In Peter Fischli & David Weiss’ "Der Lauf der Dinge", there is time to see exactly what happens. It is an extremely amusing, naturalistic film about cause and effect. One understands that the small cable would never have tipped if the fire had not burned long enough to make the liquid in the cradle evaporate sufficiently, and the fire would not have lit if the rolling ball had not struck the match against the striking surface, and the ball would never have rolled had not... It is a terrifically exciting film. What if the ball roles askew! If the balloon bursts too soon! What happens then? It must have taken hours, days of preparation to make everything work properly. In one take! At least I experience it as one single take; I cannot imagine that the artists have manipulated it - it would ruin the point. "Der Lauf der Dinge" is also inverse comedy and downright slapstick. In films with Stanley Laurel & Oliver Hardy a great deal of the fun comes from the fact that everything is so predictable. If they paint a boat together, it is only to be expected that Hardy will step in a bucket full of paint sooner or later and be hit on the head by the boom. And quite rightly, this is what happens, and you get to see it. You don’t with Fischli & Weiss. But is it possible to imagine how many times things have gone wrong? The fire goes out, or the ball roles back and is destroyed by the fire. All these possibilities make up an invisible film which is parallel to the film we see.
The CDA's archives are operating with the support of the Ostrovsky Family Fund and Artis
