The Way Things Go features a seemingly endless chain reaction of everyday objects without human interaction. Ordinarily inanimate objects come alive in chain reaction created by the artists, evoking Rube Goldberg’s humorous illustrations of complex mechanical contraptions that performed simple tasks. The film is a continuation of their investigation of ordinary objects. The premise for the piece extends from their previous photographic series Equilibres (1984-7) which animated everyday objects (kitchen utensils, vegetables, tires, chairs…) in delicate balancing situations, defying gravity.
From 1979 to 2012, Peter Fischli (b. 1952) and David Weiss (1946–2012) were an artistic Swiss duo that explored the poetics of everyday life with a distinctive and refreshing wit. Indebted to Dada, Surrealism, Pop Art, and Conceptual art, their work employed humble materials and referenced ordinary subjects.