Peter Fischli and David Weiss: In A Restless World
at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
(through sept 9th)

I recently went to the SFMoMa to catch the work of Swiss artists Peter
Fischli and David Weiss. The installation took up three large rooms on
the fourth floor. With the Fifth floor closed for installation and the
2nd floor partially closed, there were a lot of people milling around
the fourth floor galleries. There was a good mood and people seemed
relaxed and interested in what was on display.

The show consisted of three large rooms with sculpture, video and viedo
installations. The text from the show's press release explains:

"Working in the media of sculpture, film, photography and installation
art, Fischli and Weiss transform everyday objects into ironic
manipulations, infusing them with new life and importance. Highlighting
humorous and emotional elements in their work, the artists
simultaneously amuse and unnerve their audiences. Through their work,
the artists explore the relationships of seemingly opposing elements-
work and play, order and chaos, mundane and sublime - and draw the
viewer into the realm of opposites as he or she may be both fascinated
and disquieted by what's on display."

How this played out in the exhibit was particularly interesting in
watching the audience's reaction to the video projection of their 1987
work "Der Lauf der Ding" (The Way Things Go). Although the video was 10
years old, it was recieved as fresh and contemporary. The video showed
an elaborate set-up of old tires, bottles, ladders, and soap-suds that
are set in motion like falling dominoes or a Rube Goldberg drawing come
to life. The audience really cheered on the rolling tire and really
hoped for the quirky contraptions to work. When they did, and the bottle
tipped-over the ball which knocked over the bucket which moved the
ladder which tipped the plank which spanked the tire etc. the audience
reacted with the sense of triumph for the unlikely over-achiever. The
video was shot to crop the objects in a tight framing as to always keep
the current action in view but not to show what was coming next, except
for when, in certain shots, the video was reframed to show the
destination of the rolling bottle or pouring soap-suds etc. This
reframing heightened our hopes for the destination to be reached.

"Der Lauf der Ding" was sucessful in using narrative to achieve a sense
of progress, conflict, and hope. Watching the audience identify with
the objects in The Way Things Go seemed similar to the process of
indentification at work Todd Haynes' Superstar, a film about the Karen
Carpender story told with Barbie dolls. In both works you find yourself
cheering for ridiculous subjects.

The sense of hope was interesting to me. The physical methods used in
the video relied on chaos, but at the same time were resonably grounded
in basic science-classroom experiments (weight, balance, momentum and
chemical reactions). Regardless of which forces were in control, you
were still hoping that the bucket would knock over the ladder and that
the narrative would continue. It was delightful when it did and went on
longer than you had resonably hoped.

Also on display was a new version of their 1995 Vience Biannale video
installation. It consisted of ten monitors on stands arranged around the
room. Playing on the monitors were 80 hours of video ranging in subject
from sanitation workers to a Swiss chef to a motorcross race. The
videos had a cool feel to them, perfectly at home playing away as people
walked in and out, stopping for a while and wandering around.

+ + +

Peter Fischli and David Weiss: In A Restless World also contained some
of their eariler work, like "Sausage Series" (1979) and "Suddenly This
Overview" (1981). Additional works shown were "Question Pot" (1984) and
"Quiet Afternoon" (1984-5), as well as "The Green Light" (1990) and
"Canal Video" (1992).