A Story of Deception, Francis Alÿs
Tate Modern 15th June - 5th September, 2010

‘A Story of Deception’, an exhibition by Francis Alÿs, is currently exhibited at London’s Tate Modern. Derived from Alÿs generating a medium from the action of an artist walking, this review looks at the severity and diverse aspects of crime and punishment that the viewer may encounter as they pass through four of Alÿs’s key works.

‘Paradox of Praxis 1 (Sometimes Doing Something Leads to Nothing)’, 1997, documents Alÿs as he trudges along the pavements of Mexico City shunting a block of ice before him. As he journeys, the effort required to move this boulder lessens. From seemingly arduous manual labour, the monolith is reduced to an ever-depleting nugget of ice, jostled between the artist’s toes. Alÿs’s dedication to the constant manoeuvring of the ice, over roads and down stairs, appears imposed upon him, bordering on punishment.

There is something disconcerting grasped by observing Alÿs’s trail, particularly as it becomes apparent that this five-minute video is edited from nine-hours of endurance. This evoked stance could be attributed to what Michel Foucault explains as the deterring effects of such a scene. Within his work ‘Discipline and Punish’ he states that, ‘the “pain” at the heart of punishment is not the actual sensation of pain, but the idea of pain ... Punishment has to make use not of the body, but of representation.’ Foucault is referring to a period when physical methods of discipline were more prevalent, however our emotions similarly attune to a representation of punishment today and ‘stir all gentle, honest affections’ and the desire not to be consigned to Alÿs’s position is realised.

The most palpable representation of overtly criminal activity is within Alÿs’s work ‘Re-enactments’, 2000. Once again the artist walks the streets of Mexico City, this time wielding a loaded gun in his right hand. The tone of the video documentation is somewhere between gangster film and CCTV surveillance. It is displayed on a split screen, showing near-identical videos, one termed the ‘Real’, the other the ‘Re-enactment’. It seems relevant to consider further the use of symmetry within this work, the mirroring of the videos’ content and its presentation within the gallery. Gail Hart highlights symmetry within her discussion of the German playwright and historian Friedrich Schiller entitled ‘Friedrich Schiller: Crime, Aesthetics, and the Poetics of Punishment’,as crucial to a debate of crime and punishment. Hart confirms that:

‘The balance, ordering or reordering, and regularity achieved by adequately punishing an offender [is] not unrelated to the instinct for harmony… between the pursuit of social penal discourse and the symmetry that pleases the aesthetic spectator.’

Within ‘Re-enactments’ this balance is conventionally implemented, as the police arrest Alÿs for his actions. But what of ‘Paradox of Praxis 1 (Sometimes Doing Something Leads to Nothing)’? Where could the symmetry between crime and punishment be potentially found within this work? If one sees Alÿs’s actions within this film as a form of punishment, the viewer may be left to wonder what his crime was. Hart continues that ‘the absence of punishment certainly diminishes the appearance of crime’ therefore may be the absence of crime diminishes the appearance of punishment and in fact what we see is an example of strenuous work.

This suggestion is more closely aligned with that of the artist. For Alÿs this piece draws attention to the ‘seemingly unproductive hardship involved in the daily survival tactics of most people in the region’ : his action is punishing rather than punishment. Perhaps the viewer may begin to imagine a dialogue developing between the works of ‘A Story of Deception’ whereby if one ignores the artworks’ chronology, ‘Paradox of Praxis 1 (Sometimes Doing Something Leads to Nothing)’ could be read as a consequence of his behaviour within ‘Re-enactments’.

Eager to affirm the unequivocal and necessary bond that leads from crime to punishment for the maintenance of order within society, Foucault tells of a series of tolerances which were not deemed a ‘serious offence,’ . implying an aspect that became interference to an invariable portrayal of the law, where it emerged that ‘sometimes doing something leads to nothing’: a maxim appealing to our impish natures gratefully tinged with guilt that we had escaped a fated comeuppance. Among the potential for uncertainty is cited a further work by Alÿs, ‘The Green Line’ (2004), accompanied by the phrase, ‘sometimes doing something poetic can become political, and sometimes doing something political can be poetic,’ in which the artist becomes an unexpectedly discreet delinquent as he drips green paint from a can following along the line that marks the land that belonged to the newly established state of Israel as a result of the 1948 armistice.

Alÿs ‘wondered whether the poetic licence of artists … can play a genuine role in opening new perspectives on the course of a given society.’ The idea of poetic or artistic licence is intriguing: an almost figurative piece of legislation that is accessed by creative thinkers, often used in order to improve their work and requiring degrees of toleration on the part of the work’s audiences. There is a large expanse between tolerated and accepted and it would be foolish to aspire for all art works to make the move from being tolerated to being accepted or understood. However, works like Alÿs’s, with his strong intention for an effective contribution to made out width of an art context, would be worthy of this elevation.

This shift having been attained is evident through the Mexican police’s involvement in a recreation of the ‘Real’ arrest of Alÿs, for his handling of a gun which formed one of the two videos of ‘Re-enactments’. It would be useful to discover whether their involvement in a representation of a ‘Mexico City where crime and judicial negligence are rampant,’ moved beyond toleration despite the police being presented in a detrimental light, especially after recent reports of an Argentinean jail that, in an attempt to make cuts, guarded a watchtower ‘with a dummy — a football with a guard’s cap — and hoped prisoners would sense the constant vigilance.’ Under the dummy’s watch, two convicted armed robbers escaped, proving representation is not always enough to deter.

Among the now historic examples of tolerances that Foucault gives are those that ‘amounted almost to an acquired right (to collect bits of iron or rope around ships or to resell the sugar sweepings).’ However, as laws progressed, what often meant the ‘survival of the most deprived’ became illegal, making the activities of ‘The Collector’ (1990-92), a collection of sculptures by Alÿs, equally prohibited in those times. Alÿs walks magnetized mongrels bred from both roller skate and sewing machine on leads around Mexico City, collecting scrap metal. Today, a little and a lot has changed people are still living off the waste of others and within our own nation we are encouraged not to waste and the raiding of supermarkets bins is both a fashion and lifestyle choice. It is debatable whether The Collector’s antics are petty theft or street cleaning and yet proportionately it is thought that more attention needs to be paid to these minimal illegalities as these are the offences ‘everyone tolerates and feels quite ready to imitate’ Take the tale narrated by Johnny Cash through his song ‘One Piece at a Time’, where the protagonist is determined to build a brand new Cadillac from parts he could sneak out in his lunch box from work, believing ‘GM wouldn’t miss just one little piece.’