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The Swiss mulitmedia artists Peter Fischli and David Weiss have been working together for over 15 years. Their videos, installations, sculptures, photographs and slide projections are all characterized by their playful and ironic examination of everday life, albeit from the most absurd angles: "Fischli and Weiss's strategy could be described as serving the commonplace, invariably portraying its most tranquil and banal aspects in order to subvert the expectations of the viewer and to strike at the very conventions of art." (G. Verzotti, 'Fischli and Weiss: Wonder Bar,' in: 'Art+Text', no. 55, 1996, p.66.) From the 'Sausage Series' of 1979 and the film 'The Most Resistance' of 1981 to the 'Equilibrium' series of 1986, the now legendary film 'The Way Things Go' from 1986/87, and finally their series of white plaster cars from 1988, Fischli and Weiss have played through the various social, theatrical, educational and creative roles of toys and play in contemporary society: "Play as analyzed by Freud requires toys that are simulacra of objects in the adult world: tools, for example, blunted in order to enable children to play at being grown-up and productive without hurting themselves or straining their limited strength; pails and shovels for the sandbox; toy stoves and plastic dishes for the girl's room; toy cars for the boys to crash and popguns to make them manly and brave; dolls to activate maternal instincts; lead soldiers to activate leadership; stuffed animals to give boys and girls alike a model of passive softness in those with whom they will sleep. Of course, there are toys of other sorts - games, athletic gear and the rest - which have the function of sozializing the children into adult patterns (a responsibility sufficiently important to have made the manufacture and purveyance of toys a serious and profitable business). Most of these toys, needless to say, also afford the child plenty of opportunity for generating annoyance: squabbling over whose turn it is, making a racket, creating messes, hitting one another over the head, refusing to share, etc..." (A.C. Danto, 'Play/Things', in: 'Peter Fischli and David Weiss: In a Restless World', Minneapolis and London 1996, pp.98-99.)