Martin Walde | The Scent of the Fading Alpine Rose and other Essences in the Poetic Labyrinth




	The Scent of the Fading Alpine Rose... \| Annelie Pohlen

	...continued from page 4

terms:	Scents intoxicatc us, invade our body with a pleasant notion that we may lose the control over facts that we had built up through reasoning. Loosing Control is both a heads-up and a call to move past the warning lamp and so pay more attention to the "subconscious manifestation of an active being", that is "the apparently obsessive action". It is followed by a quotation from Novalis: "Where are we headed? Homeward, ever homeward. (9)
The Scent of the Fading Alpine Rose
The Scent of the Fading Alpine Rose
Enactments
Worm Complex
The Invisible Line	Referring to Max Ernst's "affinity for romantic philosophy of nature", Werner Spieß quoted the latter's favourite poet Novalis, the inventor of the 'blue flower': "Anything arbitrary, any coincidence or individual can become a world organ for us. A face, a star, a region, an ancient tree, etc. can write history within ourselves. This is the great realism of the fetishism." (10) Walde's "inventions" go further than Max Ernst. His tales wandering in the nonconformist and the casual, are shifting the borders between fairy-tales, myths, philosophy of natuu and evolutionary theory. Developments found in nature subtly move into a collective universe made up of any conceivable perception and projection.
Tie or Untie
NOFF #1
NOFF #2
NOFF #3
NOFF #4
Can you give me something?
The Thin Red Line
Hallucigenia	According to the logics of a civilisation overwhelmed by progress, the series of NOFFs (Nature's Own Flexible Facsimiles), which has been growing since 1987, needs a top cunningly and sophisticated machine, not only to copy nature in a perfect way, but ultimately to replace it. Irons of all things – legendary in the history of Surrealism – are what help the visitor to transform common packaging string made of green acrylic into a growing heap of curls, linear structures of which flood the exhibition space as "copies true to life".
Green Gel
Handmates
Woobies
The Tea-Set
Loosing Control
Melting Compactor	It all begins with the story of the invention of a refuse chute, which contributes to the uncomplicated way to make all the NOFFs dispappear that man has been busy producing since his expulsion from paradise. The Melting Compactor, or perhaps the self-consuming candle, could fulfil this function in the cycle of production and destruction, if rationality succeeded in giving imagination full reign when determining the character of the NOFFs.	(9)Harald Uhr in the catalogue: Transmitter, Bonner Kunstverein, 1999, p. 15ff. (10)FAZ, 5.9.2005, Werner Spieß, "Nur das Intervall einer hellen Nacht", p.37.
Clips of Slips
Rolling Worm
The Rain has a Pleasant Temperature
The Rain has a Pleasant Temperature
	On a "high" – and only there – the scent of the fading Alpine rose is a glimpse at fulfilment. The Alpine rose prospers best at mountainous altitudes of 1400 to 2500 metres, which explains why attempts at reproducing the flower for hobby gardeners failed. At such heights, man's control over his own body decreases considerably. It is known that these plants produce their most overwhelming scent when wilting and dying. Intoxication is related to sleep (of the rational); it brings forth hybrid existences, closely tracked by artists and scientists alike, in their search for the origins of nature and those forms in which the collective memory has stored vague yet intense know ledge of realities. Viewed in daylight – or at the level of daily life – ...(continued on next page)


authors:
Annelie Pohlen

further auhtors in this text:
Peter Weiermair
Stephen J. Gould