MOMENTS IN FLIGHT

He’s a wanderer between times. And. A traveler on the trail of his archaic ancestors ... Again and again, Wilhelm Holderied describes himself as someone who needs the constant friction between earthen heaviness and the heights of flight. Someone whose pictures and sculptures evoke the dream of flying and who simultaneously inscribes these pictures within his mythic Earthsign ...

Eva Karcher

       Flying, again and again. Gazing in profound wonderment. Usually long hauls, remote destinations, foreign places, afloat in an intermediate realm. Dilated time and boredom and acute watchfulness. A necklace of moments on a strand of time in this seemingly endless space, repeatedly losing oneself in these varied halls of space between Earth and sky. The simultaneity of melancholy and visions of unrestrained creative ideas. Perhaps intermediate worlds like Paul Klee painted.

       Flying, I’m subjected to a lasting dichotomy. One part is the insatiable yearning to float between the clouds forever. The other is the impatient yearning for the solid ground of Earth.

       The view by day - apparently endless planes and landscapes, quilts and carpets of meadows and fields. Elongated mountain chains, folded Earth, rich and dark, dramatic and beautiful with its shadowy valleys. Mirror-smooth lakes and glimmering rivers send their reflections to the people flying above. Coasts and seas glide slowly past. Between endless cloud plateaus, past cloud mountains that seem almost within reach, we move with a speed that we cannot feel through the lower regions of Earth’s airy border. Shortened, wonderful sunrises, sunsets, soft transitions of colored light, of life-giving warmth. In innocent awe of creation’s beauties. And yet, isn’t the Earth gazing upwards with eyes that we cannot see? Reminding us who float up there just how fragile is the balance, the space through which we move! Above the paved planes of the big cities, gray domes of smog insult the view and cannot hide the destruction.

       By night. The dark screen of infinity and the starry space above. Below, the unseen Earth - the depths - incomprehensible abysses and strewn nests of light from cities and villages, chains of light in streets, large and small, fraught with pulsing life.

       How many ephemeral seeds of thought will be sown in the space of flight, will blossom or be lost there? Now and then a tiny spark returns and gleams again. Here, between yearning and boredom, watchfulness and creative lust, the idea for an Earthsign was born, a sign that would go a step beyond the natural signs already on the Earth. To leave a human - an astronomical - trace for flying people. Arrogance? Surely. It would take nearly divine qualities to make this idea into a reality.

       1986. On a flight from Mexico City to Oaxaca, the first sprout, a fleet-ing thought. Why not push, shift, form this ancient folded highland into a sign, into embossed lines of light and shadow? This immoderacy engendered the creative arc, the idea of a leaving an art-sign at the new airport being built in Munich. A reminder, a warning, a symbol on the Earth to be seen from the sky.

       Ever since my first attempts to paint, I’ve always used signs and abbreviations. The points of orientation were head-signs, shadow-signs, cross-signs. For many years, I worked on this theme in picture-boxes. The materials were sand and earth, the trash of civilization, but changed by merry colors.

      My first idea for Erding Marsh was a form with a mystic aura because the direction of the quest was characterized by the search for a sign that would represent the still-present mystery of this marshy terrain.

       During this search for forms, head-shaped symbols emerged from the early picture-boxes, leapt the gap, prompted me to form with my hands a sand-sign of furrows on a Pacific beach. Week after week, playing, forming walls of light and shadow. With increasingly clarity, a mystical masked being began to appear. Each day, the setting sun laid shadows across it. Each night, the rhythmic breath of the ocean washed away the day’s attempts. Each morning, a new beginning. The last day, a few photos of this idea for an Earthsign made of furrows and walls.

       ”What do you think of the idea of suggesting an Earthsign for the new airport being built near Munich?” Uncertain, I showed my sand-photos to architect Heinz Nonnenbroich. His answer pointed the way: ”Keep at it.”

       I soon realized that it’s impossible to simply transfer a fleeting idea from a Pacific beach to the terrain of Erding Marsh. The furrows had

become nearly twenty meters tall, the sign’s length had increased to

nearly two kilometers.

       Hesitantly, I reworked the Pacific sand-sign and finally laid this figure flat, along the axis of the flight corridor leading to Munich’s new airport. The sign was to be built from stones from the nearby Isar River.

A magical, mythical symbol for Erding Marsh.

       The Earthsign, which Wolfgang Längsfeld describes as ERDING’S MARSH SPIRIT, has a smiling side and a sad side. It can be recognized as a mask-like, cipher-like head from both sides. It holds a staff that points towards the airport. A kind of apotropaius, a charm to ward off harm.