Kurt Komell is one of the founders of the 1st Thuringian VJ Crew Queps in 1998. In the first years of the crew, they played the technofloors in southern Thuringia and Erfurt. Early on, Kurt showed an interest in processing real videos and live cameras. During the Eastsidazz Nerves Tour 2001 with a gig in Austria, his style began to emerge. Over the next few years, Queps produced a programme on the regional stations in Weimar and Mühlhausen. It was here that he and his brother discovered video feedback and started using it as an effect for veejaying. At the Erfurt station Radio Frei, Queps then celebrated parties again. This led to the legendary drum and bass parties at Erfurt’s Exxit. Here, Kurt’s style sharpened once again. Inspired by the Qatsi series, he conjured up his own view of the world on the screens of the dance floors. But it wasn’t just drum and bass that was visualised; a close collaboration with the skaband Gimpelakwa took Kurt further along his musical path. Excursions into reggae at Freiburg’s KTS and performances with the Croatian dub band Radikal Dub Kollektiv were among the highlights of his work in the mid2000s, which was crowned with a performance at Fusion. In the early 2010s, he then found an artistic home in Leipzig in the crash at Radio Partisan parties with DJ Rot and Honig. Performing live with the band As Free As Free Jazz, he delighted audiences at numerous events in and around Jena. Queps started hosting shows with DJs from the region again in 2017 and livestreaming them on Youtube. Today, Kurt Komell mixes real videos with fractal videos and always garnishes the whole thing with a bit of feedback, which is now generated digitally and analogue. Kurt completed his veejay film Cycle of Life in 2022 and creates interactiveinstallations such as Dance the Light or Play with the Light.
In 25 years, Kurt Komell has performed at more than 500 nationwide and international events.The spectrum ranged from vernissages of various artists to the accompaniment of trade fairperformances and live video performances with various bands to dance events of the music genres techno, minimal, drum and bass, reggae, dub, rock, punk, etc.