Irish filmmaker and musician Willie Stewart premiered his documentary film Ludo is fantastic about Flemish artist Ludo Mich late 2018. An audio CD with the soundtrack to this film was released simultaneously on Stewart’s own label Hypnagogic. Now, two years later, Hypnagogic has released Stewart’s film on DVD together with a restored version of Ludo Mich’s 1972 film Arthur is fantastic plus the film ‘De Minotaurus’ by Chris Gillis and Rufus Mich, which documents Ludo Mich’s 2005 performance Excavation of the Minotaur. On top of that, a download code to the soundtrack of Ludo is fantastic is included in this handsomely packaged DVD.
Belgian artist Ludo Mich (1945) has walked and trespassed the line between life and art since the early 1960s. Ludo was trained an artist in his hometown Antwerp, where he was part of the vibrant and international art scene of the 1960s and 1970s. Influenced by sources as varied as Dadaism, Yves Klein, Piero Manzoni, the Dutch Provos, Fluxus and Situationist International, Ludo developed into an anarchic and subversive performance artist and a gifted filmmaker. With a keen eye for new developments in the technical field, he also emerged as a pioneering artist in modern media such as video, holography and electronic music.
According to the liner notes to the DVD, Ludo – now in his 70s – “continues to gain integrity as he ignores conformity. Financial gain and stays one step ahead of conventional and conservative art. Through a mix of archival footage, interviews with family and friends and fly-on-the-wall footage, director Willie Stewart takes us on an immersive journey through the world of the “Mich Dimension” and relieves exactly what makes Ludo so fantastic.”