Martin Walde

After his installation “Timeline 201.6” (2008/2016) was shown in the collection exhibition of the Museum Haus Konstruktiv “Um die Ecke denken” [Thinking Outside the Box], the Austrian artist Martin Walde (born 1957 in Innsbruck, Austria) was asked to create a special artist’s edition for the members and sponsors of the museum. In his intervention in the exhibition, calendar pages dated in the future, with texts and drawings on them, fluttered down from the ceiling and lay on the floor. Using this as a basis, his artist’s edition consists of 206 unique calendar pages dating from the year 2071.
Martin Walde’s interactive installations almost always involve exhibition visitors: “I am interested in leaving the development of something open. This keeps me receptive to possibilities that develop from someone else reacting to my work. […] I therefore see myself more and more as a participant, and not as someone who is in full control.” For his intervention in the Museum Haus Konstruktiv, the artist encouraged visitors to interact with his work. The pages of paper that had fallen to the floor were not meant to simply lay there, but to be arranged by visitors in chronological order, or taken home.
The hand-drawn calendar pages in the artist’s edition display a variety of seemingly unconnected notes and/or drawings of events from the year 2071. Some dates are missing, while others appear twice. Walde regards the pages as representing a collection of ideas for writing a script about a person’s life. As visual fragments, pointing to the continuous passing of time, they encourage us to reflect on our own existence and mortality.

Sabine Schaschl