Marcel Odenbach "Auf Schritt und Tritt"

In the organizer's words:

The two-channel video installation "Auf Schritt und Tritt" was created during an extended stay by Marcel Odenbach in New York in the mid-1990s. It shows how intensively he dealt with racism in the USA, including within the gay scene.

For the video recording, he had a camera built that filmed his steps from above, while a microphone built into the sole of his shoe picked up the sounds of walking and the surroundings. Equipped in this way, he crossed the historic 125th Street in Harlem, a center of African-American culture and at the same time an important site of the civil rights movements.

In Odenbach's typical visual language, the images are overlaid with other motifs from Harlem, such as children playing or passers-by on the street, as well as archival footage of street protests, and combined with a blackfacing scene from Alfred Hitchcock's film The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956).

Now, for the first time, the work is being expanded by a newly produced artistic audio description by the London collective SoundScribe. Their descriptions in German spoken language make historical and social tensions audible, irritate dominant viewing and listening habits and add a critical, contemporary level of reflection to the work.

At every turn
Video, 25.4.2026, 20:30-22:30
Filmwerkstatt Düsseldorf (Birkenstr. 47, 40233 Düsseldorf)

The screening is part of the exhibition Circulating Copies of the IMAI Foundation. All further information can be found on our website.