Franz Erhard Walther’s 1. Werksatz (First Work Set), created between 1963 and 1969, comprises fifty-eight objects. Each of the individual, numbered pieces in the work – made from cotton fabrics, foam or wooden elements and produced by Walther’s then wife, Johanna – exists in two states of matter: a storage or resting state and an activated state. Consequently, they can either be shown folded up or packaged or be activated by actors who use them to perform certain actions, as specified by the material and title. For example, piece Nr. 44, entitled Strecke Gewicht Form (Distance Weight Form), consists of a rectangular rucksack filled with several identical wooden panels that can be removed and laid out at will.

With his First Work Set, Walther created a kind of hybrid form somewhere between object and process, object and action, for he broke away from the classical notion of a work as fixed and unchanging throughout eternity, yet – unlike some of his contemporaries – he did not completely abandon the object-bound concept of the work. Viewers, tasked with executing the work, became the focus of attention and, chiming with the nineteen-sixties democratic/political awakening, were promoted to the status of participating protagonists. However, since the objects also acknowledge storage as an equivalent state alongside activation, the work also exists without life being breathed into it in this way.