Franz Erhard Walther

Franz Erhard Walther is a pioneer of participatory art. He has allowed us to sense how bodies and movement can form textiles, and how they are inscribed in this sculptural process. He changed the traditional concepts of material and artwork, making action itself into a “work form.” In his work, the book bound with white cotton becomes the work Action Body [Handlungskörper] (1969). With measurements derived from the human body, it is a book that appears tailored for precisely stipulated “choreography” and use. It is designed so that the exhibition visitor can unfold it; the body must then respond to the variable textile sculpture and act within it. The unwritten, open, incomplete book prompts us to discover the sculptural material, the possibility for action, and a new way of considering books.