Marcel Odenbach New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York Marcel Odenbach Odenbach, Marcel. Marcel Odenbach/essays by Dan Cameron .. [et al.] New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York Catalogue of an exhibition held at the New Museum of Contemporary Art, October 8, 1998 - January 3, 1999 New York. Organized by Dan Cameron, Senior Curator Includes bibliographical references Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 98-66517 Copyright© 1998 New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York ISBN 0-915557-82-7 (pb) Additional specific art and text copyrights are owned by Marcel Odenbach, Dan Cameron, Theodora Vischer, and Kobena Mercer. 1. Odenbach, Marcel-Exhibitions. I. Cameron, Dan. II. New Museum of Contemporary Art (New York, N.Y.) Ill. Title. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, The individual views expressed in the exhibition and publication are not or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from necessarily those of the New Museum. the publisher. nerunasnru "It Turned My Head" by Theodora Vischer is reprinted from the exhibition NEW MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART catalogue fremdKdrper-corps etrangers-Foreign Bodies, Video installa­ tions by Matthew Barney,Mona Hatoum, Gary Hill, Bruce Nauman, Marcel Cover: Stills from Vom Kommen und vom Gehen [Coming and Going}, 1995 Odenbach, Bill Viola. Copyright© 1996 by Museum fur Gegenwartskunst, Basel, Switzerland. Reprinted with permission from Theodora Vischer and Museum fur Gegenwartskunst. Marcel Odenbach is made possible by the generous support of the Norman and Rosita Winston Foundation, the Penny McCall Foundation, the Consulate General of the Federal Republic of Germany in New Yo1·k, and through the William T Olander Fund at the New Museum. The Rockefeller Foundation has provided support for the New Museum's 1998 exhibition program. Contents 7 Acknowledgments 9 Foreword by Marcia Tucke1· 11 Power Play: Marcel Odenbach's Layered Histories DAN CAMERON 21 It Turned My Head THEODORA VISCHER 25 Knowing Me, Knowing You: Video Art as a Practice of Hybridization KOBENA MERCER 35 Catalogue of Selected Works 45 Checklist of Exhibition 46 Biography 52 Selected Bibliography 55 New Museum Trustees, Artists' Advisory Boa1·d, and Staff 56 Contributors Still from Mir hat es den Kopfverdreht [It TurnedMy Head], 1995-96 6 Acknowledgments Dan Cameron Because of its often polemical and con­ This catalogue has been overseen by visual diaries to coincide with the museum's frontational stance, the art of Marcel Melanie Franklin from conception to final presentation of his video work. The Penny Odenbach is not an easy thing for some proofs, and it would be impossible to over- McCall Foundation has generously sup­ people to assimilate. This has made bringing state her insight and tenacity in invariably ported the publication of this catalogue, a survey of his work to a New York public knowing the right way to do things, and for which we are deeply indebted. The an especially rewarding experience, but then doing them with incredible accuracy. Rockefeller Foundation, especially Tomas not one without occasional moments of The distinguished critic and scholar Ybarra-Frnusto,Joan Shigekawa, and Mikki uncertainty. For this reason in particular, I Kobena Mercer, who has been very gener- Shepard, has provided essential funding am especially grateful to the artist, not sim- ous with his time and critical facilities in for the 1998 exhibition program. The ply for allowing the New Museum the honor familiarizing himself with Odenbach's art, Norman and Rosita Winston Foundation's of hosting his first North American survey has composed a brilliant text for this occa- Richard Rifkind continues to be a steady exhibition, but also for his patience, flexi- sion. The curator and historian Theodora and thoughtful supporter of the New bility, and constant good humor in seeing Vischer has generously allowed us to Museum's programs. Last but not least, this project through to its happy conclusion. reprint her valuable text "It Turned My I would like to thank the artist's New York Although an exhibition of video-based Head," aod we are grateful to be able to dealer, Anton Kern, for his openness to art may not appear at first to be such reprint it here in a new translation. our project; and the artists Janine Antoni a complex unde1·taking, the truth is that a Designer Kathleen Oginski has proven and Nari Ward, who helped make "Three 7 large number of individuals' skills were through her sensitive interpretation of Legged Race," my first New York collabo- needed to realize this project. Sefa Saglam, Odenbach's work that she is wonderfully ration with Marcel such a success. Melanie Franklin, John Hatfield, and Tom intuitive and flexible at the same time, Brumley have worked very hard at the while editor Tim Yohn has worked dili­ museum level on every aspect of the gently with each of the texts to enhance exhibition's technical and logistic develop- their meaning and legibility. ment, and without their expertise and The New Museum is grateful to the motivation the show could not have Consulate General of the Federal Republic taken place. Dennis Szakacs and Marcia of Germany in New York for its assistance Tucke1·, who have been 1·esponsible for with the technical development of this shepherding the project through its public exhibition. This occasion also marks the and administrative stages, were a con­ first curatorial collaboration between the stant source of assurance for everyone New Museum and Goethe House, which are else involved. hosting a twenty-year survey of Odenbach's "This catalogue is dedicated to all people who gave me a good time." -Marcel Odenbach 8 Foreword Marcia Tucker Director Several years ago, I began to hear many shifting visual and sensoI·ial space. In his people in the art world say that it was a installations, pain and pleasure are offered relief that the heyday of the "political" art not as separate dimensions, but as inter­ that had seemed so pervasive in the early woven threads in an extraordinary garment to mid-1990s was at long last over, that it of awareness. was a one-time artistic aberration swept out This is the first American museum by newer work with a more "universal" and exhibition of Odenbach's pieces and I·eflects "aestl1etic" content. Has political content one of the New Museum's enduring con­ truly vanished from significant a1·tmaking? cerns: to bring to audiences the myriad, Or has it, chameleon-like, simply adapted unpredictable, and deeply moving ways to new surroundings by changing form? in which today's artists try to understand One such artist is Marcel Odenbach, the world we all inhabit. Odenbach has whose video installations are formidable produced an important and substantive examples of how to make work that is body of work: it is an exhilarating tonic profoundly engaged with concrete political that reminds us that no matter how over- issues, but which nonetheless are fluid whelming, uncertain, and demanding rather than didactic, poetic rather than contemporary society may be, it is possible 9 st1·ident, visual rather than text-heavy. But to make sense of it without diminishing its these "either/or" polarities are inadequate inconsistent and contradictory nature. to characterize Odenbach's vision, which illuminates issues of cultural identity, totalitarianism, displacement, sexuality, and race through visual analogies that bypass dichotomies altogether. In creating exquisite yet viscerally real experiences through the familiar medium of the mov- ing image, Odenbach breaks new formal ground. In the use of video as both a painterly and a mnemonic device, he resituates the viewer as both participant and witness in an unstable, constantly Installation/Performance view of Der Konsum meiner eigenen Kritik [The Consumption of my own Criticism], 1978 Power Play: Dan Cameron Marcel Odenbach1s Layered Histories For American viewers, even those who consider themselves well exhibition in 1981,4 however, it was clear that Odenbach's editing informed about contemporary European art, this exhibition of techniques, deployment of video monitors as sculptural elements, the work of Marcel Odenbach may come as a surprise. To many, and use of the exhibition/viewing space in direct relation to the the surprise will take the form of a simultaneous recognition video's imagery were groundbreaking innovations for their time. that his work speaks with particular resonance to audiences in In this respect and despite the fact that Odenbach has taken a this country, and that he is practically unknown here. For nearly markedly different route, his artistic evolution is best compared twenty-five years, Odenbach and his practice have played a to that of American artists like GaI·y Hill and Bill Viola, whose unique polemical role in the GeI·man art world, because of his early works were the first thoroughly sculptural engagements determination to render tl1e philosophical and moral vicissitudes with the fledgling video medium .5 In stylistic terms, Odenbach's of being a German artist at the end of the twentieth century. As a current work shares with his earlier work a collagist's dedication result, he has never been associated with a particular generation to mixing footage shot by himself with found material, such as or movement, even though he is roughly the same age as a archival and commercial sources, and/or fragments from movies number of other prominent artists from the Cologne-Dusseldorf by Alfred Hitchcock (these become a prominent feature in his region: Martin Kippenberger, Rosemarie Trockel, Katharina Fritsch, work after the late 1970s). Because of this feature, Odenbach has Gunther Fbrg, Albert Oehlen, Georg Herold, Thomas Struth, and had an important influence, albeit largely indirect and uncredited, Thomas Schutte, among others. Because of this lack of a ready- on many video artists who have emerged in Europe and the U.S.