Peter Fischli (born 8 June 1952) and David Weiss (21 June 1946 – 27 April 2012), often shortened to Fischli/Weiss, were a Swiss artist duo that collaborated since 1979. Their best-known work is the film '' Der Lauf der Dinge'' (''The Way Things Go'', 1987), described by ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...

'' as being "post apocalyptic", as it concerned chain reactions and the ways in which objects flew, crashed and exploded across the studio in which it was shot. Fischli lives and works in Zurich; Weiss died on 27 April 2012.

Education and early career

Peter Fischli (born 8 June 1952) was born in Zurich. David Weiss (21 June 1946 – 27 April 2012) grew up as the son of a parish priest and a teacher. After discovering a passion for jazz at the age of 16, he enrolled in a foundation course at the

Kunstgewerbeschule A Kunstgewerbeschule (English: ''School of Arts and Crafts'' or S''chool of Applied Arts'') was a type of vocational arts school that existed in German-speaking countries from the mid-19th century. The term Werkkunstschule was also used for the ...

, Zurich, where in his first year of study he befriended fellow artist

Urs Lüthi Urs Lüthi (born 10 September 1947 in Kriens) is a Swiss conceptual artist who attended the School of Applied Arts in Zürich. Noted for using his body and alter ego as the subject of his artworks, he has worked in photography, sculpture, perfor ...

. Having rejected careers as a decorator, a graphic designer and a photographer, Weiss soon came to view a career as an artist as a realistic prospect.

Hans-Ulrich Obrist Hans Ulrich Obrist (born 1968) is a Swiss art curator, critic, and art historian. He is artistic director at the Serpentine Galleries, London. Obrist is the author of ''The Interview Project'', an extensive ongoing project of interviews. He is ...

(30 April 2012)
David Weiss obituary
''

''. He studied at the Kunstgewerbeschule, Zurich (1963–64), and the Kunstgewerbeschule, Basel (1964–65); he subsequently worked as a sculptor with Alfred Gruber (Basel) and

Jacqueline Stieger Jacqueline A. N. Stieger (born 1936) is a British artist and sculptor who primarily works in cast metal, creating jewellery and medals as well as larger sculptures. She has executed architectural commissions for churches and chapels in the UK, Fran ...

(England). In 1967, he worked at the

Expo 67 The 1967 International and Universal Exposition, commonly known as Expo 67, was a general exhibition from April 28 to October 29, 1967. It was a category one world's fair held in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. It is considered to be one of the most s ...

in Montreal, before travelling to New York, where he got to know the important

minimalist In visual arts, music, and other media, minimalism is an art movement that began in the post-war era in western art. The movement is often interpreted as a reaction to abstract expressionism and modernism; it anticipated contemporary post-mi ...

art of the time. Between 1970 and 1979 he published books in collaboration with Lüthi. For most of 1975–78, he spent a great deal of time drawing in black ink, and had exhibitions at galleries in Zurich, Amsterdam, Cologne, and Rotterdam. Fischli and Weiss met in 1978 and subsequently formed a short-lived rock band, Migros.

Roberta Smith Roberta Smith (born 1948) is co-chief art critic of ''The New York Times'' and a lecturer on contemporary art. She is the first woman to hold that position at the Times. Education and early life Born in 1948 in New York City and raised in Lawre ...

(6 May 2012)
David Weiss, Artist on Team Celebrating the Banal, Dies at 65
''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...

''. Their first collaborative venture was a series of ten colour photographs, ''Wurstserie'' ("sausage series", 1979), depicting small scenes constructed with various types of meat and sausage and everyday objects, with titles such as "At the North Pole" and "The Caveman".

Works

Art critics often see parallels to

Marcel Duchamp Henri-Robert-Marcel Duchamp (, ; ; 28 July 1887 – 2 October 1968) was a French painter, sculptor, chess player, and writer whose work is associated with Cubism, Dada, Futurism and conceptual art. He is commonly regarded, along with Pablo Pica ...

Dieter Roth Dieter Roth (April 21, 1930 – June 5, 1998) was a Swiss artist who gained recognition for his diverse body of work, which included artist's books, editioned prints, sculpture, and creations from found materials, including rotting foodstuffs. ...

Jean Tinguely Jean Tinguely (22 May 1925 – 30 August 1991) was a Swiss sculptor best known for his kinetic art sculptural machines (known officially as Métamatics) that extended the Dada tradition into the later part of the 20th century.Chilvers, Ian; Gl ...

in Fischli and Weiss' parody bearing work. ''Wurstserie'' (1979) was Fischli and Weiss' first collaborative project, setting the tone for their future work. In the series, ordinary sausages and slices of sausages became the protagonists of scenarios, alluding to situations such as cars in a traffic accident in an urban setting, layers of carpets and other situations. By the end of the 1980s, the duo had expanded their repertoire to embrace an iconography of the incidental, creating deadpan photographs of kitsch tourist attractions and airports around the world. For their contribution to the 1995

Venice Biennale The Venice Biennale ( ; ) is an international cultural exhibition hosted annually in Venice, Italy. There are two main components of the festival, known as the Art Biennale () and the Venice Biennale of Architecture, Architecture Biennale (), ...

, at which they represented Switzerland, Fischli and Weiss exhibited 96 hours of video on 12 monitors that documented what they called "concentrated daydreaming"—real-time glimpses into daily life in Zurich: a mountain sunrise, a restaurant chef in his kitchen, sanitation workers, a bicycle race, and so on. For the

Skulptur Projekte Münster Skulptur Projekte Münster (Sculpture Projects Münster) is an exhibition of sculptures in public places in the city of Münster (Germany). Held every ten years since 1977, the exhibition shows works of invited international artists for free in d ...

(1997), Fischli and Weiss planted a flower and vegetable garden conceived with an ecological point of view and documented its periodic growth through photographs.

''Suddenly This Overview''

''Suddenly this Overview'' (1981) is a collection of unfired clay sculptures imaginatively recreating various events in human history.''Walls, Corners, Tubes'', 10 October – 10 November 2012,

Sprüth Magers Sprüth Magers is a commercial art gallery owned by Monika Sprüth and Philomene Magers, with spaces in London, Berlin, Los Angeles, and New York, and offices in Cologne, Hong Kong, and Seoul. The gallery represents over sixty artists and estat ...

, London. The figures range from those rendered in meticulous detail, to coarse, sketch-like pieces. As is implied by "The World We Live In" – the title originally envisaged for the work – this panorama of interwoven happenings in the world arising out of the artists' subjective viewpoint, with its assembly of events both large and small, questions what it means to be alive. First unveiled in 1981 as an installation consisting of around 200 objects, a new version comprising about 90 was presented in 2006.Peter Fischli David Weiss, 18 September 2010 – 25 December 2010
21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa.

Rat and Bear

The artists' first Rat and Bear film, ''The Least Resistance'' (1981) was set in urban

Los Angeles Los Angeles, often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, most populous city in the U.S. state of California, and the commercial, Financial District, Los Angeles, financial, and Culture of Los Angeles, ...

, where the artists were living at the time. ''The Right Way'' (1982–83) was their second appearance and shows the two characters rambling through a mountainous landscape, of the kind that filled 19th-century artists with thoughts of the sublime. A book called ''Order and Cleanliness'' (1981), setting out the ideas of Rat and Bear, is crammed with charts and diagrams, each attempting to impose a crazed order on the world. ''Rat and Bear'' (2004) is a sculpture that incorporates the original costumes worn by the artists, presented in life-size boxes out of dark, barely-translucent Plexiglas, suspending the costumes inside.

''Polyurethane Objects'' and ''Rubber Sculptures''

In 1982, the artists began their ongoing series of hand-carved and painted

polyurethane Polyurethane (; often abbreviated PUR and PU) is a class of polymers composed of organic chemistry, organic units joined by carbamate (urethane) links. In contrast to other common polymers such as polyethylene and polystyrene, polyurethane term ...

objects depicting ordinary items found in their studio. Each object is a replica, down to the strewn peanut shells and scatter of rainbow

M&M's M&M's are color-varied sugar-coated dragée chocolate confectionery by the Mars Wrigley Confectionery division of Mars Inc.. The candy consists of a candy shell surrounding a filling which determines the specific type of M&M's. Each piece has ...

, carved from dense, rigid foam and painted.Leah Ollman (13 February 2014)
Review: Fischli and Weiss marry ingenuity and wisdom
''

Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' is an American Newspaper#Daily, daily newspaper that began publishing in Los Angeles, California, in 1881. Based in the Greater Los Angeles city of El Segundo, California, El Segundo since 2018, it is the List of new ...

''. In a 2006 interview Peter Fischli remarked, "Unlike Pop art, which turns one particular object into an icon, they are a collection of replicas of worthless everyday objects."Peter Fischli, David Weiss: Polyurethane Objects, 18 January – 12 April 2014

Matthew Marks Gallery Matthew Marks is an art gallery located in the New York City neighborhood of Chelsea, Manhattan, Chelsea and the Los Angeles neighborhood of West Hollywood. Founded in 1991 by Matthew Marks, it specializes in Modern art, modern and contemporary a ...

, Los Angeles. For a series of ''Rubber Sculptures'', they cast ordinary objects, such as a desk drawer ''Divider'' (1987), a ''Vase'' (1986/87) and a ''Dog Dish'' (1987) in a heavyweight black rubber.

''The Way Things Go''

The ''Equilibres'' photographs (1984–1987), a series of images of household objects and studio detritus arranged to form tenuously balanced assemblages, developed into the artists' celebrated film ''

The Way Things Go ''The Way Things Go'' () is a 1987 16 mm art film by the Swiss artist duo Peter Fischli and David Weiss. It documents a long causal chain assembled of everyday objects and industrial materials in the manner of a Rube Goldberg machine, though with ...

'' (''Der Lauf Der Dinge'') (1986–1987). The resulting film enlists an assortment of objects, including tyres and chairs, as components in a domino-like chain reaction lasting thirty minutes. Using such common industrial objects, Fischli and Weiss created a continuous chain of actions and reactions involving balloons deflating, tires rolling, liquids draining, candles melting, balls dropping, fuses burning, wheels spinning, and much more. The film's humour lies in the deliberate misuse of these objects, as they are co-opted into performing roles outside their normal function. Reminiscent of the physical comedy of silent films starring

Charlie Chaplin Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin (16 April 188925 December 1977) was an English comic actor, filmmaker, and composer who rose to fame in the era of silent film. He became a worldwide icon through his screen persona, the Tramp, and is considered o ...

Buster Keaton Joseph Frank "Buster" Keaton (October 4, 1895 – February 1, 1966) was an American actor, comedian and filmmaker. He is best known for his silent films during the 1920s, in which he performed physical comedy and inventive stunts. He frequently ...

, here the actors are steaming-kettles mounted on roller-skates, rotating dustbin bags, rickety stepladders set in motion, buckets, tyres, bottles and planks. Well known in film circles, ''The Way Things Go'' won awards at the Berlin and Sydney film festivals and was described by ''

'' as a "masterpiece". For their retrospective at Tate Modern in 2006, Fischli/Weiss unveiled ''Making Things Go'' (1985/2006), a documentary that gave a behind-the-scenes look of the many experiments, rehearsals, and failures behind the controlled catastrophes of ''The Way Things Go.'' It was shot over three days in 1985 by a friend, Swiss writer and publisher Patrick Frey, but went unreleased for 20 years. ''The Way Things Go'' became the inspiration for the even more famous

Honda commonly known as just Honda, is a Japanese multinational corporation, multinational Conglomerate (company), conglomerate automotive manufacturer headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. Founded in October 1946 by Soichiro Honda, Honda has bee ...

advert '' Cog'' (made by

Wieden+Kennedy Wieden+Kennedy (W+K; earlier styled ''Wieden & Kennedy'') is an American advertising agency best known for its work for Nike. Founded by Dan Wieden and David Kennedy, and headquartered in Portland, Oregon, it is one of the largest independent ...

), in which parts of a

Honda Accord The , also known as the in Japan and China for certain generations, is a series of automobiles manufactured by Honda since 1976, best known for its four-door sedan variant, which has been one of the best-selling cars in the United States sinc ...

are used in the chain instead of fire and foam. Fischli and Weiss had previously declined offers to use their film commercially, and briefly threatened legal action against Honda for use of their ideas, although in the end no lawsuit was filed.

''Visible World''

Originally made for

documenta X documenta X was the tenth edition of documenta, a quinquennial contemporary art exhibition. It was held between 21 June and 28 September 1997 in Kassel, Germany. The artistic director was Catherine David. This was the first time a woman was app ...

(1997), ''Sichtbare Welt (Visible World)'' comprises three monitors each displaying an eight-hour video made up of the artists' still photographs. The series includes much-photographed views such as the New York skyline, Sydney Harbour and the Pyramids. Others are the kind of pictures taken by amateur photographers, conventionally composed, sharply focused, with appealing subject matter such as woodland glades and sunlit gardens.Fischli & Weiss: Flowers & Questions. A Retrospective, 11 October 2006 – 14 January 2007

Tate Modern Tate Modern is an art gallery in London, housing the United Kingdom's national collection of international Modern art, modern and contemporary art (created from or after 1900). It forms part of the Tate group together with Tate Britain, Tate Live ...

, London. The images, taken in arbitrary locations around the world, slowly dissolve one into another and, as is also the case with their slide shows, there is no sound track. The work was shown on late night television in Germany every night for three months. ''Visible World'' exists in a number of other formats; as an artists' book and as an installation of fifteen light tables displaying a vast slide archive. A later version of ''Visible World'' (2003) is a collection of 3,000 small-format photographs displayed on a specially fabricated 90-foot long light table. The encyclopedic collection of images – of cities, jungles, deserts, airports, stadiums, monuments, mountains, and tropical beaches, from all over the world – is composed of photographs taken by the artists over the course of fifteen years.Peter Fischli David Weiss, 22 February – 20 April 2002

, New York. ''An Unsettled Work'' (2000–06), originally titled ''Freakshow; Monsters'', grew out of ''Visible World'' and consists of pictures rejected from the prior work. A marked aesthetic departure from their earlier pieces, this slide projection issues forth violent, sumptuous and otherworldly images.Fischli & Weiss
Guggenheim Collection. A later series is ''Views of Airports'', a slide presentation of 469 photographs the artists took over a period of two decades. His Work ''Schilf'', 2004, is by

Museo Cantonale d'Arte Museo may refer to: * ''Museum'' (2018 film), Mexican drama heist film *Museo station Museo is a Naples Metro station on Line 1. It opened on 5 April 2001 as the eastern terminus of the section of the line between Vanvitelli and Museo. On 27 Ma ...

Lugano Lugano ( , , ; ) is a city and municipality within the Lugano District in the canton of Ticino, Switzerland. It is the largest city in both Ticino and the Italian-speaking region of southern Switzerland. Lugano has a population () of , and an u ...

''Questions''

'' Fragenprojektion'' (''Questions'', 1981–2003) is a three-part, 15-channel slide installation, consisting of 243 handwritten questions, with three questions projected at a time. Each set of questions slowly dissolves into the next. The questions range from the profound to the trivial. Examples include: "Can I restore my innocence?," "Why does the earth turn around once a day?," "Does a hidden tunnel lead directly to the kitchen?" and "Does a ghost drive my car around at night?" The installation was the culmination of a series of works composed of absurd questions, including a book called ''Will Happiness Find Me?'' (2002). In the later ''Question Pot (Big)'' (1986), a large container molded from polyurethane, questions were written all over the inside of the pot in spiral formation.

''Walls, Corners, Tubes''

In ''Walls, Corners, Tubes'' (2012), the artists present a series of objects with geometrical bodies which have the form of walls, corners, and tubes and are made alternately of black rubber and unfired clay placed on high, white pedestals. Both the shapes of the objects and their titles such as ''Wand aus Ton'' (''Wall of Clay'', 2012) or ''Röhre aus Gummi'' (''Tube of Rubber'', 2012) recall functional objects, such as those often found at building supplies stores.

''Rock on Top of Another Rock''

This was a pair of installations – one on the

Valdresflye Valdresflye, also spelled Valdresflya and Valdresflyi, is a mountain plateau in the easternmost part of the Jotunheimen mountains in Norway. The plateau lies in Innlandet county, mostly in Øystre Slidre Municipality, but a small area extends i ...

plateau in Norway and the other at the

Serpentine Gallery The Serpentine Galleries are two contemporary art galleries in Kensington Gardens, Westminster, Greater London. Recently rebranded to just Serpentine, the organisation is split across Serpentine South, previously known as the Serpentine Galler ...

in London in 2013.

Exhibitions

Fischli and Weiss had their first solo exhibition in 1981 at the Galerie Balkon in Geneva. After showing ''Suddenly This Overview'' at the Galerie Stähli in 1981, they became regulars on the international art scene. Their first solo exhibition in the United States was shown at the

Sonnabend Gallery Ileana Sonnabend (née Schapira, October 29, 1914 – October 21, 2007) was a Romanian-American art dealer of 20th-century art. The Sonnabend Gallery opened in Paris in 1962 and was instrumental in making American art of the 1960s known in Europe, ...

in New York in 1986. In more than 25 years of activity, the pair exhibited in some of the most important institutions and museums worldwide including Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (2000);

Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen Municipal Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen () is an art museum in Rotterdam in the Netherlands. The name of the museum is derived from its two most important donors, Frans Jacob Otto Boijmans and Daniël George van Beuningen. The museum is located a ...

in Rotterdam (2003); Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporáneo in Mexico City (2005); and the

Rencontres d'Arles The Rencontres d'Arles (formerly called ''Rencontres internationales de la photographie d'Arles'') is an annual summer photography festival founded in 1970 by the Arles photographer Lucien Clergue, the writer Michel Tournier and the historian ...

festival, France. A U.S. retrospective of their work was organised by the

Walker Art Center The Walker Art Center is a multidisciplinary contemporary art center in the Lowry Hill, Minneapolis, Lowry Hill neighborhood of Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. The Walker is one of the most-visited modern and contemporary art museums in ...

in 1996 and subsequently traveled to the

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) is a modern art, modern and contemporary art museum and nonprofit organization located in San Francisco, California. SFMOMA was the first museum on the West Coast devoted solely to 20th-century art ...

, San Francisco; and

Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA) is a contemporary art museum with two locations in greater Los Angeles, California. The main branch is located on Grand Avenue in Downtown Los Angeles, near the Walt Disney Concert Hall. MOCA's ori ...

. Another retrospective of their work was held at

, London in 2006, and traveled to the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris,

Kunsthaus Zürich The Kunsthaus Zürich is an art museum in Zurich. It is the biggest art museum in Switzerland by area and houses one of the most important art collections in Switzerland, assembled over time by the Zürcher Kunstgesellschaft, a nonprofit art soc ...

and the

Deichtorhallen The Deichtorhallen in Hamburg, Germany, is one of Europe's largest art centers for contemporary art and photography. The two historical buildings dating from 1911 to 1913 are notable examples of industrial architecture from the transitional period ...

, Hamburg. Recent solo exhibitions were held at the

Art Institute of Chicago The Art Institute of Chicago, founded in 1879, is one of the oldest and largest art museums in the United States. The museum is based in the Art Institute of Chicago Building in Chicago's Grant Park (Chicago), Grant Park. Its collection, stewa ...

(2011) and the Serpentine Gallery, London (2013). In 1995 they represented Switzerland in the

and in 2003 were included in the "Utopia Station" exhibition of the Venice Biennale curated by

Rirkrit Tiravanija Rirkrit Tiravanija (, Jerry Saltz (May 7, 2007)Conspicuous Consumption''New York Magazine''.) is a Thai contemporary artist residing in New York City, Berlin, and Chiangmai, Thailand. He was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1961. His installatio ...

for which they were awarded the leone' d'oro for best work in the main exhibition. In 2000, the exhibition ''Aprendiendo menos (learning less)'' united Fischli and Weiss with

Gabriel Orozco Gabriel Orozco (born April 27, 1962) is a Mexican artist. He gained his reputation in the early 1990s for his exploration of drawing, photography, sculpture and installation. In 1998, Francesco Bonami called Orozco "one of the most influentia ...

and Richard Wentworth. Three different perspectives through photography, where the artists are a means to portray street findings within the urban landscape, its surroundings and its objects. It was curated by

Patricia Martín Patricia Martín Méndez (Mexico City) is a curator and art writer. She has conceptualized and directed three of the most relevant contemporary art foundations in Latin America: Colección Jumex, Fundación Alumnos 47 Fundación Casa Wabi In addit ...

. Peter Fischli and David Weiss have been represented by

Galerie Eva Presenhuber Galerie Eva Presenhuber is a contemporary art gallery, owned by Eva Presenhuber, with locations in Zurich, Switzerland (since 2003) and Vienna (since 2022). History Eva Presenhuber founded Galerie Eva Presenhuber in October 2003 in Zurich, with an ...

since 1989 and the

since 1999. The

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, often referred to as The Guggenheim, is an art museum at 1071 Fifth Avenue between 88th and 89th Street (Manhattan), 89th Streets on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City. It hosts a permanent coll ...

in New York City presented their first survey in New York in 2016. The exhibition was accompanied by a display of their text-based monument to labour, ''How to Work Better'' (1991), as a wall

mural A mural is any piece of Graphic arts, graphic artwork that is painted or applied directly to a wall, ceiling or other permanent substrate. Mural techniques include fresco, mosaic, graffiti and marouflage. Word mural in art The word ''mural'' ...

at the corner of

Houston Houston ( ) is the List of cities in Texas by population, most populous city in the U.S. state of Texas and in the Southern United States. Located in Southeast Texas near Galveston Bay and the Gulf of Mexico, it is the county seat, seat of ...

and

Mott Street Mott Street () is a narrow but busy thoroughfare that runs in a north–south direction in the New York City borough (New York City), borough of Manhattan. It is regarded as Chinatown, Manhattan, Chinatown's unofficial "Main Street". Mott Stre ...

s, and by screenings of ''Büsi (Kitty)'' on multiple advertising screens on

Times Square Times Square is a major commercial intersection, tourist destination, entertainment hub, and Neighborhoods in New York City, neighborhood in the Midtown Manhattan section of New York City. It is formed by the junction of Broadway (Manhattan), ...

every night in February at midnight.

Collections

Their works are held, among others, in the collections of the

Tate Tate is an institution that houses, in a network of four art galleries, the United Kingdom's national collection of British art, and international modern and contemporary art. It is not a government institution, but its main sponsor is the UK ...

, United Kingdom, the

Pérez Art Museum Miami Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM)—officially known as the Jorge M. Pérez Art Museum of Miami-Dade County—is a contemporary art museum that relocated in 2013 to the Maurice A. Ferré Park in Downtown Miami, Florida. Founded in 1984 as the Cent ...

, Florida, and the Guggenheim, New York.

Recognition

Fischli and Weiss won the Golden Lion prize at the 2003 Venice Biennale for ''Questions'', an installation of over 1,000 photographic slides of handwritten existential questions the artists had collected over many years. In 2006 they received the Roswitha Haftmann Prize, Switzerland.

Notable works

Movies

* 2003 ''Hunde'' (''Dogs''), DVD, color, 30 minutes * 2001 ''Büsi'' (''Kitty''), DVD of a cat drinking milk, 6 minutes, 30 seconds * 1995 ''Adventures close to Home'', Fischli and Weiss exhibited 96 hours of video on 12 monitors that documented what they called "concentrated daydreaming"—real-time glimpses into daily life in Zurich: a mountain sunrise, a restaurant chef in his kitchen, sanitation workers, a bicycle race, and so on. * 1995 ''Arbeiten im Dunkeln'' (''Works in the Dark''), 96 hours of video material with everyday scenes from Zurich on multiple monitors simultaneously * 1992 ''Kanalvideo'' (''Sewage Video''). Video compilation of previously existing recordings of the sewage monitoring service Zurich * 1987 ''Der Lauf der Dinge'' (''

''), 16 mm, 30 minutes, color, sound. The camera follows the course of the

Rube Goldberg Machine A Rube Goldberg machine, named after American cartoonist Rube Goldberg, is a chain reaction–type machine or contraption intentionally designed to perform a simple task in a comically overcomplicated way. Usually, these machines consist of a s ...

with several cuts * 1983 ''Der rechte Weg'' (''The Right Way''), 16 mm, 52 minutes, color, sound. Journey of the artist through Switzerland, as a rat and a bear * 1981 ''Der geringste Widerstand'' (''The Least Resistance''), Super 8, 30 minutes, color, sound. The artists walk through Hollywood, as a rat and a bear

Books

* ''Wurstserie'', 7/10 printed in ''HOW TO'' magazine, No. 2, 2007, ISSN 1864-8614"Table of content"
''HOW TO'' magazine, No. 2 * ''Fischli/Weiss: Fragen & Blumen'', Vice Versa; edition: 1 (2006), * ''Peter Fischli & David Weiss. Fotografias'', Walther König, Cologne 2005, * ''Der Lauf der Dinge'', PAL-DVD, 2005; * ''Findet mich das Glück?'', Walther König, Cologne 2003, * ''Sichtbare Welt'', Walther König, Cologne 2000, * ''Musée d'art moderne Paris'', 35 prints, Walther König, Cologne 2000 * ''Gärten'', Edition Florian Matzner, Oktagon, Cologne 1998, * ''Peter Fischli/David Weiss. Biennale Venedig 1995'', 1995, * ''Siedlungen, Agglomeration'', Edition Patrick Frey, Zurich 1992 * ''Bilder, Ansichten'', Edition Patrick Frey, Zurich/Secession, Vienna 1990 * ''Airports'', photo book, Edition Patrick Frey/IVAM, Valencia 1989 * ''Der Lauf der Dinge'', VHS-Kassette, 1989 * with Elizabeth Armstrong, Arthur C. Danto, Boris Groys: ''In a Restless World'', 1996, (English)

Contributions

* 2008 ''Life on Mars,'' the 2008 ''Carnegie International'

References

External links

Artists' Official WebsiteFischli/Weiss at Matthew Marks

Fischli/Weiss at Fondazione Nicola Trussardi
{{DEFAULTSORT:Fischli, Peter and Weiss, David Swiss contemporary artists Art duos Artists from Zurich Zurich University of the Arts alumni