How did your installation Suddenly this Overview come about?

It started, I think in 1981, when I did a movie with David Meiss, which also will be in the show: the rat and bear movie. In that movie, rat and bear are doing diagrams. And at a certain moment, when they look at all the diagrams, which explain the world, they say: “Suddenly this overview”. This is where the title comes from. We were thinking about the encyclopaedia, which today nearly doesn't exist anymore because we have Wikipedia. It was to make an encyclopaedia that mixes the so-called unimportant moments with the important moments. So that you have no more hierarchy of what is relevant in the world. Because for me, maybe a personal little story has the same importance as a big historical event. 

It is a “work in progress” made between 1981 and 2012. What are the different steps? Was it an ongoing practice?

When we did the first show with Suddenly this Overview, we looked at it, that this is a project that we did. But then soon after that, maybe one year later, we were invited to show the clay sculptures in Cologne. And so we said, “Oh, we're going to do some new ones”. So, it was also just like each time we had to offer to show that work, we added sculptures. But it was not that we made them constantly. And sometimes there was also… maybe we were waiting five years doing nothing because it's an encyclopaedia, and an encyclopaedia that is very generous, also open for unimportant things. You can imagine everything can be a sculpture for Suddenly This Overview, or potentially everything can be. But the rules were not changing. It's not that we stayed always with this material, and we stayed also with the same categories that we made, which would be like sports, science, personal memories, entertainment. All these categories would be the same. But then maybe also things that happened in the world would become part of that. 

How do you explain the categorisation and titles of the pieces in this installation? 

Well, also with the titles or the situations, we tried not just to illustrate an important moment of history. And mostly it was shortly before, or shortly after, or in the meantime. It was already a gap between the real historical moment and what happens in reality. An example would be Mr. And Mrs. Einstein after conceiving their son. It's not the moment when the historical thing happens. It's before, or after, or parallel. 

How is Suddenly This Overview based on the reality of the world at the time?

It's all about realising also the filter of your personal attention that you have to the world, how it comes to you. And this is always built in. So it's clear that in 1981, when we talk about pop culture or entertainment, it was something else than today. So, it also shows something about the time when the sculptures are made.

Why did you choose to immerse the exhibition space in a subtly bluish light? 

In the last year, I started to work really more precisely on the archives and the estate of Fischli & Weiss. And so, I went to the exhibition history of Suddenly this Overview. Then I suddenly saw that we chose this blue light for the first show. We wanted to make a comment against the sentimentality of the clay material. Clay back then was a material that artists would not really use. It's more like for a hobby, or kindergarten, or therapy. So, it's all this negative quote for great art. So, we were attracted to the material because of that, because of the bad image that the material has. We wanted to make a comment about it, and you can make a comment of making a contrast atmosphere to the material. The bluish cold neon is like the anti-sentimental light for looking at clay.

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The installation "Suddenly This Overview" by Peter Fischli & David Weiss is on display in Gallery 3 as part of the exhibition « Le monde comme il va » until September 2, 2024