Fischli and Weiss as DIY

Jörg Markowitsch

09.01.2022

A young Youtuber has presumably unwittingly made a remake of Fischli and Weiss' famous art video "The Way Things Go" (1987), raising interesting questions about the relationship between art, professional craft and DIY.

I have been a fan of Fischli and Weiss since I first saw works by the Swiss artist duo in the late 1980s. I was immediately struck by the playful philosophical wit of their work. It’s not the kind of art you need to study for a long time. If not at first glance, it reveals itself or not, in the second glance.

For example, their installation “The Table” (1992/93), containing seemingly randomly arranged everyday objects on a large table, such as buckets, cleaning agents, brushes, full ashtrays, paint cans, and so on. At first glance I first thought it was a bad joke, upon seeing “The Table” in the old Kunsthalle Wien (the “Krischanitz container”). How could one continue to exhibit ready-mades four generations after Marcel Duchamp by simply dumping the rubbish of one’s own studio on a table? After a tip-off from my more art-savvy companion and a second glance, it became clear: these aren’t “real” objects at all, but meticulously hand-reconstructed and painted objects made of polyurethane. How ingenious is that! What better way to question industrial production methods and consumer society than with such outstanding craftsmanship, attention to detail and artistic sensibility.

Their film “The Way Things Go”, premiered at the Documenta 8 in Kassel, is just as shrewd. It was the first art film that I found as philosophical as exciting, and entertaining. Even though it remains to be discovered whether it appeals primarily to the philosopher, the tinkerer or the child in me.

The short film shows a literal domino effect, with the individual tiles composed of a string of improvised-looking devices made of boards, ladders, car tyres, plastic bottles, fireworks, balloons and the like. The camera then follows the chain reaction in which different physical and chemical principles are used to move the next tile: it falls, rolls, bursts, swings, foams, burns, and smokes. Things take their course and one can’t help to ponder while watching, “Is it going to work?” and reflect on this, “Can life be summed up that way?”

Last year, the young Youtuber Creezy posted a simpler but equally entertaining video that immediately made me think of Fischli and Weiss. From various objects that might have accumulated in any household with a garden, he built a variant of a Rube Goldberg machine, filmed in motion in one take — just like Fischli and Weiss. Compared to the contemplative original, however, indicators of today become obvious: the video is shorter, more dynamic, limited in physical options, and just for clicks (over 4 million). There was no time for reflection and it did not initiate any either. And yet: it is a culmination of a DIY culture and an interesting antithesis to contemporary art.

Both works required outstanding creativity, meticulous craftsmanship as well as professionalism. At the same time, in their denial of any practical use, indeed complicating the task, they became a provocation to the demands that both modern technology and traditional craftsmanship place on their instrumentality. As Heidegger would say both cases deal with “techne”, that is, with craftsmanship and skill as well as with high art and the fine arts: “The techne belongs to bringing-forth, to poiesis. It is something poietic.” (Heidegger, 1962, p. 11). It goes on to say: “The word techne goes […] together with the word episteme. Both words are names for cognition in the broadest sense. They mean the knowing of something, the understanding of something.” (ibid.) In the case of Creezy, is it now also art or simply a gimmick?

Referenzen:
Heidegger, Martin (1991). Die Technik und die Kehre: Günther Neske Pfullingen.
Goldmann, R. (2006). Peter Fischli David Weiss. Ausflüge, Arbeiten, Ausstellungen. Ein offener Index. Köln: Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König.