Late at night when the malls are closed

Giant grids of television
beam God’s exile
The surgeon of the nightsky
restores dead things by the power of sound

From the Whole Megillah by Ira Cohen

It was after 2 a.m on a windy night in January 1997 that I stepped onto a 15th-floor balcony in Braamfontein, Johannesburg and started recording the deserted city around me. The serenity of deep night… It is a time out of time, a time for crossing over, a time for transgression and transcendence. In his book Night, A. Alvarez writes about electric light – which has enabled us to colonize the night; and it is there – in the pools of light – that one searches – almost longingly – for signs of life. It is an ambiguous longing – a longing for company in these lonely hours of the soul; but also a secret longing for a voyeuristic encounter.

The final shot is a slow zoom into a brightly lit office; revealing a desk, a telephone, a carpet… the zoom reaches its end – then blackness. Accompanying the black screen, a song starts up. A voice sings a world that once was. A world beyond the distant fly-overs where the city lights end.

A world which loss we sense when it is 3 a.m. eternal…