Peter Fischli & David Weiss

Suddenly this Overview (1981) is a collection of unfired clay sculptures imaginatively recreating various events in human history.[10] 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.[11]

The artists' first Rat and Bear film, The Least Resistance (1981) was set in urban 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.[12] 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.[13]

In 1982, the artists began their ongoing series of hand-carved and painted polyurethane 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, carved from dense, rigid foam and painted.[14] 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."[15] 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.[16]

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 (Der Lauf Der Dinge) (1986–1987).[17] 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.[14] 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 or Buster Keaton, here the actors are steaming-kettles mounted on roller-skates, rotating dustbin bags, rickety stepladders set in motion, buckets, tyres, bottles and planks.[18]

Well known in film circles, The Way Things Go won awards at the Berlin and Sydney film festivals and was described by The New York Times 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.[3] The Way Things Go became the inspiration for the even more famous Honda advert Cog (made by Wieden+Kennedy), in which parts of a Honda Accord are used in the chain instead of fire and foam.[19] 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.[20]

Originally made for documenta X (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.[21] 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.[22] 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.[21]

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.[23] 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.[24] A later series is Views of Airports,[25] a slide presentation of 469 photographs the artists took over a period of two decades.[15] His Work Schilf, 2004, is by Museo Cantonale d'Arte of Lugano.[26]

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?"[23] The installation was the culmination of a series of works composed of absurd questions, including a book called Will Happiness Find Me? (2002).[27] 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.[11]

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.[10]

A rock on top of another rock in Kensington Gardens outside the Serpentine Gallery

This was a pair of installations – one on the Valdresflye plateau in Norway and the other at the Serpentine Gallery in London in 2013.[28][29][30]

• 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 Zürich: a mountain sunrise, a restaurant chef in his kitchen, sanitation workers, a bicycle race, and so on.[5]
• 1995 Arbeiten im Dunkeln (Works in the Dark), 96 hours of video material with everyday scenes from Zürich on multiple monitors simultaneously
• 1992 Kanalvideo (Sewage Video). Video compilation of previously existing recordings of the sewage monitoring service Zürich
• 1987 Der Lauf der Dinge (The Way Things Go), 16 mm, 30 minutes, color, sound. The camera follows the course of the Rube Goldberg Machine 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

• Wurstserie, 7/10 printed in HOW TO magazine #2, 2007, ISSN 1864-8614
• Fischli/Weiss: Fragen & Blumen, Vice Versa; edition: 1 (2006), ISBN 978-3-905770-08-7
• Peter Fischli & David Weiss. Fotografias, Walther König, Cologne 2005, ISBN 3883759740
• Der Lauf der Dinge, PAL-DVD, 2005; ISBN 9789054691440
• Findet mich das Glück?, Walther König, Cologne 2003, ISBN 388375630X
• Sichtbare Welt, Walther König, Cologne 2000, ISBN 3883754331
• Musée d'art moderne Paris, 35 prints, Walther König, Cologne 2000
• Gärten, Edition Florian Matzner, Oktagon, Cologne 1998, ISBN 3896110438
• Peter Fischli/David Weiss. Biennale Venedig 1995, 1995, ISBN 3906700917
• Siedlungen, Agglomeration, Edition Patrick Frey, Zürich 1992
• Bilder, Ansichten, Edition Patrick Frey, Zürich/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, ISBN 0935640517 (English)