The Way Things Go

"Children actually do not need any toys."

Peter Fischli

In this exhibition at Kunsthall Oslo, things are not passive. They fall, roll, breathe, trigger, resist, collapse and answer back.

At its centre is The Way Things Go by Peter Fischli and David Weiss, never screened officially in Oslo before now. In the film, everyday objects set one another in motion through an elaborate chain reaction: a small event becomes the beginning of another, one action tipping into the next. The work can also be heard as a musical composition: a chance-based percussion piece whose score and instrumentation are one and the same.

Some works ask for your ears, others for your hands. Svetlana Maraš's Jazz can be moved around the space, while Table Book turns the room into a shared musical world. Samvær Under Tilsün's custom-built pachinko machine invites a different kind of play: physical, addictive and never the same twice.

Other works ask for stillness. In Dimitri de Perrot's Into the Dirt, you are invited to lie down and listen as sound rises from the ground beneath you. Cod.Act's πTon/2 breathes and twists according to its own rhythms, somewhere between creature and machine.

Running through the exhibition is a tension between balance and collapse, accident and control. Will that object fall? Will the flame catch? We are invited to take pleasure in instability, failure, and in the held breath before everything gives way.

Want to know more?

• The exhibition is developed for young audiences aged 8 to 15, families, school groups and curious adults.
• Some works are made to be watched and listened to. Others invite touch, movement and participation. Look for instructions in the exhibition space, and take part in the workshops and performative interventions during the festival (tba in August!).
• The title work, Fischli and Weiss’s film The Way Things Go, was made in 1987 and lasts around 30 minutes.
• Svetlana Maraš can also be heard solo in Ultima’s final concert The Instrument and the Atmosphere.