#malmberg

Flicking through the pages of a diary compiled years before the attack, Mark Hogancamp pauses to note the evidence tag attached to one of his drawings. Interspersed between emotional and frank diary entries, often written whilst drunk, are the ex-carpenter's intricate (if dark and morbid) works of art, later used as comparative evidence of his brain damage at the trial of his attackers; now unable to even hold a pen steady in his right hand, the inference of lost talent is clear. However, what Malmberg's 'Marwencol' in fact reveals is a victim whose inner-most artistry rewired itself in the form of a miraculous and unique hobby, photographing the quotidian existence of a model World War II town built entirely in his backyard.

Though the provocation for his attack is a spoiler best left unmentioned, it is enough to say that Hogancamp did not deserve or warrant the beating he received. Comatose for nine days, the ex-navyman awoke to little recollection of his past, the blows to his head permanently affecting his memory. With the therapy he was eligible for being short-lived, the job of restoring Hogancamp to his former ways remained incomplete, perhaps impossible. Unable to afford to pay for private therapy, and socially reclusive in the wake of the attack, Hogancamp's still-vivacious imagination withdrew the sense of adventure from his former life and fashioned it into 'Marwencol', a setting entirely safe from the world beyond his door that had caused him such anguish.

As Hogancamp narrates the adventures created with his camera and delicate models, there is a growing uneasiness as the events and characters in Marwencol increasingly mesh with issues in Hogancamp's life. As we learn many of his characters are based on real-life acquaintances, including his Marwencol 'wife' (a real-life neighbour, married to someone else), there is a sense in which the camera is exploiting Hogancamp's condition, the audience perhaps learning more about Hogancamp and his feelings than he believes himself to be revealing. When the New York art world picks up the story and invites the artist to showcase his work in Greenwich Village, Hogancamp is forced to assess whether his work is still a therapeutic means of avoiding the world at large, or the very bridge to allow him to reconnect.

Powerful stuff.