Francis Alÿs Movies

For an indeterminate period of time, the magnetized metal collector takes a daily walk through the streets and gradually builds up a coat mad of any...

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...

First recorded in the Isle of Wight in 1848, conkers was commonly played in the UK until it was banned from most schools in the early 2000s. Players...

Shot in black and white in homage to Helen Levitt, the pioneering photographer of children chalking the streets of Harlem in the late 1930s, this...

Neither indoors nor out, but on the doorstep, where you might play a quick game while waiting for someone. Girl and boy pile up candy wrappers, face...

A group of children hold hands in a circle. The child in the middle plays the lamb, the one outside is the wolf. The wolf tries to catch the lamb by...

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

From the 3rd to the 5th of November 2008, 60 median strips erased by the passage of time were repainted in the former Panama Canal Zone.

We see three kids from behind, standing at a set distance from a peeling, whitewashed wall. The rule is that each player throws a coin against the...

The bay is peaceful, framed by low hills in the distance. Three boys stand thigh-deep in the brown water, trousers rolled up. The biggest, on the...

The props in this game are wooden sticks or branches shaped like guns. Two kids pretend to fire at each other, making elaborate and highly varied...

Grandma’s Footsteps in Britain, Red light, green light in North America, Thunder, weather, lightning in Austria, One, two, three, ciggy...

The Belgian-born and Mexican-based conceptual artist Francis Alÿs arrived in Iraq in October 2016 to document the displacements caused by the...

For this work Alÿs purchased a gun in Mexico City then walked through the city streets with the weapon in his hand. After eleven minutes he was...

Once upon a time Ani was one of the most important cities of the Middle Ages. People started abandoning the city until all life left and silence fell...

Presented at the Iraqi Pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennale.

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

Alÿs’s motto for When Faith Moves Mountains is “Maximum effort, minimum result.” For this epic project the artist invited five...

Though mosquitoes have almost as many sensory auditory cells as we do, their hearing is for the sole purpose of finding a mate. Individual males...

Francis Alÿs has his own drawing painted by several different semi-professional painters.