Earth Art Project Inspirations: Francis Alys

Ever since he was first mentioned in class, this Belgian artist's work has intrigued me. From the green line drawn to challenge the boundaries between Israel and Palestine to the subtle yet grand movement of geologic landforms, his work is quite phenomenal and eye-opening; my final project draws more inspiration from the latter.

In his work, "When Faith Moves Mountains" (2002), he recruited 500 volunteers and each person moved a shovel full of sand one step at a time from one side of a dune to the other, and together they moved the entire geographical location of the dune by a few inches. In fact, this "human comb" pushed a certain quantity of sand a certain distance, thereby moving a sixteen-hundred-foot-long sand dune about four inches from its original position. According to an article written by himself, he attempted to make a "social allegory," translating social narratives that intervene in the imaginary landscape of a place. He wanted to add to the local Peruvian history, by adding another myth (or rumor) to its narrative, thus creating somewhat of an urban myth that could be shared from generation to generation. There is no addition to the landscape, as stated by its creator, an attempt to "deromanticize land art." According to the Mexican curator/critic Cuauhtemoc Medina that he was travelling with, "Faith is a means by which one resigns oneself to the present in order to invest in the abstract promise of the future." Through this, linear displacement of the geologic feature (or dune) did literally occur, a process that would have taken hundreds if not thousands of years if not left alone. He gives this as the only explanation of his work, allowing interpretations to freely shape themselves and evolve over time.

So you may be wondering how this can possibly relate to my project. Well, its quite simple; although I do not live in Peru or have access to any sand dunes, the idea of manipulating a large land form is quite interesting. And this is what I did; although my "land form" was not nearly on the same magnitude of size as the sand dune, I was one person (not 500) with one shovel, who had to manipulate more than the mound's linear displacement. I didn't just move it four inches in any direction, I patterned and played with the landscape until something formed. As soon as I sensed the formation of something truly different and fresh, I began to hone in on the details. Overall, it was a quite painstaking process, but one that was truly fulfilling.

On a lighter note, I also took a little inspiration from another of Alys' more psychedelic works, "Narcotourism" (1996) in which he explored Copenhagen over the course of seven days under the influence of seven different drugs. In my case, the narcotics were replaced with a depressant, a bottle of Magic Hat beer. It had nothing to do with the final product, however it made working in cold rain a lot more palatable (especially while in pajamas).