENTERPIONT NOW "Are we there yet?" marking the UN 75th anniversary, publication and ©2020 World Council of Peoples for the United Nations, co-produced with Streaming Museum. Unforgetting Violence by Monika Weiss. p22-3

2017 - A View From The Cloud, art exhibitions and conversations with innovators across disciplines at the UN Church Center and Art Salon


 
 

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