NARRATIVE BIO

Kai Lossgott was always quite impatient.  He was born prematurely in Germany on 7 March 1980, the son of a German sculptor and an Afrikaans fibre artist.  Before he could even walk he began to draw, and announced at age five that he would like to become a great artist.

It took him another nineteen years to decide what kind of artist.  Kai was the only boy in his modern dance class as a child, and later went on to major in dance theatre at university.  He plays a variety of musical instruments, briefly sang in a band, has acted in over 30 plays, and has had his poetry published in English, German and French.

In 1998 he matriculated from the National School of the Arts with seven distinctions.  He walked away with the trophies for Best Painting, Best Sculpture, Best Drawing, Best Foreign Language Student, Top Academic Achiever and Best Overall Student.  It was his firm resolve to spend the rest of his life painting in a house in the forest.

Four years later he graduated from Rhodes University with a degree in Television Journalism.  He had been the host and producer of a successful community radio show, technical manager of a radio station, a television journalist during the National Arts Festivals, and the editor of numerous corporate videos which rode on cheap student talent.  He was offered a masters degree scholarship which he did not take up.

The South African Guild of Editors judged him the best student editor of 2002 for a music video which he directed and edited. His first documentary film, which he edited, was awarded top in its category by the NTVA, as was the music video.  Along with a second documentary, his directing debut, it was nominated for an Apollo Film Award.  Kai was determined to cut throat in the television industry until he was old and grey.

Three months later he was working full time as a junior lecturer in digital media at the University of South Africa, also lecturing in Film History at the University of Pretoria.  He curated his first exhibition of digital media art for the Aardklop Arts Festival in 2003.  In 2004 and 2005, he taught part-time in the School of Arts at WITS University's MA in Interactive Art, bringing an embodied approach to new media technologies.

In 2006 Kai enrolled for his MA in Creative Writing at the University of Cape Town, entered a period of silence, and produced a 60 000 word novel. In this time, disengaging himself from the white middle class obsessions of the secure project, which was no longer proving healthy, his search for renewal lead him to create alpha (2006). nothing with skin is blind (2008) is his latest body of work.

You may also view an archive of performance, painting and digital work produced mostly in his student years.

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