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  The Scent of the Fading Alpine Rose and      
    other Essences in the Poetic Labyrinth | Annelie Pohlen      
     
       
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Theseus puts an end to man's powerlessness in the labyrinth by using a trick, a reason for the myth to become a metaphor of the classical principle of order and cognition; of a rationality that demonstrates its superiority, even in chaos. All that remains of the mythical image is the fluctuation between promising corridors and unexpected dead-ends, while faith has now been lost in the meaning of the entrance and exit – the distinction which enabled Theseus to gain power over reality using a single thread. Martin Walde keeps winding up the thread, knotting it into ever new constellations. There is no significance in either its beginning or its end, but in its knots and the stretches between them; in continually unfolding projections of realitv somewhere between the banality of standardising definitions and the longing for a sparkling existence amidst the "wealth of differentiation and heterogeneity... It is difficult to communicate this world when our opposite... is not in a position to relish it." (1)

 
The Scent of the Fading Alpine Rose    
   
Enactments    
Worm Complex    
The Invisible Line    
Tie or Untie    
NOFF #1    
NOFF #2    
NOFF #3    
NOFF #4    
Can you give me something?    
The Thin Red Line   follow me to the rightThe deconstruction of rational orders is rooted in Romantic poetry. Its close linking – like Walde's – of poetic and scientific digressions implies the 'logic' of non-linear symbols and words, the revitalisation of images from curiosity cabinets, which energy can be teased from physical matter as no more than an echo or a scent. The rejection of control "so as to distort
nothing" (2), leads both to a stimulating and disturbingly vagabonding investigation into multiple, controversial possibilities for a perception of reality and art beyond known definitions. Thus Walde, using seductive and ironic turns to liberate the 'blue flower' from its ideological exploitation by the 1968 generation (3), orchestrates the superiority of obsession over the banal promises of the everyday consumer world in The Scent of the Fading Alpine Rose. A flashing green light invites the visitors, one by one, into a small pavilion; distributed on the floor are around one hundred small bottles filled with pink-violet liquid. A distant voice tells of the grandfather's obsessive desire for the scent of a fading alpine rose. In order to participate in the long search for fulfilment, the key for each visitor is to find the one bottle among so many filled with the artificially produced scent. It is left open whether the green light flashes invitingly or the red light not only signals the presence of a person in the pavilion, but also warns of potential disappointments. The language of the performance is unfamiliar to the speaker. The language of everyday advertising mutates into an homage to the speechlessness of great visions with the polyphone echo of poetically orchestrated signs, forms and 'things' that the artist has made so that they "learn to walk" (4).
 
Hallucigenia    
Green Gel    
Handmates    
Woobies    
The Tea-Set    
Loosing Control      
Melting Compactor    

(1)follow me to the rightMartin Walde, in an e-mail during the preparaion of this text.

(2)follow me to the rightibid.

(3)follow me to the rightIn opposition to the rigid, even nationalist interpretive paradigms commonly applied by German scholars, "Dye the blue flower red" was a slogan coined in Berlin during the student movement in 1968.

(4)follow me to the rightMartin Walde in conversation with Jens Asthoff in the catalogue: Martin Walde, Städtische Galerie, Nordhorn, 2004, p. 79.

Clips of Slips    
Rolling Worm    
The Rain has a Pleasant Temperature    
   
   
   
   
authors:    
Annelie Pohlen    
   
further auhtors in this text:    
Peter Weiermair    
Stephen J. Gould first page   (continued on next page)follow me to the right next pagelast page