Martin Walde | Leaving something open to evolution...


		Leaving something open to evolution... \| Jens Asthoff

		...continued from page 1

terms:		Would they become a nuisance to visitors and a danger to the other artworks? What kind of work is this at all, which through its own nature – the creeping, munching larvae - is held in permanent re-configuration and de-formation? Anyone encountering this work by Martin Walde and finding thoughts like these creep up on him or her is already involved, no matter whether it evokes resistance, disgust, worry, detached interest, childlike fascination and merriment, or even malicious joy. The work entangles viewers in a subtle and thereby very real game about setting aesthetic, institutional, and ultimately also individual boundaries. Walde's work is all about interaction between work and viewer, and in this sense "Wormcomplex was also interesting because of the different ways the visitors and the exhibition management intervened." (1) As always the artist didn't set any rules for the dealing with his work. Just by its formal structure the work pushed certain boundaries of conventional institutional practices or ways of perception: "A problem arose because I had insisted that the mealworms should have unlimited territory", says Walde. "The worms were supposed to be able to migrate freely. But as they would turn into flying beetles after a certain time, and no one would agree on how voracious they could become, the exhibition managers decided to wholly replace the flour and the worms every week." (2)
Wormcomplex	p.1, 2, 5
Tie or Untie	p.2, 5–7
The Key Spirit	p.2
Woobies	p.2
NOFF#1#2#3#4	p. 2, 6, 7
Handmates	p.4, 7
Jelly Soap	p.4
Clips of Slips	p.4, 6
Der Regen hat eine angenehme Temperatur
Der Regen hat eine angenehme Temperatur	p.4
Woobie #2	p.5
NOFF #4	p.5, 6–8
Enactments	p.6
Loosing Control	p.6
The Thin Red Line	p.6, 8
Can you give me something?	p.6	Such a decision was neither planned in Wormcomplex nor was it excluded; it merely represented a possible solution to one of the work's central and somewhat anarchistic features, and in documenla X it became a component of the work. In another exhibition, of course, it could be different but none of the chosen ways is necessarily better or worse. Whatever new situation, the solution could be yet another one. It engages and at the same time exposes a specific participatory moment. This definitely works on several levels simultaneously. Wormcomplex, for example, produced another surprising communicative effect by which a playful alliance was created between visitors and the population of creatures. "During the day visitors left their prints in the flour", describes Walde the form of boundary transgression many viewers apparently were provoked to by his work. "They wrote and drew in the meal with their fingers, left footprints and eve posed for souvenir photos in the circle of the green light. At night the worms ploughed their way through the flour and repaired the surface, so that all traces [...] had disappeared by morning." (3) This is just a further example of an ongoing motif in Walde's work: an equilibrium mutually created between dissolution and self-preservation of form. In a different manner this applies equally to works such as Tie or Untie (1999), The Key Spirit (1997), the various versions of the
The Tea Set	p.8



			(1)Martin Walde, Wormcomplex, in: Martin Walde (cat.), Nordhorn, 2004, p. 33. (2)Ibid. (3)Ibid.









authors:
Jens Asthoff		Woobies (1991 – 2002), or variants of NOFF (#1 #2 #3 #4), just to mention a few.