Arkhe - Lost Canto
above: excerpt from Arkhe - Lost Canto, 2017 - 2024 [to hear the sound press the sound icon located in the lower right corner of the moving image]
Arkhe - THE Lost Canto
2017 - 2024
Digital film + sound composition
Duration: 13 minutes 24 seconds
CREDITS
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
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 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 at Streaming Museum, 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
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.
- Nina Colosi
