Martin Walde | Molecules and Models






	Molecules and Models \| Rainer Metzger

	Comments on Martin Walde's Waterpoint

terms:	Whenever the art business experiences problems with its social acceptability, it recalls the word interactivity. The new media and the old motifs that couch them are then schooled in sociality, joint participation and the controlling role they adopt whenever capitalist functioning proves all too easy Being interactive means being active, and who wants to be left out? And even if our contemporaries fail to provide active assistance, curators are employed to hold them back by shouting "do it", or attract them with a "you can do it, because vou want it".
Waterpoint
Blue Dolphin
Frogs
Concoctions


	In fact, all of these manipulations are not necessary at all. The art world has harnessed the magic of interactivity. Knowing all along that no one can get around it, it is utilised in the art world in the most open and every day manner. Rarely anyone when coming across this bubble foil wrapped around these canvasses, alubond panels, installations, on their global journey, can resist the urge of squeezing, teasing and squashing the bubbles till they pop. By introducing bubble wrap an own kind of oxyhydrogenic reaction came into being. The pressure from ones fingers serv ing as the trigger, nature unveils one of its small secrets, when formerly trapped air finally escapes, l'or quite some time, contemporary art appears highly suitable for children, and that starts with the packages.








	Martin Walde's Waterpoint utilises another one of these modern miracles and deliberately stages and presents something that always happens anyway. Polystyrene is the kind of stuff that people immediately press and poke in, roll it into little balls that start floating about to cover their surrounding's – which latter are not one's own in the gallery space, thank goodness – with white nothingness. The wrap portions out bubbles, so does polystyrene with foam. Both travel globally. Could this be what Peter Sloterdijk reflected on in his triad of spheres: bubbles, globes, foams?






	Waterpoint is quite literally a "wall" work, for polystyrene comes in such a handy brick format that it can be made easily stacked into a barrier or wall on which people can work off their emotions. In Walde's case, work means letting the fingers do their own thing uninhibitedly at removing from the airy mixture masses of tiny elementary forms. They roll about on the floor, where they simply are; evidence of themselves and an often trance-like activity of dislodging them. Again, something escaped what was previously part of a solid whole. How ever, in contrast to the air that escaped from the bubbles, these material balls can be recaptured; Martin Waide provides plastic cups for the purpose; these can be taken from a cup dispenser that is also a drinking water reservoir. Waterpoint is the name of the







authors:
Rainer Metzger	company that provides the fresh water and the cups alike.	(continued >>>)