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In As if Memories Could Deceive Me a piano keyboard symbol of German bourgeois tradition is the metaphorical ground upon which Odenbach devises a dynamic associative discourse on the construction of personal and cultural identity A haunted theater of collective and subjective memory is constructed from archival film and mass media representations Signifiers of German history and cultural heritage Wagnerian opera Hitlers rallies the Nuremberg trials Bavarian folk dancers are orchestrated and conjoined on the screen with male fashion iconography and autobiographical references From ornate 19thcentury Baroque architecture to a contemporary menswear emporium the artist traces an historical trajectory of cultural excess Confronting his bourgeois German past Odenbach achieves a personal history that questions the construction of identity within this cultural context