The Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick

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"In his video installation/performance “The Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick,” Marcel Odenbach faced the video monitors as if he were a goalie deciding where the penalty kicker will kick the ball. Three monitors defined the space of a soccer field — two serving as goalposts, the third facing the “goalie”/performer as the action of the game. On top of this “literal” structure, video served as cultural transmission: one monitor alternated the red image of political speeches and American westerns accompanied by a repetitive musical scale, the other a blue meditative and illusory image accompanied by softer music such as Stevie Wonder. Once again, Odenbach did not confront the video monitors specifically as commercial media, but rather as objects of cultural weight. He occupied a more generalized existential position — acted upon as a goalie, acted upon culturally and socially. His seemed the most personal of the performances. At first, the performer attentively responded to the penalty kicks, throwing himself on the ground, and then was a helpless victim of its assaults, as if the kicks were to his body. Rather than subject himself to media imposition or simply react to the penalty kick, the performer must make a choice. Within the physical space of the performance, this became a symbolic and object choice of the blue monitor by Odenbach as he ended the performance by moving his slumped body in front of it. But, as in Odenbach’s To fall between two chairs, the choice is what has to be faced, not necessarily escaped."
(Source: Wulf Herzogenrath & Stephan Von Wiese, "German Video and Performance", A Space, Toronto, 1980, p.50.)

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