The pictures in this video installation, which are characteristically smudged, oberlaid and fragmentary, are a witness of the interpenetrating and an incessant transition between the „intimate“ and „general“ in Odenbach´s art. Although his film collages should not be interpreted as mere insights of an uninvolved „chronicler“, the artist’s encyclopédisme (R. Bellour) remains the strongest artistic effect in the context of his continued topicalization of one or more perspectives that are active in them.
Since he began working as an artist, the topic of (neo-)colonialism, racism and „otherness“ has for Marcel Odenbach represented and aspect of the more comprehensive problem of one´s own indentity and the identity of events in general.
The decisive impulses from <st1:place w:st="on">Africa</st1:place> and from his own „ethnological“ interests during his studies of art history, architecture and semiotics became a continuous process of analysis in the second half of the 70s.
His strong interest in „otherness“ needs to be understood in the context of Odenbach´s early and intensive examination of his own position as an outsider (a position which artist and/or homosexuals are „accorded“ in society). His friendship with Mike Sale, the British artist of Jamaican origin, allowed Odenbach to gain closed insights into circles which he previously had no access to and this was, along with the existential experience of German reunification and its consequences, an additional, topical impulse for his cycle of work in the early 90s.
The series which was created between 1989 and 1992, including the video installation „Head over Heels“ („Of Division and Reunion II“) was continued in Odenbach´s „Fire Trilogy“ (1993-94), centering on the events in <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Rostock</st1:place></st1:city> in 1992. Transposing the things that are represented onto an ever more global and „incomprehensible“ level further went hand in hand with the artist´s viewpoint, which only superficially seemed to be getting ever more subjective.
The video installation „Head over Heels“ consists of two videotapes, which are shown on two monitors, and the accompanying Brecht paraphrase, which is fixed to the wall. It’s topic is the problematic relationship between different „races“, in particular between Blacks and Whites, which has in the 90s become more focal to Odenbach´s artistic work than it has been in the past. The usually unreflected relationship towards foreign cultures and the fact that the relevant clichés are adopted and adapted can be seen in teh example of Carnival in Cape Town and Cologne: the differences and what is „typical“ is underlined without granting the „transitional periods“ the least bit of space; the traditions and the economic conditions are
Odenbach does not allow the tow sides to coalesce: the distance separating the two monitors in the room reflects reality. The interpenetrating of the pictures of the respective „representatives“ and their own cultural surroundings (superimposition) shows the setting Brecht´s mocking-sarcastic question („Wouldn’t it be less complicated, if preachers would release the people/nation, and choose another one?“) speaks directly to the addressee – politics which is „inspired“ by prejudices and traditions.
