Fischl, Petert and David Weiss
Swiss, 1952- / 1946-2012
Der Lauf der Dinge (The Way Things Go), 1987
16mm film transferred to DVD
Duration: 30"
Courtesy Icarus Films
COMMENTS
In preparation for this film, Fischli and Weiss worked for a full year to perfect a series of chain reactions in which objects would topple, burst, burn, and smoke, shifting kinetic energy from one to the next. This film originated in a series of photographs, called Equilibres, that the duo created in 1984 and 1987, which take precariously balanced industrial objects as their subjects. The camera minimizes differences in scale—for example, between a barrel and a balloon—and the objects take the place of human actors, who are nowhere to be found.
The Way Things Go builds on modern art's investigation of the space between high art and the everyday. The film was shot in a stark warehouse, and automobile tires, garbage bags, and plastic water jugs take center stage, rolling, twisting, and exploding in what seems to be an unbroken, thirty-minute sequence of events. The film is an absurdist feat; Fischli and Weiss's devotion to detritus injects a burst of humor into the high-minded seriousness of the art world.
- MoMA Highlights since 1980, New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2007, p. 71
SBMA CURATORIAL LABELS
BORN 1952, ZURICH; BORN 1946, ZURICH
LIVES AND WORKS IN ZURICH; DIED 2012, ZURICH
For decades Peter Fischli and David Weiss collaborated in a variety of mediums, often addressing everyday experience in extraordinary ways. Their best known work, Der Lauf der Dinge (The Way Things Go), is an enchanting orchestration of chain reactions. The “things” that the artists arranged to react in elaborate succession include mostly mundane objects, such as wood planks, tires, kettles, and chairs. While the objects contain little value apart from their functional use in everyday life, they become fodder for the artists’ concentrated labor and obsessive experimentation. Their manipulation into a seemingly self-perpetuating assembly line creates a fascinating study of time, narrative, and material culture. Imbued with both creative and destructive capabilities, the objects seem to move through space entirely on their own, acquiring anthropomorphic qualities. The film thus suggests a posthuman world—a future in which all of our discarded stuff absurdly reacts without purpose.
Labour and Wait, 2013