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Der Rechte Weg - Fischli/Weiss (1983)
Topic Started: Aug 5 2015, 08:23 PM (552 Views)
rischka
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nazi trumps fuck off!!
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i cheated a bit by using the german title : The Right Way would be the correct translation but that seems somehow too literal for this fanciful film. A rat and a bear go hiking in the free, so-called unspoiled countryside, at the mercy of the elements, of all sorts of miracles - and, above all, of themselves. With pure hearts and a lot of goodwill, they try to find reasons for all they see and experience. Voluntarily, they sometimes find themselves closer than expected to the right way. --

Fischli/Weiss were an artist duo, among the most renowned contemporary artists of Switzerland. They worked together on a variety of projects in various media from the late 1970s until Weiss' death in 2012. Der Rechte Weg was their second film using rat & bear costumes - the first, Der Geringste Widerstand (The Least Resistance) from 1981, was set in urban Los Angeles. There are also a book and a sculpture immortalizing the characters. excerpt from an interview in Frieze magazine here

Jörg Heiser: You began working together in 1979. When did it become clear that this would be a permanent arrangement?

Peter Fischli: We have never made an explicit statement on this. De facto, of course, it is the case, but the joint projects themselves are what actually justify it for us, not merely the desire to work together.

JH: Beginning by making staged sausage photography, followed by a film featuring yourselves in furry rat and bear costumes, I guess you quickly gained a reputation as a comedy double act? It’s an old motif in slapstick and cartoons: the odd couple. By using the pseudonym R. Mutt, Marcel Duchamp, was alluding to the newspaper cartoon ‘Mutt & Jeff’ from the 1910s – a tall, thin guy and a small, chubby one, both totally crazy. Are Fischli/Weiss the Tom & Jerry of art?

PF: These two types exist not only in comedy but also in novels, in Flaubert and Dostoevsky – the trope of the odd couple. But even as far as the ‘comedy double act’ idea is concerned, we weren’t much worried about it being interpreted like that.

JH: For her exhibition in 2005 at the Kunsthalle in Zurich, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster wanted you to appear in the rat and bear costumes again. Not in a film but as a performance.

David Weiss: Yes, she wanted the rat and the bear as philosophers who conduct dialogues – not necessarily funny ones. Although the situation is funny, if the animals say something intelligent.

PF: It was a spontaneous suggestion. But one is not obliged to comply with such proposals to the letter. We did the opposite: instead of appearing as clowns, we hung the costumes in dark Perspex vitrines and celebrated them as fetishes.

JH: Deliberately confounding the expectations of a ‘comedy double act’…

PF: We do take steps to show things in their true light. Which is also what makes it interesting: we don’t want to be rid of it altogether, but we don’t want to leave it as it is either. That’s true of many of our works: we want to take things out of the niche where they belong and transport them somewhere else, but without denying their origins. It is about taking but also about giving back.

JH: So there is a strategy with regard to possible expectations?

DW: But not from outside, not as a concept. It just gets corrected, for example by simply mothballing the rat and the bear.

PF: And by doing nothing more than that.

JH: At the time were the rat and bear pieces mainly perceived as just amusing incidental entertainment?

PF: Yes, of course.

JH: So your attitude towards conventional discussions about art was to use not outrage or taboo but something subliminal, beneath the radar of ‘seriousness’.

PF: In Los Angeles, where we were living at the time, one was of course confronted with Disneyland and the entire movie industry, and we discovered this costume hire place, and things like that were still not being used much in art then.

JH: Did you know Paul McCarthy’s work?

PF: No. We were more familiar with people like John Baldessari or Ed Ruscha.

JH: In any case, the difference between you and McCarthy and his references to Disney, is that he emphasises the dark side whereas your works always include a barrier of normality, or decency. Where does that come from?

PF: I’ll stick my neck out – this is very speculative – but I would say that for McCarthy there’s an entirely different justification for doing it, because American mass culture – and much of Pop art – represses all that to quite a degree. In European culture it’s a different story, through psychoanalysis and Viennese Actionism. For us it had already been dealt with. And it’s not as if we avoided these issues. But we thought our task was a different one.

DW: It was simply more in keeping with our temperament for the rat and the bear to be discussing some major issues which they can never do justice to. Instead of cutting these animals open and having paint and blood coming out …

JH: So the emphasis is not on showing that popular cultures repress sex and violence but on showing that they give rise to viable cultural techniques.

PF: Correct.
Edited by rischka, Aug 5 2015, 09:14 PM.
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rischka
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nazi trumps fuck off!!
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some screenshots of this delightful adventure

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Edited by rischka, Aug 5 2015, 09:13 PM.
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Lencho of the Apes
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Let's go do some crimes
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I look forward to seeing this -- I poked around for a copy when (you and Sally?) were discussing this, back when I first joined.

I always thought that rat and bear were referencing an older tradition than Disney, something related to British pantomime, and whatever exists on the continent thats comparable.

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Plus they always remind me of these guys

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but I'd rather not talk about that.

"The four cardinal points of the compass? In reality, there are only three: North and South."
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rischka
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nazi trumps fuck off!!
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LOL! probably my most controversial choice yet but i hope people will enjoy it. i think it does evoke the european fairytale tradition as well. btw seeing as we're doing 1981 poll i'm acquiring the original rat & bear film too :)
Edited by rischka, Aug 5 2015, 09:29 PM.
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nrh
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headache
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one of my favorite movies - one of the great handmade landscape films, and a beautiful expression of what it means to be partners in any sense. like quixote and sancho or bouvard and pécuchet level great.

the first short feature is ok but nothing like this. the most interesting film programmed for the little contest so far and hope it wins, this is the gun crazy of the year of our lord 2015 (except the girl with a suitcase is back again sigh).

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Edited by nrh, Aug 6 2015, 06:25 AM.
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