György Durst (H)

To György Galántai, for his birthday.

A zero can be placed after the standing figure eight now, so let it be eighty. It is perhaps a recumbent eight that best expresses what I want to send you for this occasion. A recumbent eight, the synonym for the never-ending.

I believe that is what suits Gyuri, a snapshot, the symbol of permanence, a frame from a film, and also a sequence from a motion picture, the infinity symbol, composed of a multitude of stills, just like in his project titled “Bélyegfilm”.

The film goes on, I cannot envision Gyuri in a state of inactivity. I think even when he sleeps he is dreaming about something that I would think is impossible to realise. It’s difficult to even list all the things he initiated, so I will only mention the most important ones: Balatonboglár Chapel Exhibition, the artists’ colony in Dunaújváros, Fluxus, Mail Art, Stamp art, Art Letter, and co-founding the Artpool art documentation centre with Juli. And all the things I don’t know about, only the initiated.

The events, performances and exhibitions in the Galántai House in Kapolcs, and his activity to promote Parallel Culture. His wise and mischievous smile often appears before my mind’s eye. He is an inevitable presence if anyone wants to know and say something of consequence about the Hungarian Avantgarde from the sixties to the present day.

György Durst, Júlia Klaniczay and György Galántai

Some time in the early seventies I and Uncle Pali set off to Balatonboglár by hitchhiking. I took a 16 mm camera and a few rolls of film to record the events. By the time we got to the chapel on top of the hillock, we only found the bricklayers and a few people. And the newly walled-up entrance.

The story of the Chapel Studio with the detailed documentation of each of the events can be found in the Artpool Art Research Center, so there’s no need for me to write about that here. It is the most important and complete collection on the Hungarian Avant-garde.

Dear Gyuri, on this prominent occasion, let me thank you for your tireless efforts with a work by M. C. Escher. I wish you good health until infinity!

● mediawavefestival.hu ● National Film Institute ● catalog.c3.hu ●