WORDS: GABIJA PURLYTĖ
The Belgian Francis Alÿs, having trained as an architect, began his practice in the visual arts after moving to Mexico City some 17 years ago. Since then, he has done work in a broad range of media, from drawing to performance, and his video work often unifies multiple strands of this diverse practice. While much of Alÿs’ art has focused on Mexico City, he has brought this same inquisitive eye to many cities around the globe, involving himself with their architectural, social and cultural environment.
Around 2003, Alÿs was invited by London-based art organisation Artangel to engage with the city of London, which evolved, through a number of visits over the period of a year and a half, into a project entitled Seven Walks. With no clear master plan and an agreement that work would enfold through a method rather than as a predetermined project, Alÿs began by trying to get to grips with the most characteristic features of the city. This lead to the first group of works, Railings, to which the video we are offering belongs.
The idea of the work is wonderfully simple — the artist is filmed by his collaborator Rafael Ortega walking along Fitzroy Square, drumming out rhythms by dragging a wooden stick on the iron railings. Walking is a crucial aspect in his oeuvre, and it is the theme which, quite evidently, loosely connects the works in Seven Walks. Simplicity of concept is key to Alÿs, who believes that viewing his work should perhaps not be necessary: it might be enough just to hear about it. One of his projects involved pushing a large block of ice along the streets of Mexico City – a mental image almost inevitably emerges, along with one of amused locals having a laugh at the silly gringo.
In the case of Railings, however, seeing and listening to the video is a pleasure you would not want to miss out on: the melodies achieved by the most basic of means betray the crash course in drumming that Alÿs got from a colleague. But the audial meeting of the stick and the railings is not just an end in itself; the artist’s steady strides set the pace for our encounter with a part of the city. Sounds reveal its topography and geography: a gate constitutes a pause, a column gives out a different sound than a free-standing railing. The rhythms merge with the natural sounds of the city (and become part of them), with the sights of a dog chasing a crow, of a scattering flock of pigeons, of oblique winter sunshine casting shadows on the snow, to produce a powerful impression of the atmosphere captured at a particular place and time.
Despite the simplicity of the action, there are multiple layers to this work. Railings, after all, and especially their ubiquity, say something about the character of a city, the socio-economic division of its spaces, the historical moments of that division, and the impact of the past brought on the present day. The conclusion of the video seems to be brought about by a chance encounter — Alÿs follows a policy of letting accident guide the development of his actions/performances once they have been set in motion — but here, the dimension of social commentary emerges with full strength, leaving the viewer in a pensive mood.
To see more of Alÿs’ videos, please visit his website www.francisalys.com
