Children’s Game #7: Stick and Wheels

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.

One of Francis Alÿs’ series of performative videos that politicize absurd or seemingly futile gestures, Paradox of Praxis 5 documents the artist’s nocturnal perambulations through Juárez as he kicks a ball of fire along the city’s desolate streets. Transcending metaphor, the eerie mobile conflagration traces out an imaginary map of a devastated city.

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.

2005, 00:03:07

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Each person’s action affects everybody. This fine principle of teamwork applies even when individuals are pulling in different directions. Trying both to reach the chocolate box in one’s nearest corner and to stop the others reaching theirs, resistance becomes momentum and then desperate resistance again. Progress is most effective backwards. The square of rope comes alive, morphing into a diamond, a triangle, a trapeze, as the advantage shifts with every second. It’s when you’re nearly there that you’re most vulnerable, losing impetus, to grab the prize or be dragged back. The balance of forces is always broken in the end.

A 10-year-old boy in a pink salwar kameez stands near a dune-coloured wall under a powder-blue sky. He frowns and gesticulates, conversing in stops and starts with the heavens or at least with the gusting wind because you don’t see his kite at first, and the string is so fine you can’t see that either. What you see is a body interacting with unknown forces, pulling to the left, the right, up, down, quick, over to the left again, and so on. Here is not only the body of the boy but the body of the world in deft mutual mimesis, amounting to ‘the mastery of non-mastery’ which is the greatest game of all: a guide, a goal, a strategy –all in one– for dealing with man’s domination of nature (including human nature). Afghan kite fighters often attach small blades to their kite strings, or coat them with ground glass and glue, the better to down their opponents’. Under the Taliban, kite-flying was banned.