Marcel Odenbach / Mike Sale "Keep in View"

Marcel Odenbach's video installation Keep in View was brought into conjunction with the photomontage Nigga' Luvva' by the young English artist Mike Sale. Keep in View consisted of two video projections, opposite which there stood two video monitors. The projections were separated by a wall which protruded into the room to a point just in front of the monitors. The monitors stood with their rear towards the entrance of the space and their front towards the projections. The narrative, a complex collage of old and recent news images, followed a diagonal sequence, from the right-hand projector back to the left-hand monitor. The right-hand monitor and the left-hand projector showed long unedited shots, serving as foreground and background. The arrangement at De Appel allowed the spectator to take a distance and watch both projections at the same time, without the dividing wall getting in the way. But stepping back into either of the two partitioned spaces entailed losing sight of one of the projections. Because of the diagonal relationship of the images, this movement was unavoidable. The right-hand monitor showed a slow-motion recording of the changing expression, only just perceptible, on the face of a white man. Looming large opposite him, we saw an uninterrupted journey into the depths of a tunnel, ever deeper. Through this image flash scenes from marching masses, masses being transported, crosses pulled down, The Wall pulled down and windows of refugee hostels smashed. Through all this, we heard music, powerfully deep and majestic: profound suffering against a backdrop of ineffable clarity, Händel's Messiah and Beethoven's Symphony No.7 A Major. The projection in the other space showed a hand-held camera shot following the mirrored wall of the Grüne Gewö1be in Dresden - the Wunderkammer of August der Starke, collector of exotic and wonderful materials from all corners of the earth. Opposite this stood a monitor. A young black man with his back to the camera plucked at his rasta locks. He watched a sequence of changing images - Martin Luther King, anti-discrimination marches, South African townships, a parading army of black men, war, etcetera. The soundtrack was rap, at the end of which a voice asked: "I'm a nigger, he's a nigger, she's a nigger, we's a nigger, would y ou like to be a nigger too?". This last line lays a link to the fifth, extraneous element, the photomontage by Mike Sale. It was an enlargement of a well-known, heavily charged photograph: Leni Riefenstahl in tropical gear leading a naked Masai man by the hand along a rock-strewn path. At the top left, the artist had mounted the word NIGGA' and at the bottom right the word LUVVA'. (Edited version of Fred Wagemans’ catalogue text)

Catalogue: Marcel Odenbach. Keep in view, De Appel & Edition Cantz, Stuttgart 1993.. Text: Saskia Bos, Fred Wagemans. In Dutch & English. 16 Pages: 7 f.c. 24.5 x 24.5 cm. Softcover. ISBN 3 89322 570 6. In cassette with Marcel Odenbach, 1993. Text: Andreas Beyer, Ulrich Bischoff. In German & English. Bio- & bibliography included. 96 Pages: 37 f.c., 24 b.w., 24.5 x 24.5 cm. Softcover. ISBN 3 893 22 570 6. € 20,-