Infermental (Opening)

»Infermental«, which was started in 1980 by the Hungarian and Polish experimental film makers round Gábor Bódy (1946–1985), is the first international magazine on video cassettes. After Bódy’s death, the general co-ordination of the project was carried on by his wife Vera Bódy.

International + Ferment + Experimental = Infermental
Looking back on ten years in 1990, Vera Bódy summed up: “The annual anthologies, published by local editors (artist groups from 12 cities), are in fact a rich find for semoticians, topologists and visual philosophers. With this now 65 hours long video archive, a vocabulary of the 1980’s has been made available to the public”. Until 1990, changing editorial staffs put together a five to seven hour magazine that provided information about the latest tendency in art and media. Astrid Heibach, Georg Pinter and Jozef Robakowski were part of the venture from the beginning. The changing editorial staffs included (to name only a few members) Rotraut Pape, Oliver Hirschbiegel, Peter Weibel, Péter Forgács, Tony Conrad, Keiko Sei and Heiko Daxl. 668 video works were created by more than 1,000 artists from 36 countries, with a total length of approximately 65 hours, which have been on permanent loan to the ZKM since 1992. Among the numerous participating artists were Gary Hill, Rafael Montañez Ortiz, Marina Grzinic und Aina Smid, Yello, Ulrike Rosenbach, Hiroshi Ito, Mona Hatoum, Paul Garrin, Steina and Woody Vasulka.
On the occasion of the 60th anniversary of Gábor Bódy’s birth, the archive exhibition will present all editions of Infermental, along with selected original documents concerning the history of its founding and reception, which are now interactively available on a newly created playing station.