Séance De l’action à l’exposition

Francis Alÿs

http://www.francisalys.com

1- Les déambulations

• Marcher dans la ville pour expérimenter la réalité et introduire la fiction

* marcher comme pratique artistique

* marcher dans la ville pour expérimenter la réalité et introduire la fiction* en suivant des protocoles auto imposés* dans une attitude non monumentale*pour introduire des histoires qui se diffusent

Zapatos MagnéticosHavana, Cuba 1994

Narcotourism, 1996)

1- Les déambulations

• Marcher dans la ville : interroger la notion d’œuvre d’art* une œuvre en mouvement* éphémères* dans la ville* sans public

The Collector Mexico City 1991-2006 In collaboration with Felipe Sanabria 8:56 min.

Gordon Matta-Clark, Conical Intersect, 1975

Paradox of Praxis 1(Sometimes Making Something Leads to Nothing) Mexico City 1997 4:59 min.

Paradox of Praxis 1(Sometimes Making Something Leads to Nothing) Mexico City 1997 4:59 min.

Allan Kaprow: FLUIDS, 1967/2005HAUSER & WIRTH ZURICHLimmatstrasse 270CH – 8005 ZurichSwitzerlandPhone 41 (0)44 446 80 50http://www.hauserwirth.com

Allan Kaprow: FLUIDS, 1967/2005International workshop of the Applied Arts Universities at Art Unlimited BaselJune 13, 2005, from 2 pmTo mark the opening of Art Unlimited in Basle, Allan Kaprow’s Happpening FLUIDS will be reinvented for the first time since 1967 by an international workshop, in co-operation with the Department of Art and Design at Basle’s University of Applied Sciences and the University Basle.‘Father of Happenings’ Allan Kaprow was born in 1927. Nearly 40 years later, the art form he created continues to provoke questions about time, community and collective structures. His Happening FLUIDS involved constructing enclosures with ice blocks at various locations in Pasadena and Los Angeles. Kaprow recruited participants using billboards that displayed the FLUIDS score: “During three days, about twenty rectangular enclosures of ice blocks (measuring about 30 feet long, 10 wide and 8 high) are built throughout the city. Their walls are unbroken. They are left to melt”.

Groups of young people made his work a reality. They stacked blocks of ice, delivered by the Union Ice Company, into rectangular structures. Over the ensuing days, the ice structures melted. Photographs, film, the billboard score, the artist’s notes and drawings, letters and press clippings document the ephemeral event.Now FLUIDS will occur for the second time. Ice structures will be built at three different sites across Basle, including Art Basel’s headquarters building and the roof of the adjacent parking structure. Co-operating in the Happening are the Department of Art and Design at Basle University of Applied Science (Creative Art – Media Art Department), the art history seminars of Basle University, Basle and Lucerne University Departments of Art and Design, the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich and the University of Weimar and Vienna. At the artist’s request, students will spend two days in a workshop, devising strategies to realize the work. They will determine such particulars as how to co-ordinate delivery of the ice blocks, secure the necessary equipment and design of the structures. Thus they will create a Basle-specific, contemporary variant of the Happening, this time without the artist’s direct involvement.

For further information, please contact Laura Bechter at Hauser & Wirth in Zurich.Another project by Hauser & Wirth Zurich London, appearing at Art Unlimited will be Martin Creed’s set piece Work No. 372, Piano.

For further information, please contact Nicole Keller at Hauser & Wirth, Zurich.HAUSER & WIRTH ZURICHLimmatstrasse 270CH – 8005 ZurichSwitzerlandPhone 41 (0)44 446 80 50http://www.hauserwirth.com

L'atelier de Pollock par Goodnough

Francis Alÿs in collaboration with Honoré d’O, Duett (1999) Venice

1- Les déambulations

• Tentative de définition : un art contextuel

* un art aux frontières de la performance* un art contextuel qui « tisse » avec le réel* inscrit dans la ville mais non « in situ »* des actions politiques mais non militantes* un art furtif

Daniel Buren, Les deux plateaux, Travail in situ permanent, 1985 - Juillet 1986cour d’honneur du Palais-Royal, Paris,

Still from Patriotic Tales; Mexico City, 1997; video documentation of an action. In collaboration with Cuauhtémoc Medina and Rafael Ortega. Total running time: 24 minutes, 40 seconds.

André Cadere sur l'avenue des Gobelins à Paris, pour l'exposition organisée en 1973 par la galerie des Locataires

The Nightwatch (single channel version) London 2004 6:17 min.

The Nightwatch (single channel version) London 2004 6:17 min.

Francis Alÿs, Turista, Mexico City, 1994, Photographic documentation of an action Courtesy of Francis Alÿs and David Zwirner, New York, Image: Enrique Huerta © Francis Alÿs

2- Les objets autour des déambulations

• Objets indépendants des enregistrements médiatiques de l’action (outils/dessins/documents graphiques/ récoltes/traces)

* outils pour la marche* dessins préparatoires* documents graphiques* collecte et traces

2- Les objets autour des déambulations

• Les enregistrements de l’action

* enregistrements vidéos* enregistrements photographiques* une iconographie de l’anonymat* la question de l’auteur

2- Les objets autour des déambulations

• Les travaux élaborés avec l’enregistrement des actions de Francis Alÿs

* enregistrements vidéos* enregistrements photographiques* une iconographie de l’anonymat* la question de l’auteur

When Faith Moves Mountains (2002)

A Project for Geological Displacement.A project by Francis Alÿs, collaborating with Rafael Ortega and Cuauhtémoc Medina. On April 11th 2002, 500 volunteers were called in order to form a line to move a sand dune situated in the surroundings of the city of Lima. This human comb progressed pushing forward a certain quantity of sand with shovels in order to move the dune from its original position. The actual displacement was of an infinitesimal proportion, but not its metaphorical resonance. Duration: 15 min The Ubuweb Experimental Video Project: 23. Francis Alÿs' When Faith Moves Mountains (2002)Colin Marshall This is less a piece of video art on the displacement-by-volunteer of a big Peruvian sand dune than a mini-documentary on the displacement-by-volunteer of a big Peruvian sand dune. Though I do find the effort itself fascinating, there isn't much going on here in the form department. It's footage of the preparation, footage of the process, interviews with participants and shots of the gaunt, none-too-in-place-looking AlØs staring up at the immobile dune that is his rival. Should I stop right here? Is it my place to comment on the project documented, or should The Ubuweb Experimental Video Project concern itself only with the specifically audiovisual elements of these pieces, or go further? I suppose I could spill a healthy amount of digital ink on some of When Faith Moves Mountains' most striking images, but it won't mean much without context. In order to move the dune, Alÿs and his collaborators recruited 500 locals, many of whom seem to be college students, to don identical t-shirts, form a line and slowly advance across it, shoveling all the way. The video gives a final dune-displacement distance of 10cm, which is small enough to be plausible. Provided a close look at the line's actual technique, though, it's still somewhat difficult to believe. But hey, it ain't about literally getting an enormous pile of sand from one place to another, very similar place; it's about mobilizing the humanity and firing the will to give it a shot. The "faith" of the title seems ambiguous. This is South America, yes, and I understand a certain amount of religion goes on there, but direct references to god in the video are few, if there are any at all. (And Alÿs himself is a Belgian, one of those nationalities that I just can't picture doing anything god-y in this day and age.) The faith could equally be faith in oneself and one's collaborators to pull off neato art stunts, or, as Tao Lin said, "doing really 'retarded' things in order to relieve boredom, like buying a large billboard on Houston street and putting a hamster drawing on it." Plus, they also created something that is, aesthetically speaking, pretty damn cool. At one point, someone mentions the purely geometrical difficulty of getting a line to move over the surface of a cone, but the striking picture of a thin, white-and-blue (most of the diggers wear jeans) arc gradually crossing a vast brownness as hazy sand clouds blow across turns out to have been well worth the blood, sweat and sandpants. This film in Colin Marshall's Ubuweb Experimental Video Project

Francis Alÿs in collaboration with Cuauhtémoc Medina and Rafael Ortega, When Faith Moves Mountains (Cuando la fe mueve montañas) Lima, 2002, Private collection © Francis Alÿs Photo: Video still.

Francis Alÿs, Drawing for When Faith Moves Mountains, 2002, 16mm film transferred to DVD; 2 rear-projection screens; 1 monitor; DVD projection, Image Size: variable.

Francis Alys, "The Sign Painting Project (1993-97): A Revision,"installation view, at the Schaulager, Basel

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