MIKE HENTZ: WORKS 4

Texts: Sergej Anufriew, Gérard Couty, Hans-Christian Dany, Ulf Freyhoff, Walter Hartmann, Mike Hentz, Cecile Noldus, Dodo Schielein, Georg F. Schwarzbauer, Ludwig Seyfarth, Carl Vogel.

“This is certainly an incomplete documentation, but it gives a comprehensive impression of almost thirty years of extensive work which until now has been as a well kept secret, inside information only. Each page, each picture in this book reveals it’s own story and could be the departure point for another individual book. I know that you dear reader are eager to know more, well I console you, two more books are in preparation but they will be like this one, a faded photograph, a photocopy, an after taste, the dim reflection of the practical, direct, first hand experience of my work. As a collection of recipes they serve as an exclusive taster only if you have yourself ever developed and realised a fantasy. Printed media is a very unsatisfying medium for me and the real production was always more important then the documentation. However, in times of paradoxical dissemination where disorientation and fraude become major topics. It is important to give documentation to the visions and contents which prepare the way into the future. It is a misunderstanding to define the future in terms of the ‘new media’s they are only tools and not contents and as tools they enlarge the artistic possibilities. At a certain point in time the term multi media was connected to digital techniques, but today I don’t want the work to be contained by the reductionist expression of ‘media art’ therefore temporarily I have decided to be considered as a polymedia artist. In this sense the content of this book is free of media hype and three dimensional analysis because actually postmodernism hasn’t even started yet in our society and we will need to generate new contents and visions which will facilitate the coming future, some of these contents and visions you might find in this book”.
– The 4 4 word Hentz, 1999

Swiss-American graphic designer, musician, photographer and performance artist Mike Hentz ranks among the pioneers of new media art. He co-founded the legendary performance group Minus Delta T and the artist groups Frigo, Radio Bellevue and the European Media Art Lab. In the 1990s he realized the project Piazza Virtuale with Van Gogh TV and a great many interactive cable and satellite television shows with University TV. Hentz also taught at art schools in Germany, Switzerland and various Eastern European countries.