Francis Alÿs Sometimes Making Something Leads to Nothing video
Francis Alÿs Reel/Unreel, 2011 here
In Francis Alÿs’s video REEL-UNREEL, the action takes place along the bare cityscape of Kabul, Afghanistan. The cameras follow a reel of film as it unrolls through the old part of town—pushed by two children, uphill and downhill, like a hoop, inspiring an improvised narrative. It’s an example of “doing/undoing,” Alÿs says. And that interplay became the axiom of the film.
REEL-UNREEL was made in collaboration with filmmaker Julien Devaux and architect Ajmal Maiwandi in 2011, and it touches on the multifaceted, open-ended nature of Alÿs’s art, his social and political concerns, his appreciation of film itself, and his fascination with children’s games. (Alÿs has a 13-year-old son.) It was shown earlier this year in a chilly white viewing room inside David Zwirner gallery in New York, where Alÿs and I met to talk about his practice.
Hanging in neighboring rooms were many mostly small drawings—of people and landscapes, some with color bars (in the style of TV test patterns) painted on top of them. These bars, often done later than the diaristic sketches underneath them, block the image, as if to distance their author from the memory of his experiences, and also to leave room for interpretation.
He made the drawings, he says, to keep in touch with the film when the crew wasn’t shooting. “Eventually,” he explains, “I found it very difficult to represent what’s going on in Afghanistan. It’s not easy to translate the experience of being there—it’s very conflictive in the sense that you can’t help being seduced by the place and the people.” He found that “painting color bars is a kind of take on a Bruce Nauman expression, ‘bound to fail,’” he says. “It was my own kind of material way of expressing my frustration and recognizing that in any kind of representation I was going to fail somewhat.”
Like almost all of Alÿs’s projects, REEL-UNREEL was founded on a performance or action, and from it emerged a range of related works—from hand-drawn animation loops to small sculptures, paintings, and drawings—which Alÿs sells to support himself and his larger projects.
I thought it was interesting how he developed a practice of incorporating the performance/film with drawings and paintings. He sustains his work by selling the paintings made out of the project. I think this is a good way of working when you cannot necessarily sell any products from the artwork.
ReplyDeleteMany artists work this way so one can buy into the idea of the project. It makes sense to me because drawn up plans are still a type of drawing. Paintings and photos that document an event are still photos and paintings. If an artist chooses to and can sell these types of things... why not (there are reasons why not of course but that is for everyone to figure our on their own).
DeleteFrancis Alys performance art “Sometimes Making Something Leads to Nothing” demonstrates how a man can push a block of ice through a city space. What was odd was that people that encountered the performance seemed to not even notice. It was almost as if they had seen him doing this performance every day for the last ten years. The physicality of the performance at first could be almost considered strained, but as the ice melted it became more like a soccer ball he kicked around in the street. The kicking of the ice happened until the moment it finally and completely turned to water. This seeming nothingness relates the “Reel/Unreel” performance of the children (in an Afghanistan town) roll film canisters down and around paths, sidewalks and stairs. The poetic gesture of the temporality of both the ice and the film dragging by on the street seem to suggest an inability to represent the materiality of the people and place of which Alys explores. However, more concretely he works to create additional works such as paintings, drawings, and sculptures that enable him to express a less transitory artwork. These works seem to support his efforts in documenting his work as well as support his artistic practice through somehow selling these works.
ReplyDeleteYes. Maybe also presents a different or additional way of knowing or sharing the content.
Delete...and seeing the content...
DeleteFrancis Alys usage of performative pieces combining film, drawing, and painting was rather interesting to learn about. The pushing of a block through a city space have a neutral reaction speaks to this almost matrix like space where individuals such as Alys create pieces that interrupt the matrix allows for the meaning to be enhanced. There was a piece where a woman was in the mall dancing to music that only she could hear and many people simply walked by and paid her no attention which ultimately is similar to ALys work.
ReplyDeleteIn terms of a disruption or a puncture in the expectations of the social space... yes. The individual uses their presence and their gestures (juxtaposed with the social space)... to attempt to produce a poetic understanding of that place or socio-political condition (or both).
DeleteFrancis Alÿs performing "Sometimes Making Something Leads to Nothing" felt very poetic and showed the city and it's people in a very different light. It didn't have a narrator that was feeding the viewers a specific point of view like a documentary. It was quiet and allowed the viewers to understand the city from the perspective of Alÿs who is physically struggling to push a block of ice around until it completely melts. The act of pushing a block of ice through Mexico city seems to be symbolic of the people that live in the city and their silent struggles that I don't know about as an outsider.
ReplyDeleteThe second film REEL-UNREEL was very similar to the first film. It gave a quiet and poetic in-depth view of a city that is in political and social turmoil that often goes unnoticed and ignored by outsiders. Incorporating child's play, and the low perspective of the rolling film on the dirt was very interesting and made me wonder about the damage the film is going through. The film being slowly damaged being dragged through the rugged ground of Kabul seems to be symbolic of the amount of information, history, and culture that the city and it's people has lost because of the play of war.
I like that you brought up the absence of narration. Obviously narration would smother the work - right? The idea is the silence and the effort. Viewers are supposed to wonder and think about meaning here.
DeleteFrancis Alÿs in "Sometimes Making Something Leads to Nothing", is a very physical performative piece. Pushing a giant block of ice around a city you would think get people to look but he was able to do it as if invisible and nobody knew he was there. Without the documentation from the video no one would have ever known this happened, unless being there in person seeing him perform. Watching the ice slowly melt away leaving a snail trail of water leaving a personal mark that too will disappear. As it gets less and less, Alÿs starts relaxing and kicking it like a soccer player. I enjoyed the holding of the hot cigarette with the mix of the cold ice. Ending with children laughing almost questioning will these kids even remember this encounter or will it evaporate from their mind like the ice itself.
ReplyDeleteThe sculpture/performance turns into a story and a memory...
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