A Conversation with the Mountain: Monika Weiss’s "Arkhe-The Lost Canto" bridges the gap between the Himalayas and New York through haunting a cappella vocals, drawings, and the ritual of veiling
- Dec 8, 2025
- 6 min read
Updated: Mar 3
Streaming Museum is honored to premiere Arkhe-–The Lost Canto, a multidisciplinary work by the internationally acclaimed artist, composer, and filmmaker Monika Weiss. In the artist’s words, “The title Arkhe (Greek: ἀρχή) evokes the archaic, the beginning, and the origins of being, while Canto—a recurring title in my filmic works—frames the image as a song or a musical movement, transforming the screen into a site of vocalized memory.”
Viewing & Listening Recommendation for the optimal experience
To fully engage with the intricate layers of Monika Weiss's multidisciplinary work, we recommend the following:
Sonic Environment: The soundscape, featuring the a cappella work for voice Arkhe and the iron vessel percussion, is mixed with high-fidelity, ambisonics and spatial nuances. The use of high-quality headphones or external studio monitors is strongly recommended.
Visual Fidelity: The film integrates cinematography with intricate resin and graphite drawings. For the best experience of these textures, view the work in full-screen mode in a darkened environment.
A Ritual of Presence: We invite you to experience the film in its entirety—allowing the rhythmic movements of veiling and bowing to establish a meditative dialogue between the viewer and the spirits of the mountain.
Curator’s Introduction: Arkhe-–The Lost Canto
Streaming Museum is honored to premiere Arkhe—The Lost Canto, a multidisciplinary work by the internationally acclaimed artist, composer, and filmmaker Monika Weiss.
In this immersive total work of art, Weiss continues her profound exploration of the trope of the lament—a cross-cultural form of music and poetry used here to transform historical trauma and displacement into a ritual of shared witness. The project is centered on a compelling narrative of loss and recovery: in 2017, Weiss filmed on the restricted slopes of Kanchenjunga in the Himalayas, a site of spiritual power and complex political history for the people of Sikkim. During this same period, she captured the 2017 solar eclipse from a Brooklyn rooftop, linking these distant geographies through a shared celestial event. After the original tapes disappeared for seven years, their rediscovery in 2024 sparked the completion of this visual and sonic cycle.
Monika Weiss bridges the gap between the material and the digital, layering her rediscovered cinematography with original resin and graphite drawings. The film is driven by her musical cycle, Metamorphosis—specifically its sixth movement, Arkhe (2024)—featuring a cappella vocalists recorded in isolation to capture the raw resonance of solitude. Centering on the female body as a site of memory, Weiss choreographs and performs gestures of bowing and veiling that transcend geography.
Arkhe—The Lost Canto serves as a bridge across time and territory, connecting the ancient Slavic beliefs of Weiss’s heritage with the sacred peaks of the Himalayas and the urban landscapes of New York. We invite you to enter this bilingual dialogue with the mountain: a search for origins that honors the spirits inhabiting our natural world.
Complementing this premiere is Monika Weiss’s ongoing cycle, Piano Meditations (Occurrences) (2024–present). In these works, the artist approaches the piano not as an instrument to be commanded, but as a voice to be heard, relinquishing formal control to allow mood, rhythm, and tempo to emerge through a state of deep, focused improvisation.
The artist wishes to thank the performers who appear in the film: Katie Beyers (Soprano/Alto), Anupama Kerongi (Movement Performer), and Ingrid Piazza (Mezzo Soprano). This work would not have been possible without the generous support of several institutions and individuals. Special thanks are due to the Foundation for the Study of Literature and Environment (FSLE India); Sikkim Government College, Tadong; and the Creative Music Foundation in Woodstock, New York, as well as Kurt Gottschalk, Adam Hogan, and Rishikesh Kumar Singh, with a special acknowledgment in memoriam to Dina Helal.
Artist’s Statement
The title Arkhe (Greek: ἀρχή) evokes the archaic, the beginning, and the origins of being, while Canto—a recurring title in my filmic works—frames the image as a musical movement, transforming the screen into a site of vocalized memory.
In the Slavic tradition of my heritage, mountains symbolize the thin veil between the mortal and spirit worlds. In 2017, I filmed on the slopes of Kanchenjunga—the third highest mountain in the world—a landscape heavy with the silence of the lost independence of the Kingdom of Sikkim and the resonance of sacred peaks. That same year, I filmed the solar eclipse from a Brooklyn rooftop. The Kanchenjunga tapes were subsequently lost, only to be rediscovered in 2024. Concurrently, I composed Arkhe (Metamorphosis VI) for two voices and drums. This new composition joined the rediscovered sequences to form a dialogue with the Mountain itself.
As this work premieres in 2026, I am preoccupied with the notion of the polycene—a state of being that intertwines future-focused anxieties with our most ancient, intuitive beliefs. In this moment of profound global crisis, I find myself returning to the revolutionary concept of le peuple. While the Enlightenment defined "the people” as a word representing what we came to name human rights, our current era demands a radical expansion of this multitude. Facing the wounded Earth, we must move beyond a human-centric approach toward an ethics of care for the entire ecosystem.
Arkhe—The Lost Canto is structured as both a song and a forgotten ritual. It seeks to replace—if only for a fleeting moment—the scars of conquest with a practice of radical care for an enduring, shared world. – Monika Weiss
Project Credits
Arkhe - The Lost Canto
Written, Directed, and Filmed by: Monika Weiss
Musical Composition, Production, and Performance: Monika Weiss
Film and Sound Editing: Monika Weiss
Text 1: Monika Weiss
Text 2: Treny (1583) by Jan Kochanowski. Translated by Adam Czerniawski and Donald Davie
Movement Performers: Anupama Kerongi, Monika Weiss
Voice Performers: Katie Beyers (Soprano, Alto), Ingrid Piazza, (Mezzo Soprano)
Recording Engineer: Jeff Allen
Sound Mastering: Adam Hogan
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On Piano Meditations (Occurrences) and the Vocal Process
My compositions often manifest as a sonic dialogue with the natural world. In works such as Canto 9 (2016), I transcribed the recorded calls of flying peacocks into notation, which a vocalist then interpreted to bridge the gap between human and avian expression. By layering these original environmental recordings with the human voice, I seek to create a polyphonic whole that dissolves the boundaries between species. What unites these vocal cycles with my piano improvisations is a profound commitment to the singular, un-rehearsed moment. Whether capturing a vocalist in the raw resonance of solitude—often granting them the agency to dictate their own tempo and pitch—or improvising at the piano, my process protects the ontological truth of the sound. Each composition remains an actual occurrence: a form of living emotion rather than a rehearsed artifice.
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 than 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 piano pieces.
Recorded on November 24, 2025, this Meditation/Occurrence is a brief 6-minute, 10-second encounter with the instrument. - Monika Weiss
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ABOUT MONIKA WEISS
Monika Weiss is a multidisciplinary artist, composer, and filmmaker whose work explores the intersections of history, memory, and the spiritual architecture of the natural world. Central to her practice is the trope of the lament—a cross-cultural form of music and poetry utilized to transform historical trauma and solitude into evocative, ritualistic expression. Her work often centers on the female body as a site of memory and metamorphosis; she performs in her own films and choreographs ensembles of women to create shared gestures of bowing, veiling, and witness.
Weiss’s contribution to the field is anchored by significant public works, including a permanent outdoor iron sculpture and sound composition at the Centre of Polish Sculpture in Orońsko. Living and working in New York and St. Louis, where she holds a professorship at Washington University, Weiss has exhibited globally and continues to develop a sonic and visual language that honors the spirits inhabiting the natural world. monikaweiss.net
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Stories and programs presenting the art of Monika Weiss
2021 - Lament for Rachel Corrie. World Premiere (online). Film by artist Monika Weiss, music by composer Zaid Jabri
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
2006 - Codes of Culture: Video Art from 7 Continents, ArteBA, Buenos Aires 2004 - Monika Weiss: Vessels. Installation, Sculpture, Drawing, Sound in collaboration with Stephen Vitiello