| The Way Things Go | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | Peter Fischli and David Weiss |
| Written by | Peter Fischli and David Weiss |
| Release date(s) | 1987 |
| Running time | 30 |
| Country | Switzerland |
The Way Things Go (German: Der Lauf der Dinge) is a 1987 art film by the Swiss artist duo Peter Fischli and David Weiss. It documents a long causal chain assembled of everyday objects, resembling a Rube Goldberg machine.
The machine is in a warehouse, about 100 feet long, and incorporates materials such as tires, trash bags, ladders, soap, oil drums, and gasoline. Fire and pyrotechnics are used as chemical triggers. The film is nearly 29 minutes, 45 seconds long, but some of that is waiting for something to burn, or slowly slide down a ramp.
The film evolved out of work the artists did on their earlier photography series, "Quiet afternoon," (German: Stiller Nachmittag) of 1984-1985. As the delicately unstable assemblages they constructed for the photos were apt to almost immediately collapse, they decided that they wanted to make use of this energy.[1] The film may also have been inspired by the video work of fellow Swiss artist, Roman Signer. The artists undoubtably saw his video work which was exhibited at the Kunsthaus Zürich in 1981.[2] Signer's videos often document objects performing simple actions that are the result of physical phenomena.
As of December 2011, the film is on display in the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh, Scotland; the Sir Isaac's Loft section of the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, PA; the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Copenhagen, Denmark; and it was shown on rotation with other short art films at British Columbia's Robson Square Celebration Site outside the Vancouver Museum of Art during the Vancouver 2010 Olympics and Paralympics.
Until January 2009 it was also shown at the Western Australian Museum in Perth as part of the temporary exhibition "Experimenta Playground". It was also diplayed in the summer of 2010 in the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris.
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In May 2003, Fischli and Weiss threatened legal action against Honda over similarities between the Cog commercial and The Way Things Go. The artists felt that the ad's creators had "obviously seen" their film, and should have consulted them. Fischli and Weiss had refused several requests to use the film for commercial purposes, though Honda claimed that this was irrelevant as their permission was not needed to create new works with some elements similar to their previous works.[3] Honda's advertising firm Wieden+Kennedy eventually admitted to copying a sequence of weighted tires rolling uphill. The controversy was blamed for denying Cog a Grand Prix at the 2004 Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival.[4]