In his video installation As If Memories Could Deceive Me, Marcel Odenbach tackles different subjects to express the impact of his background, his perception of history and his cultural identity. The piece was featured in the Festival at the request of curator Kathy Rae Huffman.
artists
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Curator's text Kathy Rae Huffman, 1990
As if Memories could deceive me
In “As if Memories Could Deceive me”, Odenbach structures several themes through which he express the impact of this German, bourgeois education on his sense of history and cultural identity. Classical symphonic music, fantasy and political propaganda films, and contemporary absolute music are orchestrated by Odenbach with original footage to build a personal history from which his memories are derived, selected, and used to confront his future.
The rehearsal and performance of the symphonic work, “Manfred” by Robert Schumann, introduces the cultural context, and portrays the range of romantic emotions and nationalistic pride associate with Germany. Contradictory, abstract percussion sound elements introduce a subjective viewpoint to challenge the social order (the past, the collective memory as expressed by the classics). This contrast introduces the artist`s skepticism of his cultural influences, the opposing and interwining considerations of his counciouness that question escape from its dominations and the influence of the transition.
The search for a personal history within the grand, historic nationalism of a society, and the mystery of that process has been a constant inquiry in the work of Marcel Odenbach. The polarities he selects in both visual and audio elements reveal the most intimate exploration into the tension – and ultimate realization – that he is a product of his social and cultural environment. However, these influences, which have been passed from generation through classical, narrative music are now transmitted by media. Selectivity in the search for artistic individualism, and specifically the represented with fashion images and the seduction of consumer influences.
The keyboard of the piano and its reflection on to polished veneer is a static metaphor in “As if Memories Could Deceive Me”, and becomes the personal conveyance for Odenbach’s memory. Passages from German cultural films, superimposed alongside pre/post-war documentary propaganda, are established and internationally recognized stereotypical images representing Germany, challeges with the artist’s presence at the power it transmits, is calmative – yet open ended, in shocking contemporary collory found in the fashion industry. The installation represents the artist’s struggle with the hierarchy of memory, theon and/or acceptance of cultural influences. The gesture of the collecting and rejecting the unwanted is symbolized by the arrangement of familiar disposable plastics, which indicates the failure of history to provide individual identity.
8th Fotoptica Internacional Video Festival. 09 a 15 de Novembro de 1990. p. 92.