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Marcel Odenbach «When the Wall approaches the Table» | Wenn die Wand an den Tisch rückt
Marcel Odenbach, «When the Wall approaches the Table», 1990
Wenn die Wand an den Tisch rückt | Photograph: Bernhard Schmitt | © ;
 


 Marcel Odenbach
«When the Wall approaches the Table»

«To the right and left of the entrance, in a loosely defined interior, monitors stand on pedestals. On the screens of both we see the same face–that of a young, East German soldier from the National Peoples‘ Army. [...] Blended into this are scenes from the history of the former German Democratic Republic. These begin with footage of the Uprising of 17 June 1953, but this fades when the soldier moves his weapon. [...] We are then shown excerpts from the well-known television coverage of the Fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 and of the events that followed. [...]
Odenbach‘s installation works with several temporal dimensions: the time of the political present that, through gradual change, is transformed into the past, but a past that continues to affect our lives; the time of German history, here recorded and to some degree assessed in the video images; and, finally, the video-specific time of the artistic medium itself.»

(source: Frauke Syamken in: Heinrich Klotz (ed.), Contemporary Art, exhib. cat., Museum for Contemporary Art/Center of Art and Media, Karlsruhe, 1997, p. 194f.)