I recently participated in a talk event commemorating the release of a DVD box by Swiss artist unit Peter Fischli & David Weiss (on 2/20 at Uplink Factory). My talk partners were Sembo Kensuke and Akaiwa Yae of exonemo, and since Chihara Koh, the designer of the DVD package, jumped in from the side too, it was a short but very nice chat.
The DVD contains the pieces "The Point of Release Resistance", "The Right Way" and "The Way Things Go". They were made in 1981, '83 and '87 respectively, which shows that Fischli & Weiss are veterans in their trade. I happened to see their recent exhibition at London’s Tate Modern, and I just can't seem to find the right words to describe the peculiar mixture of objects that were on display there, including clay sculptures, photographs of plants and airplanes, and an installation made up of a variety of things the duo just brought from their atelier. It was an atmosphere as if something was going slighty mad. While reflecting reality, the exhibits were characterized by some kind of deviance between the "reality" and the "reflections" of it, a bit like in low quality print media with slightly misaligned printing, or in the slightly distorted view of a person with astigmatism, although not to a degree that would make one disapprove…
"The Point of Release Resistance" and "The Right Way" are works with a similar kind of deviance. The two artists wear stuffed animal suits and become "rat man" and "panda man", and these two are the protagonists whose conversations form the centerpieces of both videos. The setting somewhere between reality and fiction is actually so odd that one can't really speak of "conversations", although it’s not exactly silly talk. I guess there are people who think of Lewis Carroll’s "Alice in Wonderland" or Murakami Haruki’s "sheep man" when watching these videos. But neither "The Point of Release Resistance" nor "The Right Way" have a real story, and they end without a conclusion whatsoever. There are scenes that are reminiscent of famous art historical names and titles, but as soon as you get ready to tackle quotes and references, the pieces make a sudden dodge. It’s extremely difficult to explain these things to others, or find in them something like a meaning or moral.
The "Fischli & Weiss Box" is now on sale (click here for screenings of the videos in March)
"The Way Things Go" is a famous piece that was shown among others at the "Connecting Worlds" exhibition (curated by Shikata Yukiko) at ICC last year, so if you're in Japan you might remember seeing it there. A spinning garbage bag sets a wheel in motion, the wheel knocks down a bottle, the bottle spills water into a bucket, a piece of styrofoam comes up and pushes the supporting brace of a stepladder until it begins to slide and eventually sparks off a fire, the fire spreads and finally launches a small firework… This nonsense kind of domino effect is staged in what looks like a huge warehouse kind of space, and goes on for about 30 minutes (the description above is off the top of my head, I'm pretty sure the order of events is different…)
The video looks like a model of the so-called Rube Goldberg machine. At Tate Modern I saw a "making of" video that showed that a "domino topple" of this scale requires elaborate and deliberate preparation, including the calculation of the timing of fading in and out. However, watching the piece I got the strong impression that it was created on a hit-or-miss basis. No TV entertainment program could be realized this way, but I suppose this sort of sloppiness is in fact well-calculated too. It’s like music made intentionally out of time, or, as dancer Kurosawa Mika is putting it in her own slogan, with "diligent idleness". In other words, Fischli & Weiss I would call "elaborately and deliberately easygoing".
It also appears to me that the works of Fischli & Weiss might provide hints at the difference between commercial and art movies. Their pieces are sloppy and rarely have a story, let alone a conclusion… Come to think of it, exonemo are hackers (not crackers!) for whose works casualness I consider to be something like a signture. The fact that they participated in the "Connecting Worlds" exhibition as well was one reason why they were selected to be my talk partners, but I suppose Shikata Yukiko had a couple of other good reasons for her choice. One is surely the casual approach that both duos share.
Currently exonemo are participating in the "Lab Motion" group exhibition at Tokyo Wonder Site Hongo, where they present a "circuit-painting kind of installation with lights and noises created by randomly connecting electrical circuits of disused toys" (from the press release). This is another exceptionally cool but extremely rewarding work to see and experience. While exuding a rather naughty and rambunctious air, it’s a work that makes clear that "elaborately and deliberately easygoing" is an attribute that applies also to these two artists.
Ozaki Tetsuya / Editor in chief / REALTOKYO