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Fischli and Weiss’s Equilibre/Quiet Afternoon (1984-5)

This article is one of six contributions to a 2013 Special Issue of 'Art History'. The issue, also published as a stand-alone book, is the result of a Courtauld Institute cross-period research group, proposing a new art historical methodology of the ‘Clever Object’. The research examines the kinds of thinking that objects enable or constrain, and reconsiders the aesthetic objects privileged by art historians. Other contributors include Caroline Arscott, Matthew Hunter and Katie Scott. This article offers a new interpretation of Fischli/Weiss’s photographic series 'Equilibre/Quiet Afternoon'(1984-5). The photographic series presents objects that appear to act independently of a human subject, a theme which I identify as suggestive of Baudrillard’s ‘Fatal Strategy’ of the clever object. However, through a rigorous consideration of Baudrillard’s writing, I argue that whereas Baudrillard’s ‘principle of equivalence’ and his theorization of ‘the impossible exchange barrier’ diagnose an essential asymmetry which tips the world into uncertainty, Fischli/Weiss present an improbable equilibrium that exists without internal equivalence. Further, unlike Baudrillard’s view of photography as a reassuring disguise of the cleverness of objects, Fischli/Weiss’s photographic series presents a balance not reliant upon the transubstantiation of commodity fetishism, but upon a pre-Fall cleverness overseen by an absent but implied creative force. Contrary to much existing literature that views Fischli/Weiss’s work as postmodern in nature, and as more philosophical and whimsical than materialist, my article offers a new insight into their practice as resistant to both Baudrillard’s postmodern theory, and the exchangeability that enables capitalism. In doing so, the article contributes to knowledge of the artists’ practice, to existing thought about how Baudrillard’s theory can be used to discuss contemporary art, and to the significance of the methodology of the ‘Clever Object’