- 4 days ago
Another crowd-puller at the Art Cologne 2025 art fair was the work “Silences. Active Images 1990-2012” by Lohner:Carlson (Henning Lohner and Van Carlson) at the stand of Buchhandlung Walther König. The work is an edition of 38 unique video works in book form. In this video, Henning Lohner talks about the creation and significance of the work, his artistic oeuvre in general, and new projects.
“Silences are filmed objects that we found along the wayside of Everyday surprises, caught with a wonder-some urge to refine the frame of our attention, to shift focus, to zoom in on that rarest moment, to catch it like a fish jumping out of water - brief ashes turned into ballet: I'd like to give these passages - healing moments for me - back to you, my friendly bystander, in hopes that they may bring you joy.” (Henning Lohner)
Lohner:Carlson (Henning Lohner und Van Carlson): “Silences. Active Images 1990-2012” (2025), Buchhandlung Walther König, Art Cologne 2025. Interview with Henning Lohner. Cologne (Germany), November 7, 2025.
Lohner:Carlson is the visionary artist duo of German filmmaker, composer, and media artist Henning Lohner (b. 1961, Bremen) and acclaimed American cinematographer Van Carlson (1950–2011, Colorado). Their creative partnership ignited in 1989, sparked by a pivotal introduction from icon Frank Zappa, and flourished into a profound exploration of moving images that blur the boundaries between photography, film, and conceptual art.
Influenced by avant-garde giants like John Cage and Iannis Xenakis, Lohner:Carlson crafted seminal works such as the 1992 art film One11 and 103—a 90-minute black-and-white meditation on light and chance, directed by Lohner and lensed by Carlson—and the posthumous Cage homage The Revenge of the Dead Indians (1993), featuring luminaries like Dennis Hopper, Yoko Ono, and Matt Groening. Their signature Active Images series, debuting in 2006, captures fixed-frame vignettes of landscapes, cities, and portraits in subtle, uncontrolled motion—evoking fleeting moments of emergence, flow, and completion in a hyper-saturated visual world.
Since Carlson's passing, Lohner has carried their legacy forward through exhibitions at Centre Pompidou, Guggenheim New York, SFMOMA, and beyond, alongside innovative editions like Silences. Active Images 1990-2012. A bridge between stillness and vitality, Lohner:Carlson's oeuvre invites us to pause, observe, and rediscover the extraordinary in the everyday.
“Silences are filmed objects that we found along the wayside of Everyday surprises, caught with a wonder-some urge to refine the frame of our attention, to shift focus, to zoom in on that rarest moment, to catch it like a fish jumping out of water - brief ashes turned into ballet: I'd like to give these passages - healing moments for me - back to you, my friendly bystander, in hopes that they may bring you joy.” (Henning Lohner)
Lohner:Carlson (Henning Lohner und Van Carlson): “Silences. Active Images 1990-2012” (2025), Buchhandlung Walther König, Art Cologne 2025. Interview with Henning Lohner. Cologne (Germany), November 7, 2025.
Lohner:Carlson is the visionary artist duo of German filmmaker, composer, and media artist Henning Lohner (b. 1961, Bremen) and acclaimed American cinematographer Van Carlson (1950–2011, Colorado). Their creative partnership ignited in 1989, sparked by a pivotal introduction from icon Frank Zappa, and flourished into a profound exploration of moving images that blur the boundaries between photography, film, and conceptual art.
Influenced by avant-garde giants like John Cage and Iannis Xenakis, Lohner:Carlson crafted seminal works such as the 1992 art film One11 and 103—a 90-minute black-and-white meditation on light and chance, directed by Lohner and lensed by Carlson—and the posthumous Cage homage The Revenge of the Dead Indians (1993), featuring luminaries like Dennis Hopper, Yoko Ono, and Matt Groening. Their signature Active Images series, debuting in 2006, captures fixed-frame vignettes of landscapes, cities, and portraits in subtle, uncontrolled motion—evoking fleeting moments of emergence, flow, and completion in a hyper-saturated visual world.
Since Carlson's passing, Lohner has carried their legacy forward through exhibitions at Centre Pompidou, Guggenheim New York, SFMOMA, and beyond, alongside innovative editions like Silences. Active Images 1990-2012. A bridge between stillness and vitality, Lohner:Carlson's oeuvre invites us to pause, observe, and rediscover the extraordinary in the everyday.
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CreativityTranscript
00:00Hello everyone.
00:05I'm a senior.
00:07Hello everyone.
00:09I'm a professional.
00:13I have to do a few things.
00:16I can't stand here.
00:18I have to do a few things.
00:20I can't stand here.
00:22I can't stand here.
00:24I can't stand here.
00:26Here we go.
00:56So my name is Henning Lohner and for 38 years I have been making what I call active images, video pictures. They're moving photographs and my friend Walter Koenig, who's this wonderful book publisher here in Germany, has suggested for many years that I should do an addition incorporating my pictures.
01:17And we made a book a while back that was just a book with like contact pieces, like photographic contacts. And now we decided to try this out and we put a video card, a video module as they call it, into the book.
01:39And we made 38 pieces of these books, which exist. Book is the same, but the videos are unique. They're one film for each year that I've been doing this. And there they are. Well, some of them. That's not all 38.
01:56So first of all, I'm actually a composer, a musician, but I'm also a filmmaker because in the early years I wasn't able to earn any money with music. So I somehow found myself into the German television system and became a director for art films.
02:13And out of that work became these videos because I found them beautiful and in film they're always edited to something else. And I worked with John Cage for a long, long time and I understood that doing something for something else is not that great.
02:37So I thought doing something for itself would be liberating. And these images are usually used in films to be edited into another narrative. But now, back then, I started saying to myself, well, how nice would it be to show them for what they are because you can actually see them in a film.
03:01They're gone. They're gone. They're gone. Like after 30 seconds or, you know, or three seconds even or three milliseconds, they're gone. And the next thing and you can hardly retrieve them.
03:11And in real life anyway, everything moves on and you can never see anything again. So the idea was to bring something soothing and friendly and calming and meditative, contemplative, simple images from their found objects, if you will.
03:31So the idea that Duchamp had, and there's one, my homage to Duchamp, which is, you know, film to found objects. So the idea of what Duchamp had and Cage did to transport that into film and say, well, how curious is this?
03:53This I found only last year. It's in a hotel and it was a bathroom with these urinals and then these ridiculous black sculptures of these, of the deer heads. And then as coincidence has it, the cleaning lady came in and started cleaning all of this up.
04:18And so I thought, well, this is a pretty good metaphor for what I'm trying to say, which is the things that are on the wayside or that are coincidental or otherwise not noticed is to put them in the foreground and to make them nice and friendly.
04:36That's actually chronologically my very first image. I was making a film about Steve Reich, actually. And we were in Basel where the big fountain is and made a whole series of images of the fountain and the movement of the fountain.
04:52And in this particular case, we shifted the focus because we noticed there was a child eating a banana. This is from 1988. And it's just this idea of the banana, you know, in the art world.
05:04And then, of course, Tangele, who I admire so much and to make it's actually work number two, because a year later, Cage and I did a performance of 433 in Berlin with video.
05:21It's one of two performances on video with Cage. And that's number one, work number one. But this is work number two. It's earlier, but I put it afterwards because the idea to all of it came through Cage.
05:33So there's all of these are examples for coincidences, things that happen around us that are very in the moment, like the butterfly. There's there's a butterfly that lands here. And coincidentally, I was able to catch it.
05:54It comes at some point. Or, you know, here's a lightning flash of lightning. We chased the storm all day or an entire day. And then finally, the lightning came just before we were giving up.
06:10This is in Brooklyn, the promenade where they they put like a two two levels of, you know, highway into the mountainside.
06:21And then on top is the Brooklyn promenade. And so in my behind of me, I'm looking to the would be the ocean. And then there's of all things, there's children.
06:31And occasionally there's a there's a soccer ball. There's a football that flies through the air. And I thought that that was kind of charming. There's people sitting up there.
06:40And then there's the cars constantly. And of course, they're all silent. And even the the most irritating noises of the of the of the everyday become charming when they're not on the picture.
06:54And you begin to imagine what sounds might be attached to this. As a matter of fact, because I'm a musician, I'm actually starting an entire series where I'm writing the music that I hear to the images, because that's where it all comes from.
07:12It doesn't come like from a classical visual artist who draws something and then he makes a painting out of it or such. In my case, it's the music, it's the rhythms and the colors of the light and the mood that is much like the music and the harmonies and the melody and the rhythms and the sound, the tone color, this kind of thing.
07:34And that's what I hear when I look at a certain piece, why a certain piece is more interesting to me and hopefully to my friendly collectors and people who like it than something else.
07:49So they all have ideas attached to them, but mostly they have feelings attached to them, like in music, you know, where rhythms generate and harmonies generate immediate feelings.
08:01Anyway, there we are. I was looking for the emotion in these images and I was working in film.
08:10I was saddened that these beautiful pictures that my cameraman. So this is Loner Carlson because my friend Van Carlson was this wonderful cameraman who died 15 years ago.
08:20So I'm doing it on my own now, but everything that I know about photography, I know from him.
08:25And so it's Loner Carlson, although it's just me right now. And this desire to maintain and to capture this feeling of the image, that's what they are.
08:43It's really, it's all about a feeling. And because they continue for a longer period of time, you can see into them.
08:53And by seeing into them, it's like listening to music. You listen over time.
08:59And so with listening in time, with looking in time, you start seeing things that aren't there initially, which is what happens when we walk around.
09:11Everything passes by very quickly. In this case, you're allowed to pause and sit and reflect on something that happened for a particular period of time, much like a piece of music.
09:23And interestingly enough, I can tell you this for those of you who actually are interested in understanding a little bit more or knowing a little more about these things.
09:35When you look at them for a longer period of time, like a picture, so not as a film, but like a picture on a wall, which is what the originals, the actual larger pieces are,
09:50poster size on what we call digital canvas that I invented with a friend and we made a business out of it.
09:58And so there's these larger screens, digital canvases. And what happens is when you have them as pictures on a wall,
10:06and let's say the loop is usually, it's the John Cage idea of having it long enough so that you don't, you really have to sit through it in order to see the loop.
10:16So the 433 idea, the silence idea from Cage, it's a very chosen number. It's not coincidental.
10:24He wanted to have something that is long enough, but not too long. Anyway, most of these are around four, five, six, seven minutes.
10:32Some are much longer, some are shorter. And the whole idea is that you can see into them.
10:40And as you look at them as pictures on a wall, you start understanding the rhythms inside of the images.
10:49So for instance, here, this is a good example. To most of us, smoke, to most of us, smoke is entirely amorphous.
11:01It just completely changes. You cannot see a pattern in it. However, if something like this, the original of this is, I think, 12 minutes.
11:12When you see it, I promise you, if you look at it for a lifetime for, say, at home for half a year, you're going to start seeing the movements.
11:22And you're going to start seeing, oh, wait a minute, this comes next. Oh, and then comes this. Oh, and I remember the next is going to be this.
11:29And so suddenly this amorphous movement becomes like a ballet. It becomes like a performance that you actually can follow, much like a piece of music again, where you follow from one melody to the next.
11:42And suddenly you see things that otherwise would have never appeared just through the simple concept of repetition.
11:51And so that's a lot, you know, or like with the fish, I already know when which fish come and which follow which fish follow which.
11:59And when the shark comes and when the manta ray comes, you know, and all this kind of thing.
12:04Or with the with the flower, the rhythms of flowers in the wind to me is a fascinating thing.
12:12And, you know, this guy, this, this lady is looking at us very proud and it's the height of her bloom.
12:18And, you know, the wind wiggles away and she's happily waving to us is how I feel about it.
12:26So all of this to say that I enjoyed making these because they made me happy and they they're healing in the sense like music is also healing.
12:44It's it's medicine really to them to the soul.
12:47And so that's what I was hoping to do by finding these images that could exist on their own for a period of time, like a piece of music and like a piece of visual music.
13:01We have this we use this term music for your eyes, you know, here it just works perfectly.
13:09I think with the book format that suddenly these come to come alive in the in the in the whole.
13:17Yeah, as you say, haptic way, the holistic way of being there.
13:21And suddenly there are truly windows into a new world and you start seeing you seeing into the images.
13:30Part of it actually is that the way the focus is done.
13:34The focus is always somewhere not in the front and not entirely in the back.
13:41And that's another idea from John Cage is to say that ideally things would be somewhere, but not in the foreground, you know, not prominent.
13:52And here I am, but more equilibrated, more around, you know, so there's this is a pretty good example.
14:03We just saw the butterfly fly away.
14:06And in this case, it's difficult, but the flower is in the this is the foreground.
14:14That's the background and the flowers and focus.
14:16Interestingly enough, the foreground changes with light.
14:21It becomes more and less sharp, depending on how much light is on things like that happen when we began making these the very early ones.
14:281988. So I was 26 and I couldn't understand why I was so excited about these images, particularly.
14:37We used to call them lockdowns because they were on a tripod locked down so that the wind couldn't, you know, wouldn't wiggle the camera.
14:46And then we'd do it like a photograph that was alive.
14:51And I remember that I, even today, but back then I could, I had this excitement and joy about making these and I couldn't explain to myself why.
15:01I know today that it's because they calmed me down.
15:07They made me happy. They soothed me there.
15:10They were medicine to my soul, as I say, and they still are today.
15:15I am capable of giving that to others for a long period of time.
15:22I was shy about that. And so that impulse, which image is right, comes from here, from the gut.
15:34And it's just a strange feeling of excitement.
15:39And then after that comes a process of realization of awareness.
15:45It's all awareness, but of a more conscious awareness where I'm thinking, well, why, you know, then that process begins.
15:55And I realized that there are felt associations that just happened because you run around life and you think about things and suddenly you remember something or that reminds you of something or whatever, or you have some sort of an idea.
16:12But emotionally, most, most, most, most of the time, it's an emotion.
16:17And then once you've had it and you can admit to the emotion and say, oh, I have this.
16:22I do like this. I'm allowed to like this. I'm okay.
16:27Then comes a process of where that's a bit more analytical, like, you know, you don't, I would prefer not to have like, I have like 500 flowers.
16:37Well, to show to the public, you have to start thinking about, well, okay, so how am I going to do this?
16:44So that's when the mind and sort of more, more realistic decisions come into the process.
16:51But to begin with, it's, oh, I like flowers, you know, and I realized I understand today why Monet painted flowers for the last 30 years of his life.
17:00I totally get it now. A lot of, at first I thought, well, you know, it's kind of kooky.
17:05But now I totally get it. And it's kind of like that with certain things.
17:12Anyway, so they're all there to, to be organized in a way that they can, I try to touch on different areas of feelings.
17:28That's kind of what it is. Yeah. And in hopes that other people enjoy it as I do.
17:36I'm glad that Walter finally beat me up to do this. And it's a, it's a great pleasure. I've, I've, I hope we will see much more of it.
17:46I mean, I will be able to do more of it and therefore show more of it in the near future.
17:53The new projects, there are many, but it's all about money.
17:56I need to find sponsors that will help me realize these because there's the, the language of the, of digital communication, or as I might even say, digital connectivity is a huge and wonderful new field.
18:13And it's being compromised by the usual threats of things that are new, like people misusing things like, you know, artificial intelligence and the, the issues that come up because, you know, jurisdiction can't keep up with how people misuse things.
18:30It's like the wild west, but digital communication is in a new phase of acceptance because with all of this digital, the digital community is now coming closer to another.
18:43And AI is a huge proponent or propeller of this.
18:47And so there are a whole, the whole set of ideas about exhibitions, how we can move digital imagery in a unique way is this uniqueness is most important in all of this.
19:01These are all unique images.
19:02And I have developed technology that allows them to be unique.
19:07That's a longer story, but so that we can send them between each other.
19:13between each other.
19:14And we're actually coming back to a analog way of dealing with digital communication and digital things.
19:23So that's a big project for me.
19:26And it, it's like, to give you a simple example, three museums are connected and the images rotate from one museum to the other.
19:38So they're all connected and the viewer can see what is happening between these places.
19:43And so the idea of the rarest moment, that's William Carlos Williams, but it's a Duchampian idea where you can only just see something ever for a sliver of time that is, you know, and so an artwork is not permanent anymore.
20:02Although it is permanent with us, the moment we've seen it and memorized it, it becomes permanent, but it doesn't need to be here all the time.
20:11So it can move around and you can start making exhibitions without actually moving your feet.
20:18You can see there.
20:19And so there's a whole bunch of ideas.
20:22I'm not sure if I'm being very clear of how to move around pictures, turn that around, not you and I have to move along the exhibit, but we can be here and we can see in a way images that we ourselves also handle and put out and see in the moment.
20:41a new connection between people also who are not in the same place.
20:48So that's like one project, but there's many others.
20:52And that's also the cage and Duchamp Aesthetics, the everyday aesthetic.
20:59And that's all about a topic.
21:02It's all about a topic.
21:04It's all about a topic.
21:05And we were in the holiday in Holland.
21:08We were in the holiday in the Duchampian with these black horses.
21:14.
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