The installation deals with the shift toward alternative realities in which we extend our identities into virtual, non-physical space. What lies behind the destroyed hardware, and what do we see or choose to project into it?

The installation uses found electronic waste to separate the viewer from digital and artificial realities, leaving only destroyed speakers and flatscreens as a physical shell. All that remains of these invisible worlds is a distorted sound played through defective speakers, recorded during a glitched and disrupted video call.

The work is a deconstruction of the previous installation ‘Umarell’ where mostly functional electronic devices and glitched screens played audiovisual content. The material was based on abstract found footage and sound snippets from social media and presented across five screens and defective speakers, each functioning as a separate channel. ‘Inverted Entertainment’ consists only of the damaged or further destroyed parts of these devices.

In 2022, together with Jonas Romann and Johannes Hassenstein, the music label RAWR was founded. It focused on cross-genre electronic music rooted in club and live subcultures, with digital and cassette releases. The label’s catalogue ranged from ambient and electronica to techno, breaks and experimental. To celebrate music as a social experience, the crew also released remixes and organised underground parties with DJs and live acts in Hamburg’s off-spaces such as Frappant Kachelraum and Gängeviertel to fund their projects. In 2024, it was rebranded as ROMVESN to embrace ambiguity and shape a more mysterious identity.

Discography

ROMVESN 01 – Various Artists

Fásma & Yddu Single – Rœt / Keflér

Xerox Park EP – Acid At The Mall

Punctum EP – Ced Benglez Remix

A bit warmer EP – Irl:yl

Massive Virus Peak – Andi Otto Remix

Punctum EP – Rœt / Keflér

Rainbow Remix EP – Various Artists

Rainbow EP – Ced Benglez

The series consists of three prints, each taken from moving-image material created for the mixed-media installation ‘Umarell’. The visuals blend digital and analog noise, internet memes, fail videos, AI-generated sequences, and animation into ambiguous visual subjects that resist clear interpretation.

The final images evoke a painterly quality through blurred, diffuse forms, visual artefacts, and textured colour fields. These elements create shifting states between digital and analog realms.

By referring to ‘Umarell’, a work exploring digital content and its loss of context in contemporary media culture, the prints present ambiguous snapshots of today’s overstimulating media worlds. The prints act as an analogy for endlessly reposting, transforming and compressing content over time.

‘Umarell’ are men of retirement age who spend their time watching construction sites, often with hands clasped behind their back and offering unwanted advice to the workers. In this artwork, the ‘construction site’ is the installation itself, and the viewer becomes an ‘Umarell’, or in the context of the visuals, an online identity commenting on posts.

Broken flatscreens marked by colorful cracks and glitches are supplemented by two film loops arranged on five vertically hanging screens. The visuals combine digital noise, memes, fail videos, AI-generated footage, and Hi8/VHS artifacts. The two visual loops run and react in sync with their auditory layers, derived from the original sounds of the found footage. The soundscape blends atmospheric drones, voice fragments, and rhythmic noise. The two audiovisual loops have different lengths, creating endlessly evolving states as their starting points constantly shift.

The viewer is confronted with a raw and overstimulating setting, which feels like doomscrolling through social media, with constantly shifting moods and no clear context.

Loop 1 has a sharp, harsh texture with more transients, counterpointing loop 2, which primarily consists of smooth, spherical elements.

Entering Kai Lietzke‘s video installation feels almost like being transported back into David Cronenberg‘s iconic film classic Videodrome (1983): the TV screen is not just a passive object but vividly alive—it breathes, bulges, and appears organic. The audiovisual cacophony of flat screens hanging from the ceiling in this mixed-media installation exposes the physical realities of techno-everyday infrastructure systems. The tangled cabling, resembling an anarchistic network of vessels, keeps the electrical circuit running, supplying life to the discarded devices. While today‘s prosumers mindlessly embrace the flood of ever-newer technology generations in the pursuit of the next pixel, this installation highlights how obsolete technological devices become not just techno-trash but also resources.

Two phase-shifted film loops project their audiovisual narrative onto five vertically arranged flat screens, each displaying various visual defects: flickering, color stripes, or so-called ‘spiderweb cracks’. The visual material resembles a kaleidoscopic archive of our digital detritus. Fail videos meet digital noise, memes, nostalgic artifacts from Hi8 and VHS formats, and AI-generated sequences. Lietzke explores the real conditions of existence, the circulation within the swarm, and the fractured and flexible temporalities of ‘poor images’, handling the poetic potential of the glitch beyond mere technical error. The glitch becomes a productive element of disorder and nonconformity within the regulated framework of society—a moment where established systems fail to function.

Destroyer is the third solo record from Downfall Of Gaia‘s Peter Wolff and sees him collaborate with Dutch folk singer Jens Borgaard as well as visual artist Kai Lietzke who had worked with Wolff and Noemi Nicolaisen on his previous album Breath. Pairing the traditional folk background of Jens Borgaard with Peter Wolff‘s affinity for dark electronic music as well as post-metal/crustcore when playing guitar in Downfall Of Gaia, results in a mesmerizing, intimidating landscape of sound.

The idea for Destroyer came from the concept of a man who causes a fatal car crash, and his thoughts/feelings about how it happened and how, despite his efforts to disassociate himself from blame, everything he now knows will be destroyed. A heavy concept but one ripe with opportunities for atmospheric storytelling.

The record is brought to completion by Kai Lietzkes’ haunting visuals that make Destroyer an audio and visual experience. About his work, Lietzke says: ‘The film embodies the destructive story of the album without human reference points and only through images with pure association of natural forces. These are primarily created in an artificial way and play with the limit of one’s perception through the merging of organic and virtual aesthetics. Rocks symbolize the inescapable fate of the protagonist and his environment, the phenomenon of the mirage and amorphous structures as a metaphor for the slipping away of one’s own reality, the sea as a symbol of death, and heaven and hell as an exaggerated representation of inner turmoil. A journey through the abyss mirrored by synthetic worlds.

‘The confrontation, the urge to forget, to flee to anywhere but here and to put blame on anyone but himself and finally he realizes that the death he caused will destroy all that was before’ says Borgaard about the idea of the album.

‘Destroyer’ possesses the qualities of forbidden fruit, as the collaboration of Peter Wolff & Jens Borgaard with Kai Lietzke combines nerve-wracking sounds with a visually appealing, highly harmonious aesthetic that stands in direct contradiction to the album‘s thematic starting point. This makes the album feel like a metaphor for life in general, which is often marked by complex decisions and apparent contradictions that rarely reveal their meaning at first glance. However, this turmoil is primarily related to the individual‘s inner world, where the natural contrasts of beauty and danger, life and death, are vividly illustrated through both abstract and real nature imagery. Thus, it comes as no surprise that tension and relaxation are closely intertwined here.

Film by Kai Lietzke
Music Produced by Peter Wolff
Text & Vocals by Jens Borgaard
Mixing & Mastering by Jonas Romann at Chaos Compressor Club, Hamburg

‘Four Pillars’ explores the context and cultural status of an artwork. The four-part installation transformed a 50-euro wooden hut, bought on ‘Ebay Kleinanzeigen’, from a found object into an artwork and back into an unwanted relic. It investigates the shifting tensions and relationships between the hut’s interior, exterior, and surrounding environment.

The kitsch calligraphy on the front, including ‘Kultur & Events’ alongside words such as ‘Business’, ‘Hochzeit’ or ‘Erlebnisse’, was a key reason for selecting this hut, as it created a striking contrast with the changing contexts of the work. By chance, the project gained another layer of ambivalence when it turned out that the calligraphy had originally been created by Jeannine Platz years earlier for the venue ‘Theater im Zimmer’. Unaware of her reputation, the owner wanted to get rid of the hut and listed it for sale.

State I

The hut was dismantled, transported to the exhibition space, and rebuilt. It was locked and only perceptible from the outside. Nothing was changed; the branch on the roof and the calligraphy on the front were left intact.

State II

Visitors were allowed to enter and interact with the interior. A children’s birthday party was staged with snacks, drinks, altered lighting, and added furniture, subtly playing with the social norms of a vernissage. During the opening, many began behaving recklessly inside the enclosed room, leaving trash, smoking cigarettes, and engaging in loud conversations. Throughout the exhibition, the condition left by the visitors remained untouched.

State III

A durational performance by Idan Weiss, Laura Scharf and Jesse Bückner took place inside the locked cabin, streamed live via a night vision camera to a screen mounted on the exterior wall. The performance explored themes of control, observation, and isolation.

Performance Concept by Idan Weiss & Kai Lietzke
Performance by Idan Weiss, Laura Scharf & Jesse Bückner

State IIII

Martha Penelope and Kai Lietzke rebuilt the cabin without permission at night around the Alster in Hamburg to complete the cycle and renaturize the object. A cutout from the roof and the branch that lay on it were exhibited at ‘The Space – Shaped by Time’ group exhibition in Hamburg, as isolated fragments, separated from their original context. About two weeks later, the work was demolished by the city and thus transformed back into an unwanted object.

Performance & Concept by Martha Penelope Zonouzi & Kai Lietzke

‘Basement II’ is a deconstruction of the previous installation ‘Basement I’, in which the materials are now treated like trash and located behind the TVs. The setting confronts the viewer with ambiguous states between boredom and overstimulation. Eyes of humans and animals, young and old, healthy and ill, are shown on the two old TVs. They appear in sync with the sound amplitude and switch back to a black screen with subtle audiovisual noise artifacts. The sound is based on field recordings and music fragments that morph into glitchy, noisy ambient textures.

Loop 1 consists of harbour field recordings taken at night, deconstructed with granular synthesis into short and sharp audio grains. Loop 2 combines deconstructed mobile recordings with soft and harmonic synth layers.

The setting of ‘Basement I’ is a state of meditation shared with strangers in an intimate and isolated room which explores the viewer’s patience and response to unpredictable actions. The sound experience depends on each recipient’s chosen seat, as sounds are routed through different speakers and effect chains to create an immersive, spatialized sound environment.

Loop 1 shows 16mm frames on a TV with sound loops taken from Punctum (fragments of a music video and song by Rœt / Keflér). Loop 2 presents Hi8 glitches on a TV, reacting to the amplitude of distorted voice fragments from a videocall. Loop 3 uses a lamp and a slide projector with a broken slide of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs as two light sources that switch on in sync with the sound of a found cassette recording.

This EP consists of five loop-based tracks, produced using primarily analog techniques such as synthetic sound generation, real-time mixing, and effect manipulation. Drawing inspiration from dub, techno, downtempo and jazz, the music emphasizes sub frequencies, groove and rhythm, including noise and other sonic artifacts as integral elements. The EP adopts a natural approach throughout the production process, featuring progressive, minimalistic beats.

The ‘Punctum’ music video uses heavily cropped and looped 16mm footage from the short film ‘Heiligengeistfeld 21/06/10’. The reduction isolates minimal movements and shapes, creating shifting, organic patterns that sync and desync with the rhythm of the music.

Writing, Production and Recording by Rœt / Keflér
Mastering by Jonas Romann
Graphics by Kai Lietzke
Design by Johannes Hassenstein
Music Video by Kai Lietzke

Audiovisual observation and abstraction of public space shot on 16mm film

Knut is a performance installation set in a hazy room with around 30 Christmas trees collected from the streets after New Year’s. Dimmed lights, darkened windows with waste paper and the smell of the trees and asphalt defined the atmosphere. The audience could freely enter and move through the setting, with no rules or instructions, allowing the space to shape each person’s experience. The two performers Nick Wacks and Zoltani moved and interacted quietly among the visitors and the trees, never speaking, blending in like strangers instead of recognizable performers.

Concept & Live Sound by Martha Penelope Zonouzi & Kai Lietzke
Performance by Nick Wachs & Temorscha Zoltani

In the center stood a setup of electronic devices and instruments, all connected to a loud sound system. Over two days, Martha Penelope and Kai Lietzke performed a 12-hour improvisation, moving between noise, ambient textures, drones, and field recordings. Some lay down among the trees with eyes closed, others wandered slowly, smoked or drank. A few left the extremely loud room within seconds, covering their ears.

Film by Benson A’kuyie & Kai Lietzke
Performance by Benson A’kuyie
Special Thanks to NAS TEA
Music by Moses Sumney – Doomed

Continuous two days of spiritual simulation, world building and deconstruction, excess, surrender, engagement and future observation.

Asterism is a simulation space for possible worlds: virtual, spiritual, dystopian and embracing. In a black hall, accessed through a preparation lock, an extract of reality is constructed – a complete natural copy of a living surrounding. This setting is interwoven with digital and AI controlled components, which create a space on the border of realities. It investigates the question of how much reduction can be done and still maintain the real – or what are the basic components to construct a spiritual experience. This clash and switching between worlds opens an insight into possible futures of a bio-technical nature in which humans are faced with new conditions. The setting was designed as an immersive experience space to which audience and performers alike were given access for 36 hours.

Team
Concept, Music, Direction – Alexander Schubert
Choreography – Patricia Carolin Mai
Stage and Costume – Pascal Seibicke
Stage and Nature – Hervé Cherblanc
Stage Construction – Johannes Fried
Light Setup – Joanna Ossolinska
Light Design – Diego Muhr, Lasse Schönfelder
Video – Marc Jungreithmeier
Public Participation – Gloria Höckner
VR Concept – Pedro González Fernández, Tobias Pfeil
VR Development & Design – Leonhard Onken Menke
VR Technical Development – Sebastian Olariu
Text Co-Development – Michael Brailey
Sound Spatialisation – Candid Rütter
Technical Head – Olivier Fauvel
Production – Irene Beraldo

Performers
Ines Assoual, Lise Herdam, Julien Kirrmann, Jeanne L’Homer, Jules Rouxel

Singers / Performers
Cédric Dosch, Mathilde Mertz, Clémence Millet, Céline Peran

Percussionists / Performers
Hsin-Hsuan Wu, Yi-Ping Yang, Olivia Martin, Alexandre Esperet, Thibaut Weber, Emil Kuyumcuyan

Video Documentation / Camera Operators
Christian Frank
Cedric Johanson
Kai Lietzke
Jan von Roth
Julien Petin

Direction, Steadycam Operator, Edit & Grading – Kai Lietzke
B Cam & Post Production Assistance – Cedric Johanson
Line Producer – Christian Frank, HFMT Hamburg

Film by Kai Lietzke
Performance by Noemi Nicolaisen
Music Produced by Peter Wolff
Mixing & Mastering by Jonas Romann at Chaos Compressor Club, Hamburg

The film embodies loneliness and escapism, using the ship ‘MS Stubnitz’ as a symbol of a place isolated from the outside world and difficult to categorize. Each song has its own visual identity, blending between concrete and abstract or deconstructed states. The performative elements by Noemi Nicolaisen were created through long takes and improvisation, allowing contemplative moments to emerge and fostering an interplay between body, camera, environment and music.

Peter Wolff (formerly of Downfall of Gaia) releases a new work entitled BREATH via My Proud Mountain. To accompany the record, Kai Lietzke & Noemi Nicolaisen have created a visual in the form of an art film for which BREATH is the score. The music is vast, mysterious and hypnotizing, and it will pull your soul into its vice-like grip. The multi-instrumentalist brings layers of sound together to take the listener to a transcendental state.

Film by Kai Lietzke
Performance by Noemi Nicolaisen
Music Produced by Peter Wolff
Mixing & Mastering by Jonas Romann at Chaos Compressor Club, Hamburg

Directed by Noemi Nicolaisen & Kai Lietzke
Cast – Noemi Nicolaisen & WizTheMc
DoP & Edit – Kai Lietzke
Costume Design & Make-Up by Noemi Nicolaisen
Special Thanks to Leoni Lojenburg & Nando

The ABC Festival in Hamburg was founded, curated and organized by Johannes Hassenstein, Tilman Immisch and Kai Lietzke. It was an arts and culture festival focused on young and emerging artists, both local and international. The festival offered a diverse program across multiple floors, running from noon to midnight, and presented various art forms, including visual arts, music, and performances. It was a non-profit festival, run by a team of around 60 people and attended by about 800 visitors. The concept was to blend different art forms into one seamless world of art.

The first part was an exhibition with paintings, sculptures, and performances by different artists. It also presented works created by kids from different schools in Hamburg. The second part showcased concerts ranging from surf rock and doom metal to electronic music and trap. The final part of each festival featured a diverse DJ lineup blending genres such as techno, house, hip-hop, darkwave, trance, and ambient. The last festival was cut short due to a burst pipe, which flooded the basement, damaging the installation and preventing planned late-night rave.

lineup