Gespraeche zwischen ost une west / Beszélgetés Kelet és Nyugat közöt
Conversation between East and West

Description

"The three-minute Conversation between East and West was already three years old in 1981, when it was included in the first edition of Infermental. 25-year-old Marcel Odenbach and 32-year-old Gábor Bódy sit next to each other on the podium. Nameplates well known to TV viewers leave no doubt as to their identity. The camera is aimed at the faces of the apparent spokesmen and it becomes more lively as the debate becomes more intense. Odenbach (West) is foaming at the mouth. No need for an interpreter. Language is universal. The sound is taken over by a wind instrument. The visual language can be understood anywhere, both in the East and the West. It was understandable that the emphasis was not on conveying content, but on the expressiveness of the artists, Odenbach and Bódy. And it was also understandable that the usual TV podium had no other function than to enforce the game of public expression." (Source, website, C3)

Additional Informations

"The first real video work of Gábor Bódy is about a highly exciting psychological situation from the 1970s, the era of the iron curtain. Bódy and Marcel Odenbach, his friend from Cologne, communicate silently in front of the camera by blowing soap bubbles. The mood is very dramatic, yet the dramaturgy is rather simple. It is a pioneering work in the new narrative direction Bódy initiated." (Source, website, Ludwig Múzeum)

On the Ludwig Múzeum website, two places are mentioned, Cologne and Paris.

The video was published in INFERMENTAL I. (Source, website, C3)

The artwork on Stiftung IMAI's website

Publications and Periodicals which reference the work

- László Beke & Miklós Peternák (eds.), Gábor Bódy, 1946-1985, A presentation of his work, Mucsarnok, Budapest, 1987.

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