Francis Alÿs

Francis Alÿs is filmed by his collaborator Rafael Ortega walking along Fitzroy Square, drumming out rhythms by dragging a wooden stick on the iron railings.

The video shows the artist walking in circles around the flagpole (“Madre Patria”) in Zócalo, Mexico City’s monumental central square, which is flanked by government institutions. This work relates to a storied incident that took place during the Mexican government’s brutal oppression of the 1968 student uprising in Mexico City.

For an indeterminate period of time, the magnetized metal collector takes a daily walk through the streets and gradually builds up a coat mad of any metallic residue lying in its path. This process goes on until the collector is completely covered by its trophies.

For the last decade Alÿs has made repeated trips to the dusty highlands south of Mexico City to chase the tornadoes that frequently occur in that region at the end of the dry season. Tornado unfolds in three movements: waiting for the storms, pursuing them, and catching or missing them. Depicting a one-on-one challenge of the power of nature, the work is a recognition of human persistence, emphasizing the necessity of pursuing ideals however unattainable or absurd they may seem. It is also a reflection on the present chaotic state of Mexico and a study of the search for a moment of order within it; scientifically speaking, tornadoes are instances of order emerging from chaos.

For this work Alÿs purchased a gun in Mexico City then walked through the city streets with the weapon in his hand. After eleven minutes he was arrested by the police. The following day he repeated the action, this time in cooperation with the police. By presenting a record of this dramatic action alongside footage of its reenactment, Alÿs blurs the boundaries between documentation and fiction. Questioning the concept of authenticity, this work demonstrates “how media can distort and dramatize the immediate reality of a moment,” the artist has said. Gallery label from Francis Alÿs: A Story of Deception, May 8–August 1, 2011.

The Nightwatch documents an action realised by Alÿs in 2004 in which he released a fox into London’s National Portrait Gallery in the middle of the night and used the museum’s CCTV system to follow its movements. The institution was chosen because unlike other institutions it does not conceal its CCTV cameras.

2005, 00:03:07

From the 3rd to the 5th of November 2008, 60 median strips erased by the passage of time were repainted in the former Panama Canal Zone.

The cameras follow a reel of film as it unrolls through the old part of Kabul—pushed by two children, uphill and downhill, like a hoop.

A traditional animation, hand-drawn in 500+ frames (which are also on display as part of the installation). The animation consists solely of a shoe shine: hands move a length of cloth around and across a shoe, syncopated with a minimalistic melody and lyrics written by the artist. Its swaying, repetitive quality draws the audience into a simple and elegant comparison of artistic labor, in the form of drawing, to the marginalized service economy of a global city.

The children of a mountain village near Mosul re-enact a century of Iraqi history, from the secret Sykes-Picot agreement in 1916 to the realm of terror imposed by the Islamic State in 2016. The children revisit their past to understand their present.

This video performance showcases two works by the artist. In the first, he walks through the streets of London, trailing a wooden drumstick along a series of metal railings, producing a percussive, sometimes bell-like noise. The camera follows behind, focusing on the stick as it strikes the railings. Occasionally, it cuts to wide-angle shots, capturing the awkward and oddly humorous presence of other people. In the second work, titled "Samples II" Alÿs appears even rawer, minimal and radical. He walks around London with a drumstick in hand, creating sounds by playing the metal fences beside him, without a melody. These works are a playful example of one of Alÿs’s ‘interventions’ in the city.

As is well known, ‘gringo’ is the derogatory term Mexicans use to refer to NorthAmerican citizens. Shot in a central province of Mexico, Alÿs’s video portrays the confrontation between a group of dogs protecting their master’s home and an intruder (the cameraman, invisible to the work’s spectators). In this fiction of sorts, the camera takes an active role in the unfolding of the narrative. By examining the way in which its oppressive gaze can be a form of weaponry as much as a shield, it draws attention to how videocameras have become an epitome of power. Acting ‘like a dog among dogs’, Alÿs deliberately set the camera against the animals knowing that dogs loathe direct eye contact. Throughout the film the camera manages to keep the dogs at bay, sometimes providing a physical armour, sometimes actively entering into the game of menace and recognition.

64 Coldstream guards walk separately in London entering through different streets and unaware of one another’s route. Upon meeting, they fall into step and match together, looking or more guards to join up with.

The game “Mosquito of Pachacútec” refers to the historical metaphor of how the Inca Empire was challenged in its territorial conquests by a tiny adversary: ​​the mosquito. These seemingly insignificant insects hindered the expansion of the Inca Pachacútec empire in the mid-15th century, particularly in coastal areas, where malaria-carrying mosquitoes formed a natural barrier for the Inca armies. The players form a circle. One player throws an imaginary mosquito into the air, shouting, “The Pachacútec mosquito is going this way!” The following players try to kill the mosquito by clapping their hands in the air. After a couple of rounds, another imaginary mosquito is released, then a third, until the chain breaks and the round collapses in a fit of laughter.

Ordinary bottle tops, once flattened, threaded and tensed for spinning, become as sharp as gladiator swords. It’s edge against thrumming edge as the jousters try to slice their opponent’s string by means of feints, angles, and jabs. The players fight in such close proximity that the emotion of each move is magnified in their faces, as if to compensate for the necessary restraint of thrusts and parries – take that, oh no, how about this, oops close one… gotcha!

With all the charm of flick soccer, Subbuteo, pinball, and other miniature passions, this is played on a small circle of stubby broken-off sticks like a frontier fort buried in the sand, enclosing two facing, immobile teams also made of little sticks. Resembling two giants crouched over cavernous goals, the competitors take quickfire turns thumbing a marble, careful not to touch anything else. The successful marble shoots in from the side or arcs with precision through the air. For a penalty, it is balanced on top of the defending palisade. Close-ups on fans, rapt faces and dusty feet, bare or in the moulded sandals that protect knees as often as feet. The ring of attention is bisected by a chicken scooting straight through people, the exact centre of the arena, people, and out, as if performing a dare.

In order to avoid being tagged, the shadow must run away. Only the body to which the shadow belongs can escape to protect the shadow from the catcher’s evil kick. When the feet detach from the ground, the connection between the three-dimensional and two-dimensional figures breaks. Ultimately, all the children’s shadows get caught while the pigeons fly away in the sky.

For the 1999 Venice Biennale, Alÿs created an unofficial performance for the occasion, titled Duett. The piece begins with Alÿs entering Venice by train while fellow Belgian artist Honoré d’O landed at the airport, and each man is carrying one half of a tuba. After drifting through the labyrinth of streets, they eventually met three days later and reassembled the musical instrument. The work is emblematic of Alÿs’s exploration of estranged or misplaced halves striving for reconciliation.

Francis Alÿs has his own drawing painted by several different semi-professional painters.

The Purépecha community has played Uárhukua for 3,500 years. The game symbolises the fight between the old sun – the night – and the young sun – the day. The burning ball represents humanity. The gods play to win that humanity. The game is an oracle: if the kind gods win, those of the daylight, there will be rain or good weather and a good corn harvest. If the malicious gods win, those of the darkness, there will be droughts, storms and a bad harvest.

Grandma’s Footsteps in Britain, Red light, green light in North America, Thunder, weather, lightning in Austria, One, two, three, ciggy forty-three in Argentina, Frozen in Mexico, Statues in Greece – all refer to a game of stealth and balance popular around the world. While some versions rely on turning around at unpredictable intervals, these London kids play it with the regularly timed cry of “One, two, three, freeze!”. The caller takes her time assessing everyone’s immobility, which ensures further wobbles. But she can only expel the most unstable, and the forwards progress won’t be stopped.