Francis Alÿs Movies

One of Francis Alÿs’ series of performative videos that politicize absurd or seemingly futile gestures, Paradox of Praxis 5 documents the...

Outside a stark tent city, this version of the game involves a grid of squares, two across by six long, marked by lines gouged into the arid ground....

The Nightwatch documents an action realised by Alÿs in 2004 in which he released a fox into London’s National Portrait Gallery in the...

The children of a mountain village near Mosul re-enact a century of Iraqi history, from the secret Sykes-Picot agreement in 1916 to the realm of...

During the 5th Havana Biennial, artist Francis Alys put on his magnetic shoes and took daily walks through the streets of the city, collecting scraps...

As is well known, ‘gringo’ is the derogatory term Mexicans use to refer to NorthAmerican citizens. Shot in a central province of Mexico,...

Close-up on shiny boots, knotted elastic, cobbles. Within the confines of a courtyard two demure little girls are playing a game of confinement,...

The most basic sense of fun improvises on chance gifts of the environment. Snow-fun is too immediate to need rules, either. One game suggests...

Stark though it is, the roof terrace with its low ochre-red wall and washed turquoise abstract seems the nearest thing to a garden among the...

The video shows the artist walking in circles around the flagpole (“Madre Patria”) in Zócalo, Mexico City’s monumental...

Many of us played this as kids, spinning on the spot until collapsing. In a group there’s a competitive element, each tries to be the last one...

This game requires considerable practice and precision, especially on the uneven terrain of an urban waste lot. The action consists in flicking a...

"Mixing water from the Red Sea with water from the Black Sea". Trabzon, Turkey-Aqaba, Jordan, 2010.

Born in the recent past in school playgrounds and now a national sport, Nzango is a female-only game. The aim is to imitate, or more mysteriously,...

An update of tag, the scariest of kids’ games. Instead of the touched person being “frozen,” they are contaminated and activated as...

First we drive past harrowing scenes of missile and bullet damage, into an area that’s still intact. At a crossroads not far from the...

Why do all the bottle tops start the same way up, grouped together, if there are two teams? When is the ball launched with a plank and when by hand?...

Girls and boys, together for once, hunt through lush grass and undergrowth, on the lookout for well-camouflaged grasshoppers. When one is found its...