Francis Alÿs
Antwerp (Belgium), 1959

Francis Alÿs is the epitome of the artist-flaneur. During the late eighties Alÿs arrived in Mexico by chance and just as accidentally began a career as a professional artist by taking numerous walks along the streets in the heart of a city with which he was still unfamiliar. At that time, those walks were conceived as a series of anonymous actions that would be documented afterward and of which there remains nothing but a few souvenirs. One of his first walks consisted of dragging a little magnetic metal dog that went along gathering mementos. Later, he would present another version of this walk at the Havana Biennial, where he himself put on some shoes with magnetic soles that picked up diverse material with which Alÿs constructed a sort of bulletin board of mementos. All these traces are far from describing each walk with exactitude; on the contrary, Alÿs transforms them into catalysers of stories and narrations straddling both fact and fiction. This narrative aspect of Alÿs’ work is fundamental in that it renders doubtful any concise explanation or interpretation of his pieces, which, although originating in a localised context, can be meaningful in a broader spectrum. Alÿs developed this idea of multiple interpretations, taking it to the extreme by producing small painting-models that were later interpreted and re-elaborated by various illustrators of advertising billboards in Mexico City. These illustrators transformed as they wished the dimensions, tonalities and even the poses of the subjects Alÿs had proposed. The series The Liar, the copy of the liar was presented as a collaborative artwork and the illustrators even joined Alÿs in a business alliance that in just a few years, until 1977, produced hundreds of paintings. Since then, Alÿs has explored these same elements –the ephemeral, narrative and fiction- through a diversity of media that range from small animations to musical video clips, slide-shows, post-cards and even more corporeal –although equally transitory- interventions, such as the recent pilgrimage to the MoMA Queens, The Modern Procession, or the action La fe mueve montañas (Faith moves mountains) for the most recent Lima Biennial and during which a sand dune was moved by some five hundred volunteers equipped with spades. Alÿs has participated in numerous events such as the Havana, Venice, Lima and Santa Fe Biennials. His work has been shown in museums and galleries throughout Europe and America. In addition to an important one person show at the Museo de Arte Moderno in Mexico City in the late nineties, more recently he has presented an important exhibition at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid entitled El profeta y la mosca. He currently lives and works in Mexico City. I. M. B.

Time Lapse, 2001

The series Time Lapse was originally the video Zócalo, México D.F., Nov. 14 1998 in which Alÿs, in collaboration with Rafael Ortega, taped the progression of a shadow of the pole holding an enormous Mexican flag situated right in the centre of the Zócalo, the City’s central square. The place is quite emblematic and has gone through numerous transformations throughout the country’s history: from housing the equestrian statues of the Spanish governors who thus made their presence known in New Spain, to becoming the present site for massive meetings, events and public events and the destination for protest demonstrations from all over the country. Alÿs himself produced a piece in 1994 that consisted of the construction of a precarious refuge like those often erected at protest camp-outs, built with the remnants of campaign materials, placards and propaganda from recent elections. In Vivienda para todos (A home for all) was a critical allusion to the broken political promises in addition to serving literally as protest. Hence the Zócalo is one of the recurring settings in Alÿs’ work, as it also adjoins the seats of the country’s historic leading powers from the pre-Hispanic times, flanked by the Metropolitan Cathedral on one side and the National Palace on the other. These characteristics habilitating it as stage for all sorts of propaganda spectacles also make it a symbolically ideal place for expressing public discontent.
Nowadays, however, so as to make room for the huge crowds of people gathering there -it holds roughly two million people-, it has been refurbished as an enormous esplanade from which trees, benches and any other type of urban furnishings have been removed. In the centre, the square is presided over by the gigantic flag that receives military honours every evening before indifferent bystanders. Lacking greater shelter from the sun’s unbearable heat, people waiting in this huge square seek respite in the shadow projected by the pole like a sundial. Alÿs, who has spent a great deal of time mulling around the place, captures this phenomenon inasmuch as it is a sculptural situation not lacking a touch of humour: rows of people making room for themselves in the thin line of shadow and moving to the pace it sets, thus creating a sort of human thermometer/clock in the centre of this inhospitable meeting place. In Time Lapse, that register is converted into a type of scientific measurement in which the density of the people gathered in the shadow projected by the pole is an indication of the passage of time. In Cuentos patriótricos (Patriotic tales), Alÿs had already resorted to the flag installed in the square to make a small flock of sheep turn around it. The critical meaning of that video was quite evident and has some resonance in these new measurements in which people have substituted the sheep. As opposed to those who go to the Zócalo to demonstrate and protest against the status quo, these shadow seekers turn to the rhythm of the national insignia, avid only for a moment of coolness. I. M. B.

Serie details' Time Lapse, 2001