Airport Los Angeles belongs to the work group about airports; the airport as a symbol for modernity and as a reality which generates its own mythology. The aeroplane – the machine which overcomes great distances – a symbol for movement and progress, is a synonym for the global village. In the large colour photographs, we see laconic depictions of the runway taken from the viewpoint of a neutral observer interested in the technical efficiency and organisation of the place, and not in the elegant curves with which the aircraft leave the ground.

It is usually impossible to make concrete geographical ascriptions; there is seldom a hint ot the topography of the location. What we see are transit areas of arrival and departure – the short stopover. The airport as a non-place par excellence. Instead of escorting these non-places into a purely mental dimension, such as Robert Smithson did in the Nonsites, the Fischli/Weiss works render them as physically demonstrable units. Nowhere is such a unit, so everywhere and nowhere at the same time. The artists are concerned with dismantling the hierarchies of the classic counterpoints of “high” art and “banal” life. They are also concerned with our relationship to experience, both experience of art and experience of life. The Fischli/Weiss works cause the value system which determines our relationship to the world to waver by taking leave of humanistic sentimentality and viewing the object as a connection to the concrete, real world – not as a fetish.

Brigitte Huck, 2005 (translation: Tim Sharp)