Everyone wants to find their own place in the world. But where is it and what is it? How do we recognize place as being significant and not just merely space? And what is it that makes one place special and another not? These are questions that have taxed philosophers as far back as ancient Greece. But they are also much more than philosophical investigations. In a world where neighbours fight over a stretch of land, or where some groups can feel safe only in certain locations, place is a living reality that can be either the cause for violent conflict or the glue that binds communities together. This exhibition in a book presents some of the most challenging art to address the function of place in the contemporary world. Arranged into themed 'rooms', it reflects a wide variety of artistic attitudes and practices. Some artists find inspiration in the heterogeneity of the crowded city street, while others celebrate the wilds of nature as a counter to urban life. Some present imagined or fantastic worlds of their own invention, or explore the way place is often a creation of the mind. Others investigate the deep marks that myth and history can leave on the land, or consider how place can be used as a form of political control.Territorial divisions demarcating one place from another, often with terrible consequences, are the chosen subjectmatter of many artists; others prefer to look at itinerant wanderers with no claims on the earth, or to focus on anonymous non-places that lack any real identity of their own. All of the artists in this book - among them Thomas Demand, Allan Sekula, Luc Tuymans, Steve McQueen, Roni Horn and Susan Hiller - use art to puzzle out the complicated ways in which place can shape and affect us. All of them help us to understand the world in which we live.

An illustrated discussion of Fischli and Weiss's famous film The Way Things Go, marking the twentieth anniversary of its first screening, explores why this captivating work continues to fascinate viewers. The Way Things Go (Der Lauf der Dinge) is a thirty-minute film by Swiss artists Peter Fischli and David Weiss featuring a series of chain reactions involving ordinary objects. It is also one of the truly amazing works of art produced in the late twentieth century. Admired, even loved, by members of the public as much as it is praised by the more specialist audience of artists, critics, and curators, The Way Things Go was perhaps the most popular work shown at Documenta 8, Kassel, in 1987. The work embodies many of the qualities that make Fischli and Weiss's work among the most captivating in the world today: slapstick humor and profound insight; a forensic attention to detail; a sense of illusion and transformation; and the dynamic exchange between states of order and chaos. In discussing what makes The Way Things Go utterly compelling to its viewers-whether they have seen it one time or many times-Jeremy Millar leaves no doubt as to why this film was chosen for the One Works series. As everyday objects crash, scrape, slide, or fly into one another with devastating, impossible, and persuasive effect, viewers find themselves witnessing a spectacle that seems at once prehistoric and postapocalyptic. Millar tells us why this extraordinary film speaks to us at the beginning of the twenty-first century. If history is "just one thing after another," then The Way Things Go is truly a historic work. Jeremy Millar is an artist. He is the author of Place (with Tacita Dean) and has contributed to many artist's monographs. He has also curated many solo and group exhibitions internationally. Swiss artists Peter Fischli and David Weiss received Europe's most coveted art prize, the Roswitha Haftmann Prize, in November 2006. A major retrospective of their work, "Flowers and Questions," originating at the Tate, London, travels to Zurich and Hamburg in 2007 and 2008.